coldnoon: travel poetics (mar '12, 1.3)

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)

(ONLINE ISSN 2278-9650 | PRINT ISSN 2278-9642)

NO. 3 | MAR ‘12 | 1.3

ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS

(INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS

(INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)

| POETRY – RESEARCH PAPERS – NONFICTION |

ISSUE III | MAR ‘12 | 1.3

ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE

COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)

| POETRY – RESEARCH PAPERS – NONFICTION |

Coldnoon envisions travel not as flux but instead as gaps in travelling itself. Coldnoon means a shadowed instant in time when the inertia of motion of images, thoughts and spectacles, comes to rest upon a still and cold moment. Our travels are not of trade and imagining communities; they are towards the reporting of purposeless and unselfconscious narratives the human mind experiences when left in a vacuum between terminals of travel.

First published in New Delhi India in 2012

Online ISSN 2278-9650 | Print ISSN 2278-9650

Cover Photograph, Arup K Chatterjee

Cover Design, Arup K Chatterjee

Typeset in Arno Pro & Trajan Pro

Editor, Arup K Chatterjee

Assistant Editor, Amrita Ajay

Contributing Editors: Sebastien Doubinsky, Lisa Thatcher, G.J.V. Prasad, Sudeep Sen,

K. Satchidanandan

Copyright © Coldnoon 2012. Individual Works © Authors 2012.

No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or copied

for commercial use, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of cover other than that in

which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent

acquirer. All rights belong to the individual authors, and photographer.

Licensed Under:

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Mar ‘12, 1.3) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed

under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.

Jawaharlal Nehru University

New Delhi 110067 India

www.coldnoon.com

Contents

Editorial

Poetry

Madhumita Ghosh

Mohan Rana

Sreemanti Sengupta

Chris Mooney-Singh

Sébastien Doubinsky

Malay Roychoudhury

Nonfiction

Lotourism: Low Impact, Low Cost, Localized, & Lonely – The

Ecotourist on a Budget and Redefined – Katrin Siff Einarsdottir

Vignette – Sanchari Sur

Review – Makarand Paranjape’s Acts of Faith: Journeys into Sacred

India – Arup K Chatterjee

Editorial Board

1

6

7

15

22

29

38

44

48

49

54

59

66

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Mar ’12, No. 1.3 | www.coldnoon.com

Editorial | p. 1 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Editorial

Chatterjee, Arup K. “Editorial.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3 (2012): 1-5. Web.

Licensed Under:

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.




Editorial

Dear Reader,

A Coldnoon poet tells me one of these days of how he reached England. I asked

him if he was rich today or ever. He refers to his appearance. It does not seem

to me as that of a rich man. Or, so I would like to believe, just to add more

credence, or a romantic incredulity, to his story. The story is unfinished. It

begins one afternoon on a park bench. Today the park bench could be both his

and mine, you cannot trust the ownership, as I am trying to finish it with my

own strokes. Right now, the bench has already become yours. So, here, on this

bench, the poet, or I, or you, or someone was eating peanuts. As the peanuts

got over the paper bag was dropped to the ground. Here, in India, paper bags

are also made of newspapers. These travel from one city to another. Despite

never being very fond of newspapers these scraps that often hide themselves in

our Indian households often distract me. Neatly a few times have I been

delayed on family visits owing to such distractions. These bags exchange

numerous hands. They are tainted and probably that is why they provide us

with a sense of forbidden pleasure. So, these scraps that travel so much

invariably hold me back. Anyhow, so, the peanut-eater too picked up the paper

bag he had just dropped. And, in this poet’s words a new “Coldnoon was

born”. Yes, it did strike me as very unwitting in the start. I tried to amuse

myself immediately, partly because of my respect for his writings, but the

flavour of the infinitude of travel seeped in only gradually. Slowly it appears as

though there is a huge nexus between inanimate objects that move through

human agency. I do not know what is the a priori attraction of the paper bag

articles, whether it is the shared journey with so many other human agents, or

the very agency of words to have travelled some immeasurable distance.

