Travel

Showcasing India for the World

The taxi ride to my hotel gave me my first look at the dense crowds that Mumbai is famous for. The sky was very dark. The city feared a storm so ferocious that, according to my driver, offices were ordered closed for the next day. A little note on my pillow in the hotel had this from Shakespeare: “A little sleep, per chance a dream.” The view from my window the next morning was like a dream. Several stories below me was the famous Gateway to India >>>

The Bottomline

I went to Iran, the country of my birth, in November of 2009 and stayed there for two months after being away for 30 years. I had left Iran right before 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah. Before I left for my visit back to Iran, I was feeling very agitated and depressed about the way things are here in the USA and I felt like I needed to get away for a while. My trip to Iran was a pleasant, interesting, and eye-opening trip, but at times I felt strongly the gloomy atmosphere that was overshadowing the country of my birth>>>

Bulgarian Paradox

The narrative of victimhood as a legacy of “colonialism” might feel proprietary to non-Europeans. Bulgarians offer a contrast. The “yoke” Bulgaria complains about is the one imposed by four centuries of Ottoman “oppression,” that separated it from the rest of “Christian Europe.” In this story the Church is the agent of liberation, as a result, ironically, of the distinct religious autonomy allowed to four groups of non-Muslims in the millet (community) system of the Ottoman Theocratic-Imperial rule. Still more paradoxes color the Bulgarian complaint >>>

The important jewel

My visits to Mumbai, nay India, tend to be centred on visits to Britannia restaurant. (If my plane from Goa arrives later than 2pm, it means waiting until 12 o’clock the next day to eat. It’s well worth not eating for three days in advance in order to stock up like a camel at Britannia.) In fact, those who come to India for spiritual experiences surviving on a plate of dal, prayers, and sweeping an ashram at the crack of dawn baffle me – the closest I have come to a spiritual experience in this great country is the explosion that occurs halfway through a plate of sali boti – diced lamb>>>

In search of an identity

When the Romanian-born Herta Muller won the 2009 Noble prize for literature, her novel The Land of Green Plums shot up to No. 7 on Amazon.com; until then it had been No. 56,359. Muller was little read even in her adopted country Germany, in whose language she writes. Romanians, whose language is different, still take unusual pride in her. This would be a reflection of their craving for positive international recognition, which I observed in my recent trip to Romania. Never mind that like another Noble laureate Elie Weisel, who was Romanian-born, Herta was an émigré from an inhospitable homeland. Romanians, in time, mix history with myth for respectable results. Such is indeed the case with the legacy of another famous writer, Bram Stoker’s legend of Dracula>>>