Ganesh,  also known as Ganapati,  was the son of Siva and Parvati, two high-ranking deities in the Hindu pantheon. It is said that Parvati, while bathing, fashioned her son out of the dust on her body and then asked him to guard the door. Siva, returning from a long absence, became enraged when this stranger denied him access to his wife so he promptly beheaded him. When he realized that   he had killed his own son he asked his gana, or troops,   to bring him the head of the first sleeping creature they came across. It turned out to be an elephant whose head was then   cut off and handed  over to Siva. Siva, in turn,  placed it on his son’s decapitated body declaring him to be  Ganapati, the leader of his troops.  Thus was born Lord Ganesh, the elephant god revered by Hindus as the remover of obstacles, the slayer of  evil and the source of education, wisdom and wealth.

Such myths lacking in scientific feasibility are common to all cultures. Their purpose is to further humanity’s understanding of the dynamics of the universe and the struggle between good and evil.   They are not meant to be taken literally. After all, everybody knows that centaurs, mermaids and griffins defy the laws of biology.

Do they really?  Not anymore. Thanks to genetic engineering it is possible to develop soybeans with fish genes, hogs with human genes, featherless chickens and cattle saturated with human growth hormones. The proponents of genetic engineering claim that such experiments will improve human life, whereas its detractors rail against  the dangers of causing environmental degradation, widening the gap between the rich and the poor and most importantly, creating  yet more Frankensteins.

Dolly was a lovely sheep with beautiful qualities. She was cloned so that her genetic makeup would not be diluted throughout future generations. Never mind that her clones were her biological age at birth thereby experiencing premature ageing.  Featherless chickens were  designed to harness their energy not into producing feathers but more flesh, presumably for the Kentucky Fried Chickens of the world.  Pigs, as well all know, or should know, have bodies that resemble human bodies  more than those of other animal species. They are genetically “humanized” so that their hearts, kidneys and livers  can be “harvested” for xenotransplants (inters-species transplants) into humans who can afford them.   Unfortunately these pigs are also susceptible to  degenerative diseases  such as arthritis and deformities thereby leading a life of suffering until they  are “sacrificed” –or made sacred- for human use and consumption.  This scenario poses the ethical problem of some sort of cannibalism as well. Human growth hormone is widely used in the production of milk and beef, a practice now disallowed in many countries. Beans or tomatoes with fish genes can potentially cause allergic reactions in susceptible people who think they are eating  a vegetarian product. Plants bred to be resistant to certain pesticides contribute to wiping out other plant species and humans will consume their overload of lethal chemicals.

Aside from environmental and health-related concerns, there are political and economic  dimensions to the conundrum of genetic engineering. The Human Genome Biodiversity Project specifically gathers the genes of indigenous people under the guise of preserving their heritage. However, they, the indigenous people,  see this “human husbandry”  as yet another form of colonization, racism and exploitation. They are also tired of having their plants stolen, genetically modified, patented and then resold to them at a high cost. Texmati or basmati rice anyone? Monsanto is perhaps the biggest perpetrator of such exploitation.[Watch: The World According to Monsanto. A documentary by Marie-Monique Robin.]  Farmers in the Indian state of Maharashtra have been committing mass suicides when they realize that neither they nor their heirs can escape from the usury involved in being forced to buy terminator seeds that supposedly  will  liberate them from their perpetual poverty. [Watch: Bitter Seeds, a documentary by Micha X. Peled.] Fortunately there are people like Dr.  Vandana Siva, [Indian physicist,  philosopher,  environmentalist, proponent of traditional agricultural methods, author of over 20 books  and leading figure in the anti-globalization movement] who is leading a crusade to develop heritage seed banks throughout the country…and the world.

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury wrote a poignant short story about a couple who cheat on each other by leaving a robotic replica of themselves at home. Will the decoy robots end up making love to each other? Anything is possible in this brave new world envisaged by Aldous Huxley in his 1984 scenario and implemented by big corporations in the 21^st century.   The Japanese have been studying the feasibility of producing computers with human elements. One can only wonder at the elements involved. And the other way around, of course. Electronic chips can and have been inserted into human brains for clinical  purposes. Implants of different levels of sophistication have helped the hearing-impaired as well as cardiac patients.  However, there are rumours floating  in the air that they can also be used for mind reading and political as well as commercial indoctrination. Many have argued that science and technology are value-neutral. Science, or pure knowledge, certainly is. Technology not necessarily so, driven, as it is, by the search for profit, the hunger for power and the seduction of prestige. Maybe that is what was meant by the biblical metaphor of the original sin, that is, the acquisition of knowledge outside the confines of a moral framework.

Big Pharma has become a stock-phrase as trite as the military-industrial complex. Triteness comes out of familiarity and familiarity breeds contempt. It is now not only into farming, but also into pharming, that is the designing of animals that can actually secret drugs into their blood and milk.  No wonder many concerned parents shy away from cow’s milk for their children. The crime of converting animals into pharmaceutical laboratories is as heinous as hunting down rhinoceros  to enhance human male potency or killing musk deer for their glands to produce perfumes.

Lord Ganesh is reputed to have authored the Mahabharata, the longest epic not only of India but of humanity. This Sanskrit text is about ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. The potential for the misuse of technology devoid of ethical input is in the same order of magnitude. But this is no reason to be discouraged. The Earth’s biodiversity and the diversity of human cunning is also  immensurable. The key word here is resistance.

Resistance takes on many forms  such as the creation of seed banks to foil terminator seeds, the enactment of legislation to control research and development, the practice of sustainable small-scale farming to protect biodiversity, the refusal on the part of consumers to buy genetically modified foods, pressure by patient lobby groups to look into harmful or needlessly invasive medical technologies that often do more harm than good.

Knowledge is a prerequisite for any kind of resistance. We live in the information age. We can subvert the corporate conspiracy to appropriate what belongs to all of us on this planet by using the very same technology to defeat evil and defend goodness. The key word here is ethics.

And this is where we can call on symbols like Ganesh,  or on real people like Vandana Siva and the millions of people who have not abdicated their responsibilities as intelligent and sensitive human beings to join us in clearing the obstacles we face,  leading us towards education, wisdom and [w]health.

Or we can simply fall back on our own indigenous resources which are our skilled hands, our natural intuition,  our complex brain and a strong heart to  make the journey together.

1956  was the year that marked  a sea change in my life. I had to leave a private grade school to attend a public  high-school that was so poor that our classroom only had three walls, the fourth being chicken-wiring that prevented the children from leaving but let the cold air in.  It was also the year in which a plastic surgeon of Hollywood fame  tried to mend my broken nose by removing a bony bump that prevented me from breathing and replacing my mangled septum with some dead person’s cartilage.  It was the year in which I learned that the word virgin did not only  refer to Guadalupe, the dark Madonna revered by Mexican Catholics  but also to me on account of my intact hymen.  That was also the year that confirmed that I was tone-deaf when our new music mistress, a Mezzo-soprano from the Mexico City  Opera, while classifying the voices of her new charges  shook her head rather hastily when I predictably struck the wrong note. That was also the year in which I lost the only home I had ever known when my mother traded it for a passage on a slow boat to India where my father awaited us to start a new life.

The biggest change got a jump-start when we boarded the SS Francesco Morosini in Veracruz, a cargo ship that picked up sugar and molasses in the Caribbean and took it to Italy to be converted into rum-flavoured gelato, or so I liked to think.  It was a crossing that would take us forty-three days, during fifteen of which we would not sight land.

There were only six passengers on board, including my mother, my older sister, a middle-aged  French woman, and a  Belgian sex-pot who would  be unceremoniously dumped  off at the nearest port for disturbing the morale- or was it the morals ?- of the crew. I also remember a man  in his eighties  who swam every day to keep fit while his nurse-companion hovered around the tiny swimming pool ready to provide assistance.  The swimming pool doubled as the cargo hold opening when the ship docked. I often wondered whether the sea water and our sweat  could filter down making those molasses taste like taffy.