Eventually I never came to know how he reached England. Maybe, I

deliberately forgot if he did after all tell me how. He does not look like a



wanderer, instead he looks like someone just slowly wrinkling at one place.

The reader is not obliged to believe my description of him. Probably I am

describing the Coldnoon traveller instead, I am describing all the poets to

have written here, the ones I have known.

The Coldnoon is a surrogate noon, it is lived by another for another’s

sake, following a journey by another, for another’s sake, followed by the

perspiration of another for another’s sake. Even in the most real experiences of

travel the element of surrogacy is foregone. Here by “real” I refer to foreseen

journeys. Journeys could be planned. However, even in that there is the

unmistakable dialogic interaction between the plan and the planner, in other

words, between one planner and those to have come before. The imagination

of a journey lives behind and shapes another travelogic imagination. So,

travelling is a quest to share itself, with its past, present and future. Sometimes

objects of travelogic desire give in so readily to carried into forthcoming

desires. And, with the traveller’s agency distant objects are interwoven

organically into an autonomous world web of their own. As long as this

structure is untarnished it remains invisible. The nexus comes into sight only

when the travelogic imagination begin to conflict. As different ideologies of

travel (travelogies) creep into a homogenous travelogy, let us say from a given

family or era, the fundamental signs of these travelogical conflicts

(travelogemes) tend to approximate Coldnoon Travel Poetry. A ludicrous

instance is that I do not observe the road or the potholes or the stones or the

tyres any longer. These have been embedded too deeply into my psyche, not

solely by myself, but by imaginations outside of me as well. I have been

travelled by my generation and my history, in surrogacy. Others have travelled

for my sake, or taken me places, either borne in a rickshaw, or bearing my

luggage; either writing for flight magazines that I read or making paper bags

out of newspapers I would never have read. So, there is a grand nexus to share

me in travel and keep my travels, and the objects I have travelled, shared. I do

not know where and when this nexus starts, and where or when it ends. I do

not ascribe it entirely to technology; technology is a very small portion of it or

just one mechanism to retain its structure. However, the very structure has its

own technology, in the broader sense of the word outside of technology

understood as gadgets and wires. It is this structure that I have fondly started

calling the surrogate-infinitude. I am not here to criticize it, or not even



criticize it under the guise of celebrating it. I look at it with pure awe because I

cannot see more than a zillionth fragment of it at a time. A newspaper article

on a paper bag, or the worldwideweb more familiar to us as “www,” are

symptoms of this structure. The structure is dynamic; it keeps adding on itself;

it keeps me passive. I am given the illusion of movement in the movement of

this structure. But when I truly move, even let us say, from my doorstep to the

bus stop, and start observing, re-interpreting and permutating objects on the

way, with an intention of seeking difference from the surrogate-infinitude I

start building up a travelogeme, a new site of my travelogic difference. This is

when I start writing the Coldnoon and living the Coldnoon.

Travelling means changing co-ordinates. When in graph a curve moves,

two axes move as well. The curve has its identity by virtue of the axes. Is it

possible to have an identity without travel, and a travelling companion?

Travelling is the formation of identity; it also keeps identities in flux. But when

one is located and still identity is at its ideal best. So, in a case when there is no

companion and yet one is moving, one is in fact moving farther from identity.

Now, to this add the lacks of purpose and volition. It will precipitate the other

extreme of identity, that of the identity of the object of perception of the

traveller. It is this identity that Coldnoon brings to you once again in this issue.

This complex unveiling of the surrogate-infinitude and representing our daily

unrecorded oppositions of it is not a simple task in writing poetry. Besides,

such poetry also needs a conscious reading strategy of locating travelogemes.

Therefore, this issue onwards, Coldnoon will bring to you writings from

genres other than poetry. Although we call it non-fiction we understand that

there are things more imaginative than even fiction that can be regarded as

scholarly or philosophical. Non-fiction does not expressly mean that no

element of fiction will be approved of. Instead we have so named this section

to incorporate a broad area of writings that will help supplement Coldnoon’s

Poetry section, in order to enable us in the development of a comprehensive

“Travel Poetics”. So here we ask for assistance from you, the reader, to release

inhibitions and start accepting what we accept here in this section – widely

ranging from monologues to dialogues, from essays to academic papers, from

monographs to cartographs, from travelogues to travel memoirs, and so on.

