Blogging from Germany: Palace of Tears

Not much to say. Just that the phrase Tränenpalast is achingly beautiful. Palace of Tears. A nondescript little station it was. The station at Friedrichstraße. The point at which families and friends and lovers said goodbye. The one headed West and the other to remain East. Feels like West should be in capitals while east should remain all lower case.

Much as the seperations of families and friends during the partition of British India in 1947. Much as all separations.

My paternal grandfather, Bhagat Ram Kumar, came from Quetta, Baluchistan. His mother's name was Maya and he told me that she was buried in the Quetta eathquake of  1935. But tough old bird that she was, she was taken out of the rubble alive, and lived till the age of 104. Pre-partition, he taught at the university at Karachi and after Partition, the details are unclear for some reason, but Bhagat Ram's family ended up in  business in Chandigarh and Ludhiana. He, on the other hand, ended up in Benares Hindu University where he got swept into Theosophy by Annie Beasant, met my father's maternal grandfather Sri Ranganatha Mudaliar (who was a widower raising his only daughter, Jaya) and the rest is family history.

Bhagat Ram and Jaya were married by Annie Beasant in a secular ceremony beneath the great Banyan Tree in the Theosophical Society in Madras and went on to live in their grand old house, Nanda Kuti, on No: 20 Beasant Avenue. This house, with its yellow walls and bougainvillea covered verandahs still plays a large part in my dreams. 

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the year that I went to America. Exactly 10 years before, Pink Floyd would record their anthemic album, Another Brick in the Wall, that made us feel, no, we refuse to be cogs in some giant, invisible machinery. When I finally returned home, thirsty, and feeling like I had never been away, India was liberalized, unrecognizable. The machinery had changed form.

Talking about the East, last night. That people weren't allowed the idea of luxury. If they had a car, they must share it and it was impossible to have more than one home. To rent a home out, unthinkable. The good heritage of socialism.

Soon it will be the end of another era, as Zui writes. Enjoy every leak and every cobweb. Tränenpalast.

Soon she sets off on her own journey West.

Blogging from Germany: Sunday

Last night we had a seriously bad meal. So this is a warning: When in Mannheim, you see a Greek Restaurant across Mesplatz in front of the Altefeuerwache cafe-bar, avoid it like the plague. We should have run on seeing the plaster of Paris sculptures and fake fruit, but were worse for the wear and not especially savvy. 32 Euros down we are now super-savvy ;)

Sunday in Germany....

For someone from India the silence here is deafening and wonderful. On an average Sunday on St.Mark's Road, Bangalore, you would hear: traffic, auto's honking, people talking as they stream out of St.Mark's Cathedral or into Koshy's for appams and stew, a bit of a bustle around Zui's friend, Coconut Uncle, opposite K.C.Das, and other random sounds like crows cawing, someone at the pan stall spitting and so on.

But here, everything in closed and there is no traffic on the street till much later in the day. The only discernible sound is the glory of church bells from the various churches around us.  Just across the River Neckar and visible from our balcony is the Baroque CityKirche Konkordien.

I'm resuming this post almost 2 weeks later in Münster whose name originates in the Greek 'monasterion'. Münster had always been Catholic till a brief Protestant take over and then returned to being the Catholic city it is today. The exquisite St.Lambert's steeple is not far from the junges theatre offices. Florian told me that the cages one sees on the steeple are where the Anabaptists were tortured and killed. 

Last night as we walked back from the very groovy Pension Schmidt, we heard some music coming out of another church not far from Julia's home. So we stepped in. Fantastic! It was World Dance Day so the church interiors had been taken over by black and violet lights, hip hop crews and freestyle dancers. How wonderful to see something young and current co-exist with the Gothic nave, aisles and transept. No stress about religious sensitivites and sentiments, just a solid affirmation of life and the pursuit of happiness.

I like.

Blogging in Germany: Berlin Flashback

I´m in Münster and it feels good. I miss my cheap Nokia cell phone which has served me so well taking crappy but swift pictues of my routes and odd stuff that crops up, but never mind. Words shall be my pictures. 

I had all sorts of strange dreams last night: a lorry, a sleazy dive, nasty words exchanged, something that hurt me. So when I awoke, I felt glad and optimistic. 

The week past in bits and bytes:

- Berlin graffiti is the shit. The absolute last word in graffiti. On the way to Sophia's home, I saw a gigantic wall with a black rat or weasel, popping out in black line detail, like a Japanese master.

- Watched many plays, all largely annoying. The overarching theme was reality and theatre, so there was one loooong supremely self-indulgent manifesto called Young and Restless by two edgy theatre-makers with 8 young adults from Münster. It must have cost gazillion euros to produce and had some quite artistic moments (like when the girl with the afro pulled on an adult diaper and fellated a black Barbie. I kid you not.) but for the most part was some trance-y music, cool lights and set design, frenetic dancing (that I liked) an Al Gore chant, whining about global warning and America's poor human right's record. Of course it could have actually been very profound, but I didn`t get it. A good dramaturg could pull it together to a quality 60 minutes and say it all. 