I got my first tooth abscess at  high seas.  The Captain sent me to the engine-room mechanic who was also the on-board nurse. At first I was not averse to the idea of his pulling my tooth since I was eager to meet this man with the swarthy skin, curly hair and soulful eyes. He led me to his cabin where he opened a glass cabinet full of medical equipment. And that is when I got a good look at his hands blackened by engine grease and I politely declined.  By the time we got to Italy my gums were so soggy that  the Egyptian dentist who extracted my tooth did not even have to use anaesthesia.

There was nothing much to do on board except swim in the tiny pool, eat, drink (if you were an adult) and stare at the sea.  I would observe the dolphins that accompanied us on our journey and when they were absent, I would stare into the depths of the dark waters.  One day a sailor warned me off since marine lore has it that the sea can hypnotise you and lure you into its bosom.  I heeded his warning and dropped my favourite pair of earrings into the water  instead.

It  wasn’t all smooth sailing, though.  The sea can be cruel.  On the 25^th of July the SS Andrea Doria, the pride of Italy’s passenger fleet, send out a distress signal after it collided with a Swedish vessel.  Our own ship made an abrupt turn and went full steam ahead, but other vessels had arrived before us to provide succour.  Another near miss was a giant whale that narrowly escaped the Francesco Morosini’s propellers.

That was also the year of my first love. I was fourteen and he was 24, but our age difference didn’t matter since he was completely oblivious to my crush. I became Giancarlo’s confidante, though, and he would sometimes whip out the picture of his Egyptian wife and their blond curly haired boy while he told me how much he missed them.

I made another friend whose name was Scarlatti. He was an old sea hand who had been travelling back and forth between the Caribbean and Italy for so many years that he no longer knew where his Italian ended and his Spanish began. I helped him paint the ship during the fortnight that we were at high seas. He repaid me by making me fluent in Spanish-flavoured Italian.

We docked for a week in Casablanca which gave the passengers plenty of time to visit the city.  My mother, the French woman, my sister and I visited the Kasbah by ourselves, to the horror of the sailors who warned us of the dangers that lurked in the Arab quarters.  Nobody bothered us there, but  a young boy grabbed my leg while we were sitting at a sidewalk café in the French Sector. He insisted on polishing my shoes, which certainly wanted some buffing, but I refused, jerking my leg away and hitting him accidentally.  He let out a string of curses in Arabic but the French soldiers sitting next to us pretended not to have witnessed anything. Later that day, while returning to the ship,  two policemen tried to arrest my mother for attempting to kidnap “two Arab girls”. My blonde, green-eyed Belgian mother had to produce our passports to prove we were indeed her daughters. They had taken her to be French. Morocco had recently obtained home rule and then full independence but tension between former colonizers and the colonized was still  high.

Our ship docked in Naples at a funny angle on account of a mine left over from World War II.

After three weeks in Italy we boarded  a passenger ship  headed to India via the Suez Canal. While the ship waited in the locks some passengers took tour buses to visit the pyramids but my mother stopped us from accompanying them because  “something was about to happen”. She was right.  When we reached Bombay  we discovered we had narrowly missed the shutting down of the Suez Canal by Egyptian President   Gamel Abdel Nasser in retaliation for Anglo-French policy in the region. The cold war was heating up.

When we docked in Bombay I caught sight of my father who looked so small in the huge crowd. Many seas separated me from my birthplace and life would never be the same, but  I had finally arrived.

March 24, 2012

Elle s’appelait Simone Signoret. France. 2010. French with English subtitles.

The American public will remember Simone Signoret as  the first French actress to win a Hollywood Oscar.

French filmgoers will, more often than not, think of her as the female villain of the piece. Tabloid readers will marvel at her famous pronouncement when her  husband, Yves Montand, became involved with Marilyn Monroe.  Here I paraphrase: “It will be impossible for Yves to unravel all the threads that tie us together”. Their marriage lasted until her death. As far as today’s  generation of botoxed and carved-up  starlets is concerned, there might be grudging admiration for a  woman who dared, not only to act her age, but even older. Signoret was not afraid of displaying her battle-scars on screen, although off- screen she admitted that she could have taken better care of her physical appearance.

To militants all over the world  she will always be worthy of admiration and hopefully, emulation,  because she acted  on  her convictions with courage and determination regardless of the cost. She and Yves were often seen together defending victims of  blatant injustices.  However,  like many progressives of her generation, she felt betrayed when the depths of Stalin’s perfidy became known.

I will always think of her as the daughter of Andre Kaminker, a pioneer interpreter who worked during the Nuremberg trials and  founded  AIIC, the  Geneva-based International Association of Conference Interpreters.

Do see this film. They don’t make them like that any more… actresses, that is.

[Maya Khankhoje, who was a member of AIIC for over three decades, still remembers her childhood horror when  she watched Simone Signoret in Les Diaboliques.]

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March 22, 2012

The Toledo Report, Mexico, 2009. Spanish/Zapotec/English with English subtitles.

Francisco Toledo is a graphic artist, painter and story teller from Juchitan, Oaxaca. The Zapotec speaking municipality of  Juchitan not only defeated the French troops that invaded Mexico in 1866 but also  installed a left-wing pro-socialist government in the late 20^th Century.  Toledo comes from such hardy stock.

Francisco Toledo’s work has been greatly influenced by Dürer, his readings of European literature  and his student days in Paris. There he shared a studio with other artists from whom he learned a lot and to whom he taught  a lot, not to forget, of course, Mexican folk art and mysticism. This film documents Toledo’s life, his artistic trajectory  as well as his fiery political involvement. The documentary contains  old footage, new interviews and animation based on Toledo’s engravings  which in turn are based on Kafka’s Peter the Red. There Toledo describes himself as an ape who learns from others, a clin d’oeil to his Parisian experience.

However, not everything is black and white in Toledo’s work or his thinking, as evidenced in his paintings and sculptures informed by Mexico’s oral history. The crocodile and other reptiles are a recurring theme in Toledo’s work, as well as other animals that inhabit the Mexican jungles. The ape, of course, is used by the artist in many of his self-portraits.

Like Gaudí, Toledo participated in several architectural projects with massive sculptures, notably in the very modern and industrialised city of Monterrey.

To watch this film is to both get a privileged glimpse into life in El México Profundo and a coherent  answer to a nagging question: What is the link between art and revolution?

[When Maya Khankhoje and her daughter Shanti were holidaying in Huatulco they were unable to visit neighbouring Juchitan because of the standoff between the federal government and the people’s government of Juchitan.]

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March 20, 2012

La Famille Stein, la fabrique d’art moderne. France, 2011, French/English.

Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso and Juan Gris have one thing in common, aside from being modernist  painters. They all visited  Gertrude Stein´s salon in Paris at some point or another , or at least had their works  hung on those high walls of her apartment. Initially it was her brother Leo´s apartment, later she joined him and lived with him until he left and she set up house with her companion Alice B. Toklas. They say it was Leo who knew about paintings and that Gertrude  learned from him. Others say it was the alchemy between these two siblings as well as the zeitgeist of Europe  that produced such fine collections which later made their way to museums all over the world. Be it as it may, all art lovers have gained from this marriage-like relationship between these  two siblings,  both of them outside the norms of accepted heterosexuality for the period. Unlike a marital couple, however, they had no problems splitting the collection when they went their separate ways.

It is one thing  to acquire an art collection if you receive money from your hard working older brother in San Francisco and buy paintings from hitherto unknown painters at a favorable rate of exchange in Paris. It is another to know that what you are buying, bold and innovative for those times, will be recognized –and endure- as masterpieces down the years and into the following century.

