links_
TRK
IX. An Italian Odessey
When my journey began, and as we walked across No Man’s Land at Wagha
border we did not realize how weary would become of the whole enterprise
and feel both homesick and, at the same time, long for an end to our
journey. We had travelled two days by train across a barren mountainscape
to Iran, with smugglers as fellow travellers, and then we had been befriended
by students and fellow scribes in Iran. A week later we had crossed over
into Turkey, encountered a wrathful Mount Ararat. It had felt like receiving
Manna from Heaven, soaking the last remaining piece of bread in the torrential
downpour. Yugoslavia had been big hearted and we had re-energised ourselves
in the company of our old friends in Belgrade. Our journey had now to
continue:
We did not stop at Zagreb, the Croatian capital as we became aware of
how seriously we lacked funds and how difficult it would be to arrive
in a strange town and force hospitality from strangers. Our aim was now
to get to Paris, my dream destination, where I believed I would be welcomed
and looked after by my patron and honorary uncle MVK, a famous Indian
journalist. Travelling from town to town, importuning for free rides
and food was no longer romantic or adventurous. I had lost some 15 pounds
in weight, my socks had not been changed for two weeks, so that they
were practically glued to my skin. One arm was covered in what looked
like infected eczema. Our clothes were stiff with dirt. Our eyes were
hollowed by tiredness . We fell asleep even standing, leaning on a lamppost
To European onlookers, we probably looked like two refugees from a region
ravaged by famine and war as we dragged our luggage behind us wherever
we went..
And yet the approach of Italy filled me with dense and obscure desires.
It represented to me the dark and the sensuous whether in literature,
landscape, poetry, painting or food. Names resonated: Michelangelo and
the Sistine chapel, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio the provocateur with
his ambivalent sexuality. Botticelli’s
wistful Venus rising out of a seashell, every man’s dream, Rome’s via
Veneto. the wish fulfilling Fountain of Trevi – as I remembered them
from a romantic comedy Roman
Holiday featuring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in a cinemascope
vision..... these cinema images crowded my mind for attention...
The only literature I can claim to have read other than Alberto Moravia
novels was Alighieri Dante’s Inferno in
an abridged translation, and then, leaping centuries, The
Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa about an Italian prince. Alberto
Moravia’s novels were about the elite aristocracy and their sombre perversions
behind closed doors. This half digested fare has a distorting effect
on the perception of the country you are about to cross.
Soon we were in Italy and passing the Adriatic town of Trieste. I can
recall no more than red roofed houses clinging on to the hillside and
the silent bustle of feet of the shoppers crowding the streets. Then
we were in Venice, with a loaf of bread and precious little money...
Venice is a city honeycombed
by a hundred canals, some mere backwaters others, like the Rialto, adorned
by massive sculptured bridges and dotted by vaporetti (water taxis) and
gondolas and lined along the embankment with restaurants, bars and shops
displaying exquisite jewellery and expensive gifts.
Click to view full image Photos
:© Dom/asia-major.com
There were sumptuous covered markets, heaving with a thousand cheeses,
fresh and smoked fish and hams, a dozen variety of breads, liqueurs and
wine, pastries filled with exotic fruit and nuts, vast display of fresh
vegetables and fruits, and the universal smell of fresh roasted espresso
coffee. Drinking dark espresso in tiny ceramic cups in a single gulp
expresses the Italians’ zest for life.. You see lines of clients standing
at these espresso bars facing large gleaming coffee machines spurting
steam, not lingering but entering, ordering an espresso, quaffing it
noisily and leaving the bar all in just a few minutes. One could effectively
mime or choreograph this very Latin ritual. I could not help yearning
for the heady coffee aroma from home. I remembered my coffee addict father
who bought coffee beans fresh from a Coorg coffee exporter, fastidiously
roasted and powdered it himself and brewed it with stop watch timing.
He got us all addicted. We did not have the money to buy and taste one
and be a true Venetian.
We also longed to be on one of those gondolas, stretched out against
oriental damask pillows, sipping sweet liqueurs and munching on Italian
delicacies to the strains of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. There would be troubadours
on the banks singing medieval madrigals, and ceremoniously bowing as
the gondolas with their occupants passed......
We walked up to St.Mark’s
Square through narrow cobbled winding streets, past restaurants packed
with the locals, mostly families. It was truly unbearable watching them
swab food off their plates with chunks of bread or luscious pasta and
fill their ravenous gargoyle mouths with them. It was a veritable torture
from the perpetual hells of pretas, the hungry ghosts. . We sat by the
quay watching the evening bacchanalia unfold in gondolas with drawn lace
curtains, with some of the activity going on plainly visible. Here we
ate our remaining pieces of bread soaked in a paper cup of water each,
grateful for the passing comfort it gave us.
We then headed in search of a bench we could sleep on and found the magnificent
railway station with a near empty waiting room full of unoccupied ornate
benches opposite the Rialto bridge. There was piped music of the operatic
strains of Mario Lanza
singing Caruso, and it all seemed wonderfully inviting. We settled
down for the night and fell asleep but not for long. Soon we were being
poked by the batons of the local Polizia, asking us for our train tickets
which alone would qualify us to spend the night in the waiting room.