Come, the new issue awaits your readership, and your acceptance.



Happy Coldnoon,

Editor


p. 6 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Poetry


Madhumita Ghosh | p. 7 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Madhumita Ghosh

Ghosh, Madhumita. “Poems by Madhumita Ghosh.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3

(2012): 7-14. Web.

Licensed Under:

"Poems by Madhumita Ghosh" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a





Madhumita Ghosh

The End

You gave me a few words.

I held on to them, to walk,

guiding my tottering feet

through rushing frenzied life...

a blanket, I hoped,

to shut out the chill

of blazing cold

petrifying gazes,

configurations

to navigate a silly paper boat

I had left behind,

in a sepia photo album.

I held on to the words,

the key to the front door

safe, deep in the recesses

of my crimson handbag,

used and cared for

everyday.

New words piled up,

a mountain of acrobats,

adding, subtracting, multiplying,

factors played truant,

till the words, misplaced,



settled under the pile...

The key rusted,

fits into the keyhole no more,

threadbare blanket

thrown away,

along with the silly paper boat.



A Web and a Camera

A rainbow coloured spider

Weaves a gossamer web of tales

Within my dream's reach

I spare him

As I dust murky trivialities away

A pentagon of five decades

Shimmering in the morning sun

Secrets treasured

Promises unkept

Vaulted with satin-wrapped care

In my heart's ruby-encrusted chest

A freckled face smiles

A tooth missing and doe-eyed

World's mischief carefully guarded...

Lo she walks in a siren's gait soon after

Sashaying down Park Street

Pairs of eyes following

As one eye focusses

Through a lens on a tripod

No star she is

A friend's amateur subject

Lovely Rita meter maid

She was to him

Just for the way she wore her bag

Beatles were their friends

As were Truffaut and Solzhenitsyn...

A cooker whistles

Duster in hand I run

Only to see when I'm back

The web hanging dirty and the spider gone

A gecko in its place moving its tail

I throw back my head



And laugh

As from the corner of my eye

I catch a lens on a tripod

Winking at me from the mirror.



For all you Lovely People

I walk the paths of eternity

Travelling to the edge of time

Tearing binding cobwebs away

That wrap themselves around my feet

Dropping breadcrumbs on the way

To keep busy the birds of prey

There blossoms a rainbow

Out there somewhere...

I promise to bring it

For all you lovely people.

For all you gentle people

I walk through shadows numberless

Crushing withered brown leaves under my feet

Counting the sapless helpless sentinels of the woods

That wait to burst out in flames

I spread my wings to hide the sun

Wring my heart to squeeze out drops of dew

To see the moist woods weep tears of joy

For all you beautiful people.

I climb up the hill in the clouds

To find space for you

Which I shall never occupy

But dust and scour

Polish and gleam

For you to come and go as you like...

The see-saw will not be a balance

The two sides are now in a plane

Joy is in the up and down

As you know all you sprightly people.

I am god

It is I who created



And the same I who destroyed

Creator and destroyer

Shall I preserve it now

In a dancing gleeful brook of tomorrow

For all you lovely people.



Christmas

The holy night sings

Peals of laughter and cheer

Dazzle the starry sky

Fairy lights smile

Through a night very bright

Not so calm

At the street corner

In dingy rooms

Mother and child

Huddle into a shapeless form

A mass of darkness

Melting into a holy night

Blinding car lights zoom past

Mobile midnight mass

In polyphonic pristine perfection

Ring through a holy night

As Infants tender

And mothers gentle

Sleep though

Afraid to dream of a heavenly sleep

Dreaming of a miracle

A magical mystery morn

Drinks overflow

Food smashed

Polished shoes on polished floors

A holy child peers through a frosted pane

For a gleam

Of a redeeming grace.