Leo and Gertrude had a special gift. Watch the movie and you will be regaled with authentic footage of Gertrude reciting some of her literary pieces and you might even get a glimpse of Picasso when he had a full head of hair.

[Maya Khankhoje has never understood why Gertrude Stein is considered such a literary figure. After watching the film she is eager to read more of her work.]

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March 19, 2012

Bone Wind Fire, Canada, 2011.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr and Frida Kahlo were three of the most important painters, men or women,  of the 20^th Century.

Both O’Keeffe and Carr drew their inspiration from nature, the former from the deserts of New Mexico and the latter from the lush forests of Western Canada.

Kahlo, on the other hand, drew her inspiration from her personal pain and the bright colours of the Mexican landscape.

Each painter had a unique style, but the three of them walked a path strewn with obstacles. Whereas Emily and Georgia lived and painted in solitude, Kahlo thrived in human company.

The narrative is taken from the diaries and correspondence of the three women thus providing  viewers with a glimpse into their hearts, minds and eyes.

The film could have shown more images of the incredible art of these painters. However, in the case of  Kahlo, the film gained by showcasing some lesser known works.

[When Maya Khankhoje was a little girl she often accompanied her father on visits to her old friends Diego and Frida. She’ll never forget the image of Frida lying on her bed with her easel hanging from the ceiling.]

**

Beatriz González, ¿Por Qué  Llora Si Ya Reí?

Beatriz González, born in 1938,  is one of Colombia´s foremost painters. She has been called the Latin American response to pop culture because  some of her work is reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s silk screens. But the resemblance stops there.

As a child she was nicknamed “the artist”.  Her rambunctious siblings did not enjoy the privilege she enjoyed: that of  accompanying her father on different outings and errands during which he would comment on everything they saw. Beatriz learned to be observant, to question what she saw  and to rebel against the “good taste” which her genteel mother had tried to instil in her.

This rebellious spirit led her to mock politicians whom she judged to be leading the country towards fascism as well as  to explore the meaning of  taste, good or bad. For her a pluralistic society is a healthy one.

Beatriz started out by deconstructing copies of famous paintings or newspaper photographs to create something entirely new. With a 50-year history of armed conflict in Colombia, she realized that humour was no longer a valid weapon.  The newspapers chronicled so many tragedies, both personal and  political,  that her art began to be steeped in tears rather than laughter. However, it is not lugubrious. The combination of pathos and the luminous colours of Colombian popular art  is visually stunning and healing.

When demolitions started in the 1836 Central Cemetery of Bogota to make room for a park and other amenities, people were shocked. Colombian traditions, although formally Catholic,  are also deeply rooted in voodoo. They felt that the souls of the dead would wander eternally over the city. Beatriz González, of a more rational and humanistic bent, lamented the loss of historical memory and a place to grieve. When she realized that there were several units housing 8957 empty niches which had not yet been demolished she set out to rescue them by designing tombstones. For this, she created several silk-screen patterns to cover each and every empty columbarium  so that “the  wandering souls could be contained”. With this she also hoped to give meaning to a future Memory, Peace and Reconciliation Centre honouring the victims of violent death. Her designs depict dead bodies being carried the traditional way:  tied with  a rope, lying on a hammock or simply wrapped in a plastic sheet.

Beatriz González  is aware that her art is ephemeral. She hopes other artists follow her lead.

[Maya Khankhoje was close to tears after viewing this film, but her spirits were uplifted when she  bumped into Rax Rinnekangas who recommended she view his film: A Journey to Eden, very fittingly, about  and forgiveness. More anon.]

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March 18, 2012

Intime Etranger,  France/Japan, 2011.

This meditative film follows the production of two abstract paintings by Japanese artist Hitoshi Mori, whose body harbours  a slow form of cancer. The painter seeks out a barren rock-strewn landscape and paints a couple of huge rocks, or rather, the space between them. In between bouts of painting he either rests or visits the doctor in the company of his wife. He also occasionally shares a beer and a chat  with friends, or gardens in his kitchen plot. Everything is grey, the rocks are several shades of grey and so are the paintings which become more and more abstract as they  reach completion. Bursts of green Japanese landscapes punctuate the narrative. There are neither highlights nor dramatic moments in the movie.  It is all very Zen and very soothing. Just close your eyes and image the paintings for which, unfortunately, the festival failed to provide visuals.

Is the intimate stranger the illness that is eating the painter away? Or is it the slow process of creating an abstract masterpiece, a la Japanese with a touch of Parisian chic?

[Maya Khankhoje was fascinated by the process of creating an abstract painting which appears to involve a lot of meditation and a touch of slapdash.]

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March 17, 2012

Les Ambassadeurs d’Holbein—Rendez-vous avec la mort. France, 2010.

The Ambassadors (1533) is perhaps one of Hans Holbein the Younger’s most important works. It forms part of the curriculum of most art history and art appreciation courses. It depicts two men symbolizing secular and religious power as well as three levels of human life: the heavens, life on earth and death. Such a type of painting containing still lives and a double portrait is often known as a Vanitas. On the upper left-hand corner there is a crucifix partially hidden by the curtain and at the bottom centre part there is a skewed skull depicted in anamorphic perspective. If the viewer views it from the right hand corner its perspective will be compressed appearing as a normally shaped skull.

The objects in the centre are scientific instruments depicting latitudes, longitudes and other types of measurements whereas the broken string on the musical instrument denotes disharmony, perhaps of a geopolitical nature or between secular and religious powers. The rug is oriental and the mosaic on the floor is a copy of the design on Westminster Abbey. This latter detail is explained by the fact that although Holbein was Germanic by birth he spent many years in England painting the portraits of King Henry VIII and a couple of his wives.

The movie is technically impeccable, thought-provoking and engaging. Its most interesting feature is the panorama of the times offered  by the narrator.

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March 16, 2012

Casa Estudio por Luis Barragán. Finland  2010.

Where can you watch a film about an eminent Mexican architect narrated in Finnish with English subtitles? In French-speaking Montreal, of course, thanks to FIFA.

Casa Estudio, as the name implies, was the home and study of Luis Barragán, an engineer and self-taught architect  who went on to win the Pritzker Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in architecture.

He was greatly influenced by   Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus movement  and Islamic  architecture and has often been described as a minimalist.  However, even though he can certainly be called a modernist, his use of colour and natural materials such as wood and stone, have set his work apart.  For him, design should reflect emotional contact. As far as Barragán was  concerned, a  house should not stand out from its surroundings  which is why Casa Estudio is unprepossessing on the outside. He also believed that a home should reflect serenity and silence. Therefore it  has a Zen-like quality on the inside and is alive with colour and light.

Even though Barragán designed the urban plan for El Pedregal, a luxurious neighbourhood in Mexico where the houses are landscaped on lava rock, he chose to build his home in a working-class neighbourhood.  It was built in 1947 and UNESCO added it to its list of World Heritage in 2004.

[Maya Khankhoje, who  was born in Mexico City,  used to think Mexican architecture was outstanding. She no longer thinks that, now she knows for sure.]

**

Ai Weiwei. Without Fear or Favour. United Kingdom, 2010, Mandarin/English.

Ai Wei Wei is a Chinese artist and activist engaged in curating, sculpture, ceramics, installations, architecture, photography and film. He is also a social, political and cultural critic.  A true renaissance man of the 21^st Century who, according to this BBC film, is answerable only to himself, that is, to his artistic truth.  His politics are equally scathing against Mao’s vision of China and its current capitalistic orgy. He helped design the Beijing National Stadium, otherwise known as the Bird’s Nest for the 2008 Olympics yet he distanced himself from the Olympics themselves, decrying what they stood for.  Why then did he agree to design the stadium?  Because he thought his design was beautiful.