- The reality themed festival program also contained a version of Alice im Wunderland, which I totally didn`t get being, perhaps mistakenly, under the impression that Lewis Carrol took drugs and wrote Alice under the spell thereof and that the book has little to do with reality as most folk know it. Hence the magic mushroom style 'Drink me' bit. Altered reality, right? But the actors were stunningly good and did some whack stuff like using a puppet for shrunken Alice, the White Rabbit played piano, the ensemble danced and sang and in general pulled out as many theatrical tricks as possible from, I`m guessing, the Mad Hatter's hat. Beautiful revue style theatre, is all.
- In my opinion (hugely objective no doubt) Boy with a Suitcase and 9 Leben from JES, Stuttgart http://www.tanzhaus-zuerich.ch/en/projekt/9-leben-ab-13-jahre-blickfelder-2013-kuenste-fuer-ein-junges-publikum were by far the best the festival offered this year. I missed seeing Blue Boy, a documentary play from Brokentalkers Theatre Company, Dublin that some say was very good.. But Boy a Suitcase just blew audiences away. Personally, despite having watched inumerable shows and rehearsals, I was very moved by the seamlessness on stage. There was so much generosity in the performances, a certain knowing of each others way. This is very delicate and not arrived at easily. The music, movment and text were inseparable and one couldn't imagine one without the other.
- In one of the discussion, a young woman asked a question about racism. Whether we had encountered it or talked about it in the making of the play. A pity the question was ignored for this offered us the opportunity to make the Boy experience deeper. Truer.
- Robbert is the lighting designer for Boy with a Suitcase. He and his partner Frederick had a dream about a chocolate shop in Berlin. So they moved from Mannheim and created Mon Plaisir, home to the prettiest macarons you ever saw. Beige yuzu macaron flecked with black sesame, lavender, violet, black, lime green, pink, taupe, magenta, orange....an Alladin's Cave of sugar delights. When in Berlin, do not miss http://www.monplaisir-chocolaterie.de/angebot/macarons/

- The Turkish guy´s good energy (at the Donner/Asia place next to Theatre an der Parkaue). Here's to glorious, cheap Asia imbiss. yum yum yum. Here's to strangers who are warm in big cities as folks speed by being busy and making appointments.
- Anke, the new PR manager at Schnawwl, who is from the Alsace region and was in Berlin for the first time. 'I feel little...the only one to have never been to Berlin before. Little Anke in Big Berlin.'
- Friends. Agnes and Yohanna who drove 600km from Munich just to hang out with us. Ramani and Mata.
- The breathtaking 3 course meal birthday present to me from Agnes at Brecht's (next to the Berliner Ensemble) and alongside the river. Here`s the menu...burn! http://www.brechts.de/en/menu/brechts-menu.
- Besides the food, this was an evening of high drama. The head waiter thought Agnes's handbag was a dog and wanted to bring it water, a silver fox meandered by and took away our water only to turn the corner and pour for us, quite shocking the living daylights out of us for she was so elegant and un-waiterly. Then a lady in a scarlet trenchcoat strode into the kitchen followed by a man who looked like a stripper-cop. When Agnes asked the waiter where the toilets were, he paused and shrugged and said 'Well, there's the river outside'. And things just got freakier after we had walked past Tränenpalast (whose anguished translation is Palace of Tears) and the cabaret distel...
- Lost (and trapped) at the surreal, blue-tiled Alexanderplatz at 2am with Ramani. Wandering the corridors of an un-filled gigantic swimming pool in the wee hours of the morning. The U Bahn, U5, U5...Smell of bread baking but not a soul in sight. Freezing cold and staying clear of doorways with their accompanying blasts of Arctic air. A homeles lady, suddenly, drinking at a water fountain. Three brown folk huddled at the steps looking for a phone number and then...Was macht ihr alle? Nothing, we`re looking for the U5 platform. That way...auf diese weise. Cool, let's go. Then, shock. The U train is out of service. Let's get outta here and take a cab! Then the doors are all locked, we're friggin locked in at Alexanderplatz!!! Alice had nothing on this.
- Quasimodo! Disco Heaven at the Quas. Mike Stern will be playing there this week, but Mata and Ramani made it possible that we hit it on the night of mirror balls, glitter and Studio 54 style fun. The band covered everything from KC and the Sunshine Band to James Brown, it was wet outside, but inside  was so warm :) Walking back at 2 am from the Frankfurter Allee station, we got soaked to the marrow in icy Berlin rain.

Like this, like this, life was. In this way. Impressions buzzing about my head like crazed bees, making it hard to think or feel. Then Kuki took my Nokia phone and his guitar and went to Munich.

I arrived in Münster and passed out for the night.