Mohan Rana | p. 15 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Mohan Rana

Rana, Mohan. “Poems by Mohan Rana.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3 (2012): 15-21.

Web.

Licensed Under:

"Poems by Mohan Rana" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.




Mohan Rana

A Patch

The forest first dried inside me

The river turned into stone

The sky became barren

The earth fallow

Desert spread

soaking up every drop like blotting paper

Every shape tumbled onto its roots,

I had crossed a sand bridge there

before putting it into words

A green shoot dried under my feet

A memory – just touched – became sand

My footprints disappeared

Crazed hot air whirled about

unravelling breath from my lungs

Past days are saved in spider webs

in the outer mirrors of the inner world,

Hopes lie around with broken spades

Sew a patch

on the torn fringes of the day

so that a door may open

This century has lost its way

in the dark lane of time

With eyes open I see

this world, all around



words turn into dust

First inside me

the sand storm has struck

Translation from the poem in Hindi: “Ek paiband kahin jodna” by Lucy Rosenstein



Cormorant

In a few days will begin a season

If Spring crosses this latitude

I will change my clothes

Searching maps of neighbourhoods to stroll

Branches will leaf up

And the remaining sparrows return from far and near;

I hope the news will not announce

Some new war;

I will clear my throat to say the unfinished, and fall silent again

Let the spring be so long this time

Those memories of autumn do not haunt so soon

In solitudes of the alphabet

Spring has been growing shorter every year

Each year grows shorter in spring,

Sometimes I wish there were only two seasons

Two, just like

good and bad

joy and grief

love and fear

you and I

Divided just in spring and autumn, and a wilting rain year long

By and by I longed to transcribe

the flavours drifting from the kitchen

Caught in the fabric of my sleeve

Pondering over some mystery in the backyard

Or the quest for an inch of corner in a tiny space

A time may come in some days

To divide our world

A time for whose memory all else must be forgotten

Saving receipts of daily essentials,

Life, not chance of breath alone

But the flames of love in the mind’s shadows –



A hand that grasps before the fall

Auditing the minor debts of everyday toils

Small rearrangements in the abacus

Shuddering in the crumbling present,

groping for chapped cheeks

I am yet to witness what is past

From behind the mirror glass

As I dive into its mercurial unknown

To find some, I lose some more

Translation from the poem in Hindi: “Pankauwa” by Arup K. Chatterjee



Two Feet of Land

Where have you disappeared

or maybe I am lost

in what corner of the city, where

on two feet of land

even that is not mine

No distances, nor a mind in wrath

no reason to remember you

the pretext of forgetting you is the bad weather which

like a headache

eats time up, keeps eating

but is still hungry like today

Or I am asking myself

eating time raw

why am I hungry like a headache

Thinking, I am cracking a hard nut

Now I've even forgotten

what did I ask you

Replying to my own question

on two feet of land

which is not even mine.

Translation from the poem in Hindi: “Do Pairon Barabar Zameen Par” by Lucy

Rosenstein



After Midnight

I saw the stars far off -

as far as I from them:

in this moment I saw them -

in moments of the twinkling past.

In the boundless depths of darkness,

these hours

hunt the morning through the night.

And I can't make up my mind:

am I living this life for the first time?

Or repeating it, forgetting as I live

the first moment of breath every time?

Does the fish too drink water?

Does the sun feel the heat?

Does the light see the dark?

Does the rain too get wet?

Do dreams ask questions about sleep as I do?

I walked a long, long way

and when I saw, I saw the stars close by.

Today it rained all day long and the words were washed away

from your face.

Translation from the poem in Hindi: “Teesra Pahar” by Lucy Rosenstein and Bernard

O'Donoghue


Sreemanti Sengupta | p. 22 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Sreemanti Sengupta

Sengupta, Sreemanti. “Poems by Sreemanti Sengupta.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3

(2012): 22-8. Web.