Whatever he is, he is true to himself, a man  “without fear or favour”,  who rose from poverty to great wealth and back again to penury, funnelling all his earnings back into his art.

These contradictory characteristics are not surprising, considering his father was Ai Qing, a beloved national poet and ardent communist who was exiled by the government in 1957 for defending Ding Ling, a Chinese woman author accused of rightism.

This thought-provoking film traces Ai Weiwei’s evolution as an artist, his self-exile to New York where he was influenced by members of the beat generation like Ginsberg and where, out of poverty and necessity,  he learned how to create art –conceptual art- with whatever materials were available to him. He also learned to destroy Ming vases and tamper with antique furniture to make a point about their value.

It also shows his return to China following his father’s illness triggered by the Tiananmen Square events and his decision to actively participate in his country’s destiny.

The most important piece of art showcased in this film was  commissioned for an unknown amount  by the Tate Gallery in London. It was two and a half years in the making and  consists of 100 million, yes, 100,000,000 porcelain sunflower seeds made by hand by hundreds upon hundreds of artisans in the region  where Ming vases were originally made. But this is a gross exaggeration, the Tate Gallery only bought 8 million seeds for display.

Ai Weiwei uses art to turn on itself. How subversive is that?

[When Maya Khankhoje visited Beijing the city was still ruled by bicycles, but that was in the last century.]

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March 15, 2012

The 30^th Edition of the International Festival of Films on Art  kicked off on 15^th March and will continue till the 25^th of the month. It showcases 232 documentaries –and a few feature films – from 27 countries on art, architecture, literature, dance, fashion, music and painting.

Montreal Serai’s pick for today is Gaudí, le dernier bâtisseur [France, 2010, color, French/Spanish] previewed in the Festival’s excellent media facilities. Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), master builder of the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia) in Barcelona came from a long line of artisans who knew how to build structures and fashion objects out of wood, clay, construction materials, metal, glass and other materials taken from nature. Those skills, together with his formal architectural studies, made him a remarkable builder, architect,  sculptor and artist in general. He was also a deeply religious person who shared medieval man’s veneration for places of worship which were anchored in the earth but reached out to high heavens. As far as he was concerned, cathedrals had to look like forests and they did.  His main inspiration was the rugged topography of Catalonia, his natal province, as well as its idiosyncratic vegetation. His great love of nature  is reflected in his   penchant for curves and asymmetry.  How can his curvilinear pillars  support heavy stone structures that seem to want to sway like sea weeds­?

They can and they do, because Gaudí was an undisputed architectural and artistic genius. He was also a recycler: broken wine bottles, porcelain shards, bits and pieces rejected from factories and other found objects were never too humble to be embedded as decorations into the walls of his magnificent structures. He was also a social visionary. There isn`t a single house that resembles another one  in his housing project for factory workers. Gaudí, unlike the Bauhaus movement architects who strongly believed that form must follow function,  was obviously trying to compensate for the soullessness of the industrial era.

If  there are viewers  who fail to be moved by this film it means that they are square and rigid unlike Gaudi’s sublime and visionary architecture.

 
Canadian literature is as rich as its native children such as Joseph Boyden, who, Through Black Spruce, has allowed city folk to breathe in the heady scent of aboriginal life in the north, Hugh MacLennan, who bridged the gap between Two Solitudes and Gabrielle Roy, who made us understand that Bonheur d’occasion really translates as unhappiness for  the Montreal  St. Henri District working class during the difficult forties.  And there are many more. So many that it could be said that Canada has one of the highest ratios of writers to reading public. And that is saying a lot in a highly literate population.  Could the Canadian Council for the Arts and its hitherto encouraging policies have something to do with it? Perhaps.  Are you listening, Mr. Harper?

Canadian cultural horizons, however, have been vastly broadened and made more cosmopolitan by the contributions of Canadian writers born elsewhere, bringing in  their experiences, culture and unique perspectives. Once again, there are so many that to mention just a few would be doing a disservice to the unmentioned many. As they say in Spanish, to get an idea of a row of buttons, one sample suffices.

Montreal Serai has chosen The Cat’s Table, by Michael Ondaatje, as a sample of excellence in Canadian literature.

“What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.” Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table.

Where does the title come from? The cat’s table is the one farthest away from the Captain’s table in a passenger ship. That’s where you get the scraps of society if not of food.  Distinguished passengers seated at more privileged tables take turns, upon invitation, to sit at the Captain’s table but that will not be the fate of Michael, our 11-year old hero who sits at the cat’s table, with an assortment of misfits and eccentrics. And this is because he is a pesky child travelling alone with a nominal guardian in the higher decks.

And herein lies the story. The plot is simple. A Ceylonese (the country’s name had not yet been decolonized) boy travels from Colombo to London to meet his mother whom he hasn’t seen in several years. The setting is the early fifties. (The publisher lets us know that Ondaatje, who shares the same first name as his hero and who made a similar journey at a similar age, has not meant to be autobiographical in spite of the autobiographical techniques resorted to in the novel. Crafty Ondaatje, he will leave us forever wondering!) He is apprehensive but not enough to not enjoy some escapades with his young  comrades-in-arms. On the threshold of sexual maturity, he manages to get into scrapes for which he is cut down to size by the ship’s authorities. He has two sharp eyes and two keen ears which allow him to take in the comings and goings of the adults around him.

This fascinating narrative raises many questions.  Was there a murder on board? Was there accidental manslaughter? Who is the mysterious prisoner taking in fresh air at night whose manacles and anklets scraping against the ship make him sound like a ghost? Is the furtive couple hiding in one of the life-boats an unlikely  pair of lovers or Whitehall spooks at work? And what about the messenger pigeons and weimaraner pedigreed dogs? Who paid for Asuntha’s passage? Has the tailor lost his vocal chords? Will there be more burials at sea?

Ondaatje weaves in and out of these sub-plots and time frames with the consummate  ease of a well-lauded writer. He manages to keep his readers hooked from beginning to end and somewhere in between he throws a curved ball  hitting them hard  in the chest,  as deep and hard as the waves that make the cat’s table dip and swell.  It is for this skill and insight and many more reasons that Ondaatje  has been awarded the Booker Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award (five times!) and the Prix Medicis, inter alia, we should add, for good measure.

Read this book if no other.   Canadian literature at its best, eh?

[Media reports dated  October 2011 state that Michael Ondaatje asked to be withdrawn from consideration for the Governor General’s Award for The Cat’s Table to give other writers a chance. Alas, it did not win the recent Giller Prize. ]

When I return from a trip and open the door of my fifth-floor apartment and look out the window and  catch a glimpse of  the wooded ridge that Montrealers grandly call Mount Royal,  I first feel a sense of relief, and then an urgent desire to relieve myself, for  my whole being knows  that I am finally and unequivocally  home. For home is, after all, that one place  where you body relaxes and your mind is at rest.  And I certainly feel Canada is my homeland,  except when I ask myself what brought me to this frozen landscape so distant  from my sun-drenched  birthplace, or why my loved ones are so far away or what will happen when my body falters or where will I be when the time comes to end the journey.  At such moments, home feels very far away.

Today I say that Canada is my home forever, but how long does forever last? After all, once upon a time, I felt safe in Mexico City, the city where I was born, the “most transparent region in the world” as Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes once described it, a city with astounding architecture surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes and lit at night by the stars. I used to think it was the most beautiful place on earth and could not imagine not living there. But now when I visit my birthplace, I no longer think of it as home, my homeland, burdened as I am with harrowing tales of political and street violence as well as the assault of millions of bodies hurrying about in millions of hydrocarbon-fuelled cars or riding in crowded smelly subway cars or just trying to cross from one side of the street to the other without getting hit. Besides, my ageing body can no longer take high altitudes without going into overdrive and pollution has clogged up the atmosphere.