Two young policemen, with their motorbike helmets still in place giving
them an intimidating presence, kicked the wrought iron legs of the bench
indicating that we were not welcome in this Spartan waiting room. It
was midnight and the revelry in the cafes was still in full swing. Reluctantly
we dragged our suitcases to the edge of the canal and sat on them with
our feet in the water, a cooling if bracing experience. Subhash and I
talked about our time so far and how weary we were and why there could
no longer be any pleasures of discovery in this journey. At 5 in the
morning when the first light of day broke through the iridescent glow
of mist over the canals, some of the revellers we had seen earlier at
their window tables in restaurants were staggering down narrow alleys,
headed for home.
I was to learn later on in life that taking a holiday in Venice , Florence,
and Siena is like being a time traveller temporarily inhabiting Italy's
medieval times once ruled by dynasties of bankers. The Venetian bankers
along with their banking brethren in Florence, Sienna and elsewhere,
gave the world of banking some of its best known terminology and useful
financial instruments, dominated the world of European trade for four
centuries from their august palaces, and financed the bloody crusades
of the middle ages.
I was immersed in history, architecture that defies description and an
incredible treasure of art. I recalled to Subhash the longing I had felt
as a youngster in an Indian village for Renaissance Europe, its museums
and its palaces and cathedrals. My resource then was an abridged Encyclopaedia
of unknown provenance, as its binding and cover pages were missing; and
a travelogue by the Kanarese novelist, aesthete and polymath Shivaram
Karanth, Apurva Pashchima, The Incredible West.
Although these cities look and feel as if preserved in aspic, they were
full of tourists. It was impossible to get into a museum or the most
famous Academia picture Gallery in Italy, as the queues snaked round
the corridors of this monumental structure even at nine in the morning.
We had to content ourselves with a couple of picture postcards which
we dutifully sent to our parents in India. Our money did not stretch
to purchasing a glossy calendar of Botticelli paintings.
There were, it seemed, thousands of young Japanese girls in fashionable
European clothes displaying a very European body language making up most
of these line-ups. Instead we hung around a bookshop full of unattended
books and browsed through a coffee table book of the 18th century Venetian
paintings. Our disappointment at not being able to get into the one of
the galleries was somewhat assuaged.
Venice is a city that should be lived in; not just visited for a few
days. However it was time for us to move on, destination France.
We found our exit from Venice, a maze though it was of canals, and found
ourselves in a massive long distance transporter headed for Milan. and
Turin. This was a gigantic industrial landscape producing hundreds of
thousands of Fiat motor cars sustaining the Agnelli dynasty.. There was
little point in stopping over as we had no money and little likelihood
of finding friendly hosts. It was getting harder and harder to get a
hitch and we stood for hours waving our thumb to uncomprehending drivers
headed for the Italian border. I could see in my mind’s eye two oversized
dusty ragamuffins dragging two suitcases, bent against the prevailing
wind and smoke, careering along the hard shoulder of the motorway, waving
our thumbs. Bafflingly, no car with French number plates deigned to stop
for us.
We must have waited sitting on our suitcases on the speeding edge of
the motorway outside Turin for several hours into the night before a
young Italian in a two door sports car who wanted to relieve himself
spotted us and pulled up. He was going across only as far as Grenoble
and we were welcome to share his car.
We had not prepared for the awesome drive through the Frejus tunnel under
the Alps which sat majestically straddling several countries in southern
Europe. The tunnel is 14 Km long and whizzing through it in a sports
car is not for the faint-hearted. We clung to our seats as the G Force
and invading closeness of the tunnel walls with no familiar co-ordinates
grabbed our senses and our accelerating bodies.
View
Larger Map
It was the early hours of the morning, dewy and fresh as we pulled into
historic Grenoble in
the foothills of the great Alps glimmering in the sun. Our driver dropped
us off in the middle of a handsome mediaeval square with a colonnaded
city hall at one end. It made one realise that all French architecture
is on a grand scale, Paris being the apotheosis of this architectural
paradigm. The fountain was playing dowsing some historically significant
statuary and a mass of colour of well tended flower beds dotted the square,
painting a pleasing tapestry of bright colours.. We sat by the fountain,
refreshed by its spray and breakfasted on a remaining loaf of bread that
we had rescued from an Italian restaurant dustbin.
Photo © Dom/asia-major.com
We were in France at last, the land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,
not forgetting the bloody revolution and the guillotine! There were several
days ahead of us still before we would enter Paris, notionally the end
of our journey. More surprises and shocks awaited us. How would MVK,
celebrity journalist and my honorary uncle and patron react to us when
we arrived on his door step, hungry, ill and dirty, carrying our dilapidated
suitcases? Will we be fed and praised for our courage and sleep in comfortable
beds or would we be heading for shelter under the famous Parisian bridges
spanning the Seine to the strains of Juliette
Greco song Sous le Ciel de Paris (Under the skies of Paris) and share
our shelter with notorious gang of clochards( tramps, vagrants and alcoholics
who live and sleep on the streets with territorial fights between them
for a space under the shelter of the bridges)? We had several surprises
in store for us in the great city of Paris..............