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Sreemanti Sengupta

City Blues and the Crab Killers

It beaded down

Drop, drop, drop

College far away,

The tensile hair on my pain

Scratching in culinary emotion

Not rough enough the rock

The movie snores

In the beer-smelling bus

Twirling up

Running down

Crab hunters

Soup drinkers

Back from school

My cheap little comb

Three and a half

And a half Roti

The impish pillow

For a cooked up story



Hassled and skimpy

Back home



From, The Wordmaiden

Day Two

God does not play dice

- Albert Einstein

Eisequaltoemseesquare. Even he couldn’t put it down to words.

Not like James Joyce. And you thought I wouldn’t catch you

imitating.

You anger and startle me at the same time. Now, how did you know that?

Ulysses. That ship. It changed everything. Joyce. That man must’ve suffered.

Coffee?

Yes. With…

Lemon and without sugar. You’re getting repetitive.

Is it morning already?

Yes. It’s the second day.

Damn it. Time’s never been my friend. What’s with all the research?

Time travel. I didn’t like the sound of it when you mentioned it in the first

place.

Ah! Don’t let my cynicism influence you. Einstein. He won it. He kept his promise.

Did you know Time’s the fourth dimension? Have you any idea that time actually

slows down with speed?

How much speed?

Too much.

Nothing we laymen can do with it?

No. Nothing. How was I last night?

Okayish. But you steer clear of the spot.

Yes. Like the cat who couldn’t decide whether to die or live.

You got to face it. It’s skin after all.

Einstein couldn’t face it. He lost it to Uncertainty. The universe, the

changeability. God, he said, was smarter than that. Smarter, organized. Had it all

sorted out.

________



Is being half of something very difficult?

For me, it is.

And for the others?

It’s sheer fact to them. Imagination loses hands down to facts. It’s

nauseating.

Don’t you wish you never came across that ship with no treasure?

No. I should be. Any sane person would curse that ship for disturbing her peace.

But, it gave me the world I desired. A snatch at hope. Three days with reality.

The promise. I don’t know what to do. A poem you say. A poem.

That’s too big a demand. I can’t get past pretence. I haven’t got the ship.

Maybe it’s too early for you. Maybe the challenge came too fast. But something tells

me you’ll get there one day. You’ll find your ship with no treasure.

Do you know what happened to the cursed sailors of the ship?

Yes. They grew lazy and drowsy on the drug from the island’s exotic flower. The

captain, he couldn’t persuade them back to the wild life of the wild seas. Most of

them died in hallucination of a better life.

________

You live your life

As if it’s real

- Leonard Cohen

What’s your purpose? You loll about the bed. As if you’re waiting for the ticking to

stop.

Would coffee help? Coffee with…

Lemon and without Sugar. I’ll put the water to boil.

The promise. You’re never going to fulfil it. Are you?

Please! I beg you! Am not honest. That cleft on your waist. It turns

me to butter. I’m so helpless.

Exotic. Ain’t I? That’s what you thought when you dealt that blow with Mama

Lise. What’s a two liner for a lifetime of immortal beauty?

Yes. I deserve all that. You’re behaving human now. I don’t like the

Goddess voice of yours.

I’m not human. I’m standing on bargained legs. And Sanders loves me.



Sanders? Who’s that?

The man who loved me with no more than truth. I let him down

when I came for you. Greed done the death of me. It’s night already.

I’ll come up with something. I’m a Poet. Don’t you worry. Let’s have some fun now!

It’s called making love.



Cheshire Trains

I come back home with neon animals

And gasoline burning my insides

The gentleman tilts his head

To the rushing track

It carries away his brain

He leans back, and smokes a little less

By then the sands have settled down

And books are up for burning

The train rumbles in

And leaves me in rapid light years


Chris Mooney-Singh | p. 29 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Chris Mooney-Singh

Mooney-Singh, Chris. “Poems by Chris Mooney-Singh.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3

(2012): 29-37. Web.

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"Poems by Chris Mooney-Singh" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a





Chris Mooney-Singh

Pantun of the Chinar Grove (Srinagar, Kashmir)

Written above the gate of the Shalimar Gardens, Sri Nagar, Kashmir by

the order of Emperor Jahangir (1542-1605)

‘If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.’