At the age of seven I discovered that Mexico wasn’t the centre of the universe when the newly independent government of India invited my father to work there for a couple of years. My Indian father had been exiled from  his own homeland for forty-seven years for having had the temerity of trying to free it from foreign rule. But now  India was free and the family could “return”. So we made the long trip to India until we reached Nagpur, right in the centre of the country.  So Nagpur became my new home. And if home is where the heart is, my heart was certainly very much in this country where life offered very few amenities and very many adventures.  Home for me was the place where I could follow  the bright eyes of a tiger who had come to our fountain to take a drink of water, while we slept outdoors in summer. It was the backyard where I was chased by a black-faced monkey larger than myself when another child hurled a stone at it. It was the lotus pond in Telenkheri garden on whose banks I would lie  trying to break the silvery beads of water that bounced off the lotus pads. It was the jungle where I tried to count the parrots that camouflaged themselves in the green foliage. It was the back steps of the house where I learnt how to spit and shine shoes from  the driver’s son who also taught me Hindi, my third language after Spanish and English. Home was an independent India full of promise and adventure.

But as they say, all good things come to an end and our idyll in Nagpur lapsed with the end of my father’s contract. So we reluctantly returned to Mexico City where our real life awaited us. But Mexico City had changed, or rather, I had. I no longer found it as comforting or as unique as I had once thought it to be. Yes, indeed, it was still beautiful but our life paled in comparison to the excitement that  India had provided.  But India taught me many lessons, and one of them was the importance of learning. So the nine year old who returned to Mexico had stopped being a shy wide-eyed dreamy child to become a self-confident student. School filled the hollow left in my guts when India was yanked away from me. School was a place where I always felt at home.

But as they say again, the only constant is change itself. My  mother, who was born in Brussels and had the courage to marry  a “black” revolutionary thirty years her senior, suddenly realized that her daughters were growing up and they deserved a better future. For her, a better future meant marrying an Indian man, an idea inspired no doubt more by her fierce love for my father than by any maternal logic.  So  my parents sold our cozy little house, and packed up the family library and all of us took a slow boat to India to live there forever. I was fourteen and I suddenly realized  that I no longer wanted to leave Mexico.  I was very confused. So  I cried me a river and the river overflowed into the Caribbean and then the Atlantic through  the Mediterranean  past the Suez Canal across the Arabian Sea all the way to Bombay. As soon as the ship docked, I burst into tears again at the sight of my father who had preceded us one year earlier.  The family was together again.  We had swam against the current, reversing  migration trends, for who would be crazy enough to leave a relatively well-off third world country where we had a roof over our head and my father had a job for a poorer country still suffering from the wounds of partition and facing the challenge  of  looking after its huge idiosyncratic and diverse population.

When we got to Nagpur, I kept on crying until my tears were drowned by the monsoon and then dried out by the summer drought and them simply forgotten as we settled down to our new life. Life was no longer the exciting affair it had been when my father was a government guest. Unemployment for an elderly patriot, a challenging  life for an outspoken unconventional European woman and the strictures of a patriarchal society for the two young women my sister and I had become were tough, but the support our family got from the community carried us through.  Once again, we were home.  So  I  hit my books again and went about my daily business, turning a deaf ear to what people said about us. What they said was that the girls shouldn’t be running around so freely in their  bicycles, that my mother should keep her opinions to herself, that a girl shouldn’t work in the garden with a hoe and spade like a common worker, that running for office in the student body was just not done,  and so on and so forth. I had finally found a niche in college, but had no idea what the future would bring after graduation.

Then the phone rang. It was my mother who had gone to New Delhi to meet my sister’s future mother-in-law. Pack up and come, she said, there is a job waiting for you in the Venezuelan Embassy. When? I mumbled. Now! Tomorrow, said my mother. So the following day I took a train and reached New Delhi on my twentieth birthday. What does a secretary do, I asked my mother. Well, she said, she uses her head. If your boss has a headache, for example, you get her an aspirin. If you have a headache, you keep quiet and keep on typing. I see, I said. And I did. Three years and three more Latin American embassies later, I was offered a scholarship in Mexico City.

So once again I returned to my homeland at the age of 23. This  time Mexico City did feel like home. The air was beginning to lose its transparency and traffic was clogging formerly quiet streets , but it was certainly home. A Master’s in oriental studies in Mexico seemed to be made to measure for me. But destiny decided otherwise.  I quickly fell in love with an American student, married him, got pregnant, dropped out of school and started my career as a simultaneous interpreter. I even acquired my husband’s Mexican extended family. I had finally arrived.

However, events moved rather fast in the sixties and seventies.  The ’68 movement which first hit the cobblestones of Paris spread like wildfire in the universities of Mexico City and then invaded the streets.  Political violence escalated  culminating in the Tlatelolco massacre in the Plaza of the Three Cultures where we lived. We had to abandon our modest  condo and rent  an apartment near the university campus at the other end of the city. Violence seemed to follow us. More than once I had to run for cover with my two little girls while bullets whizzed past us. Mexico was no longer safe. Mexico stopped being home. So we sold off our belongings and decided to spend my husband’s sabbatical abroad to test the waters.

One day  we drove off  in our Beetle at the crack of dawn. As the sun started to rise, I remember telling my husband that even though we were temporarily without a home and perhaps a job, I felt that our car was our home, because the whole family was together and that was all that mattered.  So we kept heading north until we reached New Haven in Connecticut where my husband planned to sit down and write a book.  The nine months we spent there are a blank in my mind. We had no friends and felt completely isolated.

And then  the phone rang again. It was a job offer for me at a UN agency in Montreal. So we drove to Montreal and I have been here ever since. One day my husband simply decided to leave and I stayed on.  Montreal, I thought, was a good place to raise two girls.

So here I am in Montreal, the city that has provided me with the greatest stability, but my heart is not all in one piece. It is scattered in Mexico, where I have warm memories, in Chicago, where one of my daughters lives, in Wichita, where the other daughter and my granddaughter live, in Delhi, where my sister lives, in Nagpur, where I bid farewell to my father and in about forty-five countries which I have visited and where someone or something has touched me.

My friends have always asked me whether I feel Mexican or Indian or Canadian. I classify that question in the same category of unanswerable questions as the one some silly grownups would ask me as a child: Whom do you love more, your mother or your father?  I also remember the comment made by a fiercely Spanish friend of mine. She once informed me that my problem was that I did not know who I was.  My reply? I did not know I had a problem, I said, and actually your problem is that you are the one who does not know who I am.  It is difficult for me to understand the mentality of people brought up in a jingoistic society. For them, life is either/or, black/white, us/them. For me, identity is a very important part of how we define ourselves,  but at the same time it is also a political and social construct used to manipulate citizens.  Wars would not exist if people didn’t define themselves as “them” and “us”. How can we think of appropriating a piece of land, or destroying buildings or taking human lives if in our minds we did not consider them “the others”, the enemy. And this is a problem which I perceive to be highly  gendered. It is no coincidence that it has been women in Ireland from both sides of the protestant/catholic divide who seriously sought to achieve peace. Their argument was that they did not bear children to convert them into the killers of other women’s children and vice-versa.  Women have also spearheaded peace movements such as the “women in black” group to promote a peaceful solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conundrum. It was women in Plaza de Mayo in Argentina whose relentless efforts brought some answers to the riddle of the disappeared children. What has this got to do with the question of homelands?  The excuse for most wars is to try to save the homeland from some horrible fate and most wars are declared and waged by men.