Blogging from Germany: Tulips, Dildoes & Wedding Gowns

Some ideas floating around, formlessly.  I wonder what they mean?

Tulips and wedding gowns, Jeanette Winterson's The PowerBook, Harem stories, Bacha Posh (dressed like a boy)....

Bemused, I decide this evening, to walk to Istanbul.

I take the road to Marktplatz. Not the main road but the parallel lane, in the Turkish Quarter of Mannheim. Rows of wedding gowns like brightly coloured flowers and shops selling equal measures of gold and baklava, halal meat, Asia-Africa shops with palm hearts and masoor dhal...

The shape cannot be a coincidence! Tulip-shaped wedding gowns. Did you know that tulips originated in Persia and Turkey and only arrived in Europe in the 16th century? So much for the Dutch monopoly of tulips. The word 'tulip' is derived from the Turkish word for the gauze used for turbans - tülbend.

The arrival of spring

The tulips on the balcony of Herr Lehmann's flat, where we live.. 

The dark core of a tulip represents a lover's heart, darkened by passion...

In The PowerBook, the tulip is even more potent. Beginning with the import of tulips from Turkey to The Netherlands, the tulip then becomes a dildo of sorts. The penis of the girl who is disguised as a boy, sewn as they are, into her trousers. Memorably, she makes love to her beloved princess, using the tulip in more ways than one.

This is a common device in Harem stories, the girl who dresses as a boy to get away with a lot. Love, passion, experience, life. Fancy that. Having to dress up to claim one's birthright.

We think about this a lot, while we're here in Germany. Where it appears that women don't have to worry about what they wear, how they look, what they say, who they're with. 

We think about it even more these days of horror, when, through the international media frenzy over the Boston bombing, penetrates the news of the 5 year old in Delhi. Last night Andrea said that through the reportage of the Delhi gang rape case, Germans were impressed by the way that Indian rallied together. This is solidarity, they said, this is democracy. But now? This is just exhaustion.

Must we disguise ourselves as men. As boys? Will that stop the hatred? Bacha posh the lot of us, the half that holds the sky up? We'll grow facial hair and Adam's apples. And then will you love us? 

Wedding gowns are a symbol of what? Virginity? Chastity? Purity? 

Oh please.

Give me a tulip dildo any day.

Blogging from Germany: Cake

I'm blathering on through equal portions of lemon cheesecake as well as himbeer/rasberry cake as I write. Seriously, to come to Germany and not stuff one's face with cake is a serious omission. Day One, we had cherry cheesecake, strawberry torte and German apple cake with whipped cream. And this was just for lunch.

Himbeerkuchen from Grimminger's

Just your average garden variety zitron cheesecake....

...off a market shelf

There's not much more that can be written about German cake. Except perhaps this: the stuff that was covered with some indeterminate white icing, brown flakes and red bits of candied papaya peel and called Black Forest in the Blue Moon/Blue Diamond cafeterias before they too succumbed to Mall-Heaven and whose descendants now malinger in various bakeries around Bangalore - is a bloody fake! A spy in the House of Love! 

To taste a real slice of schwarzwälder kirschtorte is to experience the loveliest 'small death' in a flurry of cream, chocolate, black cherries and booze. My friend Isabel Ferrari makes the superfragilisti-best I have ever tasted. Stacked skyscraper high with layers of chocolate cake and whipped cream, she adds generous doses of cherry schanpps to both cake and cream. 

Mannheim is also the city of Mozart. And what Mozart liked to do was sit in a particular cake shop, Konditorei und Kaffee Herdeggen, in the Quadrat and eat cake.

We went there one day, to eat Rhubarb Cake in the spring. But ended up also eating mango/coconut, chocolate/hazelnut and passionfruit. 

It is no wonder that children play...

Backe, backe Kuchen,

der Bäcker hat gerufen.

Wer will feinen Kuchen backen,

der muss haben 7 Sachen:

Zucker und Salz,

Butter und Schmalz,

Eier und Mehl,

Safran macht den Kuchen gelb.

Schieb in den Ofen rein

Baking is really a fine art.

Often on a morning, I go across to buy little multigrain rolls and pumpernickel at Grimminger's. And I find it impossible to resist also picking up a vanilla danish or a cinnamon roll or an enchanting, jewel-like slice of erdbeerkuchen, the strawberries glazed like uncut rubies above a layer of cake.

It was in Dresden that I ate my first stollen. Lemony and flecked with currants, I fell so in love and have since always taken some marzipan-coated stollen back home, to pick on in June or August and have Christmas flashbacks.

Ah.....sehr gut....mmm..mmm...mmm. Thus between the discourse of kuchen and torten and the semantics of fruit, cream, marzipan and chocolate, my waistline expands luxuriously. I stretch, I sigh and I make strange sounds of pleasure.

So, of cake in Germany, it appears one must simply ask "Are you experienced?"