So returning to the personal, I feel very Mexican when I go back to Mexico and a flood of  childhood memories takes over my brain. But I stop feeling Mexican when I hear the first few words of the national anthem which say: “Mexicanos al grito de guerra….! Mexicans answering the call of war…. Or when my right to call myself Mexican is questioned by passport authorities who inform me that my family name Khankhoje is not Mexican or when I wear Indian clothes and my Mexican friends make a snide comment.   On the other hand, Indians accept me as Indian, even though I was not born in that country,  do not  carry an Indian passport and  do not speak Hindi, the official language,  correctly. This is perhaps due to the fact that the motto of Indian identity is: Unity in  Diversity.  And even though my parents did not give us a religious education,  I strongly identify with the philosophy of several religious traditions that flourished in India. Now, nobody would consider me Belgian at all, because I am sure Belgians see me as “coloured” (although Indians see me as white and Mexicans as just right), but I  certainly feel very  Belgian when I see somebody with my mother’s oddly coloured eyes: green with brick-red specks and feel a deep affinity,  or when I toast to her memory with a stein of beer in one hand and a chocolate in the other. And I realize that I have become Canadian because I enjoy the fact that it is a country where they just  let you be. True, the multicultural mosaic sometimes cracks along its fault lines, but it is still very much multicoloured.

And what about the United States? I must confess that crossing the border into the United States fills me with some trepidation, especially after 9/11. Before that, I had a Mexican passport and they would always give me a bit of trouble, perhaps because having a Muslim sounding name on a Mexican passport was a bit unusual. Now that I have a Canadian passport, I feel a tad safer, but not much more. The press is full of horror stories of how honest citizens have been harassed or worse, for no logical reason at all. I do not agree with the policies of the United States government at present or even historically, but I am very careful not to hold the American people responsible for all of their governments policies. It is a known fact that in most countries of the world, governments do not necessarily speak for the citizens they claim to govern democratically.  And this is a very important point. We tend to think that our homeland is that place were our interests will be protected, but this is not necessarily so. Homelands are an illusory concept because the elites that rule countries seldom take decisions that favour their  weakest citizens.   There is a suprahomeland for the rich and powerful, built on a network of jumbo-jets, world-class hotels, corporate board-rooms and the best playgrounds  that countries have to offer, where all its citizens are given VIP treatment. There is an infrahomeland for  the marginalized, the homeless, the disenfranchised whose shaky foundations are built on the sludge of Brazilian favelas, the landslide-prone mountain sides of Mexico’s vecindarios, the townships of South Africa, the landfills of urban sprawl, the sidewalks of Mumbai. And then there are the autochthonous people, the natives, the aboriginals,  the first nations, the adivasis, call them what you will, but the land they hold under their stewardship is shrinking at an exponential rate.

A lot has been said about globalization, both good and bad. Actually what is bad about the globalizing trends of today is that corporations have become powers unto themselves over and above national laws meant to protect their citizens. And even if there are international laws that are supposed to protect all citizens of the world, including those who hold no citizenship papers,  their enforcement is a tricky question.  But globalization of people is a good thing. It is a fallacy to believe that this is the first time in human history that there have been mass migrations. People crossed the frozen bridge of the Bering  Strait on foot  just as they walked on red-hot sand to somehow cross the  Red Sea, they drifted from the Pacific to South America on a raft (or was it the other way around?), they sailed from China to Mexico and around the Cape of Good Hope and they will keep doing so, because this vast planet of ours is their and our homeland. Today things haven’t changed that much. The locus of what we call  homeland has been extended, that is all. Double and multiple nationalities are quite common. Hyphenated citizenship is a fact of life. And oftentimes, homeland is a concept which is not geographical at all, but simply a very fluid concept.  This is especially  true for transhumant communities. In a sense, even though people who live outside the countries in which they were born are still a minority, the trend is rapidly growing.

Which brings me back to  the original subject of this essay: the word homeland. I have come to abhor that word because it has been hijacked by  politicians to manipulate people, just as the Swastika, a symbol of wholeness in the Hindu tradition  was hijacked to instil terror in the hearts of people.  Homeland Security are two words which inspire dread in many citizens, both inside and outside the United States. It is almost as bad a word as Vaterland. The world homeland was used in many African colonies to reduce the habitat of the original inhabitants so that the colonizers could appropriate the lion’s share of the land. The word homeland is often synonymous with reservation, where the natives are hemmed in just as animals that were born free have been penned in  towards a slow extinction. The notion of a homeland for a specific religious or linguistic  group has caused untold suffering in many parts of the  world by excluding one group at the expense of another one. Current newspapers are full of examples.

I clearly remember a doll I had as a little girl. When  I had accidentally decapitated it, I discovered that  a tiny  Mexican flag  had been used to hold some of the doll’s innards together. The idea that a flag should be used in such a disrespectful  manner shocked me, because at school I had been indoctrinated to believe that nothing was more sacred than a national flag. I no longer feel that way. Symbols should never replace the sentiments they are supposed to foster. Nationalism was certainly a very useful unifying factor in the anticolonial struggles that followed World War II. It was also an  improvement over the old feudal notions of the ruling class that considered the  peasants living on “their” land  as their personal chattel and cannon fodder. Nationalism is a good thing when it includes, it is a very bad thing when it excludes.  Today, more than ever, we have to realize that the only homeland we have, in a strict territorial sense, is the planet Earth. We all have a legitimate right to live off the land and a  concomitant  duty to  protect it.

The “commons” is a  lovely English word. The land that belongs to the collectivity is our true homeland for all of us to share.  Passports,  identity cards,  green cards, laissez-passers and soon electronic chips  are simply documents  invented by people to keep track of their affairs, nothing more and nothing less. They do not legitimize or invalidate the human being who is at the centre of it all. Moreover, our true ancestral homeland is most probably Africa, because it is there that palaeontologists found Lucy’s bones, perhaps the  oldest remains in the world.  Lucy is the foremother of all of us, as proven by DNA and mitochondrial studies.  I love that notion, because I’m sure it makes white supremacists lose a lot of sleep.

Perhaps the best sense of homeland, our homeland, is that space which we have pledged to cherish and protect, where our kith and kin and friends  live, that is our kindred humanity, including the animals and plants with whom we share space. Our homeland is a social and natural contract in which all the parties are committed to working for each other in the interests of the commonwealth.

I therefore agree with  Virginia Woolf  who said:  “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world”. But Virginia also talked about the importance of having a room of one’s own. So for me, home is not only where the heart is, but it is also that room, both physical and metaphorical,  where we can truly be ourselves. It is that space where our voice is heard and our aspirations heeded. It is where we feel a sense of communion and community. It is that space where we can engage in joint endeavours  and share both the good and the bad. It is that corner where we can break bread together at the end of our toils and raise a glass of wine in celebration.

My homeland is where I can relieve myself at will or cry me a river without fear of drowning or having the Homeland Security chaps knocking on the door telling me to shut up.

because English  here is charmant

and French  c’est cool

because locals  know

that a ridge

is really a mountain

because tortillas &  chapattis

&  pitas & bagels

have no quarrel

with pâté chinois

because anything that flies

or rides or rolls

or sails or skates

converges on  this island

even the Grand Prix

because the women dress with flair

and the men with panache

because cyclists push

SUV’s off the road

because the weather

can still surprise us

like a new lover

because it has

a head and a heart

somme toute 

because life in Montreal

is a year-long  f-e-s-t-i-v-a-l…

 

 

I have a recurrent dream in which I am flying over a large body of turquoise water. The air is balmy, the water is deep, transparent, welcoming.  Just as I am about to plunge, I wake up.

I have been flying every since I was a little girl, back when propeller planes where the norm  and the word security evoked a mother’s embrace, a glass of warm milk and the certainty that all was well with the world.

All is not well with the world today, yet I continue to fly because as we all know, or should know, flying is the safest mode of transportation per passenger mile. Yes, that is how statisticians calculate our chances of making it or not making it at the end of the run.  But we do make it and we do repeat our performance year after year, holiday after holiday, conference after conference or as the whim strikes us.

But flying is not what it used to be. In many ways it is much better, smoother, safer. In other ways, the thrill has become mundane, the aggravations that precede a flight a trifle annoying, not to say distasteful, the rewards taken for granted. But that is not the airplane’s fault, but our own. We have become jaded with flying, with  what was Da Vinci’s greatest dream  and the stuff of which myth and  legend  are made. Garuda , half-man and half eagle, carried the wisdom of the Vedas on his wings to inspire generations  of Hindus in their search for the truth. Icarus suffered a meltdown when he flew away from Crete and carelessly got too close to the sun. Quetzalcoatl, half-serpent, half-bird, flew away from his Aztec home only to sail back centuries later in the guise of a bearded Spaniard.

My own experiences with flying are more modest, but no less visceral for that. When I was a little girl, my parents had a little cabin in the mountains to which we retreated over the long winter break from school in Mexico City. To get there, we had to take the milk plane, or more accurately, the chicken plane, for I remember the hens cackling in their cages at the back of  the small plane. People gave little thought to what we now call security concerns, but Mexico in the late forties was in the throes of a foot-and-mouth epidemic that threatened to decimate the livestock of the country and its economy as well. In order to prevent the spread of disease, passengers had to wipe their feet on a sawdust  trough soaked in disinfectant before boarding the plane. I tripped and fell flat on my face. A kindly airhostess, for that is what female flight attendants  were called in those days, picked me up, carried me to the plane, took me to the lavatory and wiped my face and dress clean. I don’t remember my body having hurt, but I still remember the injury to my pride.

Flying became an exciting adventure when our whole family  went to India in 1949. My Indian-born father had been invited on a long-term agricultural  mission and we were to fly after him. First we rode a bus from Mexico City to New York, which took several days and several nights. It is all a blur in my mind.  Then we flew from New York to Europe, via Gander, Scotland and Belgium. In Gander we stopped to refuel. It was winter and the trek from the plane to the small terminal was rather longish. I had never seen snow in my life, so I scooped some in my bare hands and was surprised by the way it stuck to my palms making them bleed. After living in Canada for thirty-two years I now know better and wear nothing but mittens in different thermal grades.

At some point in our week-long trip we flew over Istanbul, but for some reason, did not land there. I still remember the sight of a brightly-lit crescent moon coasting dark waters. It  looked like a diamond necklace,  a fitting sight for passengers riding in a Super Constellation. Many years later in Canada during the eighties  I would  get to see an old Super Constellation converted into a pesticide-spraying plane for agricultural use. That was a far cry from a plane that had  proper beds in first class and lavatories with several stalls and washbasins surrounded by ample counters. But it looks like the beds at least are making a comeback.

In 1965 I had to fly from New Delhi to Mexico City via Italy. This was my first experience with jet planes and with the fear of remaining stranded in the middle of nowhere without the proper documentation  or sufficient money in your pocket.  After an overnight stay in Rome I headed back to the airport in the airline bus (yes, in those days the airlines would provide transportation from their downtown office to the airport free of charge) where I discovered I had been bumped off due to overbooking. The term didn’t exist then, but the concept was beginning to creep into airline culture. My desperate tears, my obvious lack of money and the fact that the next connecting flight was one week away softened the heart of the airline employee who upgraded me to first class where I was treated to champagne.

In the sixty-odd years  that I have been flying as a passenger, I have had many adventures, all of which ended very well. During a flight to India over the Middle East the pilot said: “Oops, we have to move over, the military say we are encroaching on their airspace”. I was not paying attention to the announcement because  I was busy snapping a photograph of a plane flying over our right wing as if wishing to give it a friendly nudge. We had just been intercepted!

During my first flight to the Soviet Union in the late seventies the plane took off from Mirabel Airport in Montreal as if it were a fighter jet, straight up. I was later told that any Aeroflot aircraft, while civilian, could be quickly stripped of its seats to become a fighter jet in no time, and that commercial  pilots  were actually  military pilots in mufti. I do not know whether this was true or not, but I found the flight thrilling.

During a recent flight from Montreal to Chicago, our small feeder airline  plane suddenly dipped its left wing, dived towards lake Michigan and then quickly  recovered its altitude and  righted its course again. I heard a few muffled cries from the passengers, one of which might have been my own. But it was nothing. Or rather, it was something, something to be thankful for:  our deft pilot had just managed to stop us from getting sucked into the wake of a large jet. Such close calls are the effects of decreased vertical and horizontal separation between planes, which in plain language translates into crowded skies. But not to worry, highly sophisticated equipment and an ever-vigilant satellite navigation system make sure that planes do not collide. Not often, anyway.

On another flight from Chicago to Montreal, bad weather forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights throughout the United States and Canada but I managed to get the last plane out of O’Hare. Climbing out of that heavy snowfall felt like trying to surface  through whipped cream but when we cleared the weather system, we were rewarded with the sight of an unbroken circular rainbow made up of several rings. Apparently all rainbows are complete circles but we are seldom high enough in the skies to see the complete picture. Yes, Dorothy, it is indeed possible to fly over the rainbow…  .

Such sublime experiences, however, don’t have to be the result of bad weather. I once took a short sightseeing flight along the Himalayan range out of Katmandu airport. As soon as we were seated, the pilot warned us not to get up when we neared the range to have a better look since the passengers seated on the wrong side would get a good view on the return leg. When the snow-capped mountains appeared in all their glory most passengers disregarded the captain’s instructions and almost tilted the small plane to one side. Perhaps because I had  behaved myself and remained seated I was rewarded with an invitation to the cockpit to get a better look. Perhaps. I can now understand why so many people have risked their lives and some of them lost it, just to get a glimpse of Mount Everest radiantly facing the sun.

Talking about cockpits, have you ever eaten an ice-cream cone while sitting on the jump seat watching the plane moving along the centerline of the tarmac? I have, courtesy of  the airline that had bumped me off, and very rightly so, for having arrived late. But they let me ride in the cockpit so I wouldn’t miss my business appointment  the following morning. Unfortunately, by the time we left Malaga and reached Madrid, I had no more ice-cream left.

Flying in a chopper is, pardon the pun, a choppy experience, especially if the craft is hovering over Niagara Falls. There you feel as if the cataracts are sucking your  innards  out of your body. Stomach-churning is the only description that comes to mind. But hey, who wouldn’t pay this price to see  the Falls away from their tacky surroundings! On another helicopter ride I was surprised to see the snow that still lingered on the crest of Whistler Mountains even in summer.

Gliding is what I imagine heaven feels like. The sight of a Quebec pasture with tiny cows  while you are sitting in the cockpit of a glider is an almost mystical experience. After you get over the initial shock of  disengaging from the motorized plane  that tows you up, and the sensation of  having your umbilical cord abruptly cut off,  you are ready to enjoy absolute silence and stillness. And the landing is as easy and as gentle as that of a timid  paper plane landing on the teacher’s desk.

Flying in a balloon is similar to gliding, but with a touch of elegant retro glamour. I did not get to fly over the Loire Valley in France, but did experience the luminosity of the Arizona desert at sunrise. Our pilot miscalculated and made us land on a golf-course which annoyed the golfers but a good-will toast from our stash of  mimosas  mollified their irritation.

Flying as a passenger is one thing. Piloting your own plane is another.  After going to ground school for weeks trying to understand the physics of flying,  the mechanics of the cockpit and the vagaries of the weather, I took one glorious thirty-minute flying lesson out of St. Hubert Airport on the South Shore of the  St. Lawrence River. I taxied on the runway until the instructor ordered “take-off!”. I understood it was now or never, so I did just that. I took a deep breath and took off. Just like that.  Once in the air, the plane started bucking like a skittish horse. I tried to hand over the controls to the instructor who ignored my pleas and told me it was quite normal on account of the breeze. He then instructed me to turn around a low hill and to return to the airport where he would land the plane for me. While we were up there he asked me to admire the scenery which I was too terrified to do. The following morning, when I woke up stiff and aching,  I understood that the instructor had been merely  trying to get me to relax.  I have not taken any more flying lessons because you have to drive  to get to the airport and I am afraid of driving.

I have been talking about the joys of flying but have not mentioned airports. Airports are a necessary evil. They  have become cities onto themselves with their own shops, places of worship, clinics, hotels, streets, plazas, food-courts and even jails. Yes, there are mini jails in some airports where the customs and immigration authorities have the power to detain unruly passengers or stop undesirable people from stepping onto foreign soil. They are then handed over to the proper authorities. But that is a well-guarded secret. Forget I said anything.

Once while waiting for our plane to depart  from Amsterdam on our way to New Delhi, I asked a novice  flight attendant why our flight was delayed. He explained that a couple of passengers were missing. I asked him whether he had tried the Casino (yes, there is a Casino  and even a museum at Schiphol Airport). He answered he hadn’t had a chance. What I had meant to say was that the passengers were most probably delayed there! When the flight attendant saw me fiddling with my eyeglasses because a screw had fallen off its hinges, he volunteered the Captain’s services to fix it.  “Does he have the necessary tools?” I asked. “His cockpit is fully equipped” he told me proudly.

So while  modern airline crew members might not wipe the muddy face of a weeping child you can be sure they will certainly  fix her eyeglasses sixty years down the road. That is a comforting thought.

Yet I would rather dream of flying over a large body of   turquoise water than actually have to endure the vicissitudes of post 9/11 travel. Really.

“Hello, did you just say that there is a special on flights to the Caribbean? Get me two tickets please!”

The Art and Science of Healing Since Antiquity. By Daya Ram Varma, MD, PhD. www.Xlibris.com, 2011.
***

Why should a book on the history of medicine be reviewed in a magazine mainly dealing with the arts, culture and politics?  Because this book has it all: an insight into the art of healing, an understanding of how culture can advance or hinder medical science and a mordant analysis of how politics can affect, for better or for worse, the health of a nation’s citizens.

First of all, a word about the author. Indian-born Daya Varma is a Professor Emeritus of McGill University in Montreal, world renowned medical school. He is best known for his research in pharmacology and for his scientific and humanitarian work involving longitudinal studies of the survivors  of the Union Carbide tragedy in Bhopal, India, which killed thousands of people. He is also known for his political activism which, as far as he is concerned, should never be divorced from his work as a scientist. His book reflects these concerns.

The initial chapters explain how medicine, being both an art as well as a science, branched into different schools,  a phenomenon not seen in other scientific disciplines. Dr. Varma also traces the influence of sociopolitical determinants on medical advances.  He emphatically differentiates what he calls  “witchcraft” from what he calls materialist medicine, but fails to make a feminist analysis of how  witches in medieval Europe were persecuted, not because they might be poor healers,  but  because of the threat they posed to a patriarchal and ecclesiastical political order.  Women who could not only heal, within the limits of the knowledge of their times, but also provide contraception and abortions, were a threat to male authority.

The author also lumps major alternative healing systems such as  Ayurveda, Chinese medicine and acupuncture, homeopathy and Unani-Tibb or Islamic medicine under the generic term of witchcraft, which is an extreme  simplification of a very complex reality.  After all, there are many modern scientific studies validating the benefits of acupuncture in pain management and anesthesia, the blood-pressure lowering effects of meditation and the possible benefits of  the blood-thinners present in the saliva of leeches for the treatment of strokes. Varma is rather dismissive of all alternative therapies and seems to allow no room for the mind-body connection in healing, which is rather strange considering that he recognizes that medicine is both an art as well as a science. On the other hand, he does a wonderful job of explaining the therapeutic mechanisms of pharmacological substances in a manner which a lay person can easily grasp. And his warning against being seduced by therapies that are not evidence-based is a point well taken.  He also warns his readers that natural substances can be as toxic and harmful as their synthetic counterparts. Varma very rightly concludes that people resort to charlatans and unproven remedies  because mainstream medicine might not be easily available to them or because the limits of science have failed them.

One of the postulates of this richly-documented book is that modern medicine did not start with the Greeks, but actually had its birth before that, in ancient civilizations like the ones that thrived in the Gangetic Plain, the Yang-Tse River Basin and the Nile Valley. For Varma, the true birthplace of modern medicine is Egypt, not Greece. The author, however, explains that there are gaps in the evolution of modern medicine, most probably due to the material conditions prevailing then. For science to be able to develop, a capitalist mode of production is necessary, and that requires going beyond feudalism. This explains why, according to Varma, Europe produced so much in terms of scientific discovery when it outgrew its feudal economy  and why the United States, with its importation of European brains and the absence of a feudal past, has become a leader in medical research and technology. However, Daya  Varma is quick to point out that in spite of being such a rich country, the United States has failed to look after the health of all of its citizens unlike Cuba, which has one of the best public health systems in the world.

Another important message contained in The Art and Science of Healing Since Antiquity is that countries can, and should, mobilize their resources in looking after the health of their citizens the way they mobilize resources during natural disasters or catastrophes.

This richly-documented book is a treasure-trove of information on the history of epidemics, diseases, discoveries, medicaments,  theories and myths. It is also a brilliant collection of memorable quotes, paired in opposites, opening each chapter. Einstein, Marx,  Engels and Shelley are equally pressed into service to illustrate the novel ideas of  a book which is a delight to read and difficult to put down. The author’s humour and originality trump the minor errata and typos apparent in the preliminary version available to this reviewer. These will, however,  be eliminated from the final edition.

Of late, however, this hitherto productive sea has been churning, spewing out not fresh fish but stale discontent.  Several moons ago a satyr who lives in the boot kissed the hand of a madman who lives in a bunker presumably for  having initiated him into the mysteries of the bunga bunga. Or was it to exchange gold for oil? And many more moons before that another descendant of the Pharaohs fell off  his seat as his heart was  pierced by a shard of metal leaving his seat vacant which was promptly warmed  by his best man. This new Pharaoh only gave up his seat when it became too hot. Such stories are the stuff of which epics are made.

Why should people, people started asking,  starve to death  in a land that has  produced a  diet that health gurus claim ensures longevity? So the inhabitants of this land of plenty surrounding this deep blue sea  have learned a new word: R-E-V-O-L-T. First somebody whispered this word to someone else who  twitted it to a third person who pressed the send button and copied it to a fourth person until it hit  Facebook. Images went viral, imaginations were inflamed.  People took to the streets. Because, you see,  newspapers can run out of newsprint and TV screens can go blank  and journalists can meet untimely death, and the internet can suddenly freeze, but the voice of the people cannot be silenced.

Actions have consequences. Some bad rulers have been run off the land, others have been kicked into the sea and some have taken flight. Blood has trickled and then flowed, tainting the once azure waters the color of rust.  Who will replace them is a question that sages are still pondering.

But if actions have consequences, how come it is only the people under the boot who are restless? Not so! Take a closer look at the mappemonde. Inside the boot you will see the women with their brooms chasing away the satyr who once kissed the hand of the madman who taught him the bunga bunga.

I now know for sure that Santa Claus does exist, provided you believe in him, and that my parents were indeed very much mine, thanks to the laws of consanguinity and bonding. You see, my sister had only been trying to test the dual tenets of transparency and freedom of information.

Or had she?