- Jami

Someone has set a bomb off in a car

where tourist buses come from foreign cities.

Disturbed, the birds alight from a chinar

and now there’s shadows running in the trees.

As well as flowing blood from foreign cities,

seeping where the leaves turn smoky purple,

the sound of running in those giant trees

brings crack troops and walkie-talkie babble.

It is the dusk when leaves turn smoky purple

with a game of hide and seek, just like a movie –

some crack troops, the walkie-talkie babble

and insurgency behind each massive tree.

The blown up bottle-bodies are a movie

that Bollywood will buy and script and make

because revolt behind Kashmir’s State Tree

insults the tranquil ripples of Dal Lake.



Bollywood will buy and script and make

this upturned tale upon some pristine hillside

with song and dance, a house-boat on Dal Lake,

yet those dead tourists do not stop to ride.

What was a heaven dancing on a hillside

is now some shadow running in the trees.

The flag of peace has slipped away to hide

as Kalashnikovs bring shadows to their knees.

The final shadows fall behind the trees

here in the dying season of the chinar,

and now the mourners fall down on their knees

because a bomb was set off in a car.



Coconut (Malabar Coast, Kerala)

A person needs

a tree of heaven,

a place to rest,

a place to forget,

a seat of ease,

with falling nuts

with shells for cups,

of meat and milk

and healing oils,

thickened curries,

flowers for weddings

and ceremonies

smashing the shell

inside the temple

like cracking the ego

and passing back

sweet blessed Prasad;

or on special occasions –

anointing a guru

like a maharajah.

Such a tree might

rise up slender

as a coconut tree,

a fine full woman

breasted, tall,

in her prime and

always ready

with slim, lean trunk

so boys can climb

to shake her down,

to shake her down

then greedily

drink her breast milk.



A nation needs

a tree of heaven

in a watered place,

a respected space

where love can plop

its fruit in the lap.

It must guard against

creating the kingdom

as a barren place

where belief begins

to drive its nail

into the trunk

on a moonless night,

or spit at her

while passing by

in cursing heat.

A philosophy needs

a tree of heaven

a final place

a paradise tree,

a rising myth

a kalpavriksha

to let it see what life

could be ahead

and how to make

this starting point –

a place to rest

a place to forget

a life of work–

success and loss

of milk and pain

along a beach

at morning, dusk,



and shade midday,

the shoreline saying

over and over

this is the place,

this is the place.



Ber Tree (Amritsar, Punjab)

You bear such a famous name

straight from old poems,

and yet in India you’re

still the plain ber tree, laden

with poor man’s fruits,

not too sweet to spoil us

and cheap in the bazaar.

Yes, plainness is holy,

a dukh banjani tree of cures.

At the Golden Temple,

one leans over the marble tank

of water, built around

a once-upon-a-time miracle

pool. A heron once dived in

and flew out a white swan.

Seeing the remarkable,

a cripple’s faith rose

and he jumped in next.

Soon he could run a race

to show and tell. Guru Ram Das

built a temple next

and soon a city rose

from the fruit of that

faith and blessing.



And I’ve seen a ber

in the village of one saint

who sat beneath with focus

and a hand telling beads.

It’s said he had visions,

then got his orders

to cure the sick

with the shape of the story

within these branches.

The voice in the tree,

once a princess

snubbed a maharishi.

As a cure for pride

he rooted her here

for penance as this ber.

She still serves here

with yellow-green berries,

the most simple of treats

for a race of farmers

who have few rupees

for mangos or papaya.

Dropped berries are taken

with faith as medicine

and little tongues of leaves

talk to the pure-hearted,

giving them guidance,

telling them how to pray



and how to get through life.

A thousand years of penance

are set, until the tree

falls and she will be free,

but the trunk is strong

and the fruits – not too sweet;

each has the hint

of sourness at the pip.

Who knows, one day even

when teeth spill the juice,

that last tart flavour

will be gone, will be gone.


Sébastien Doubinsky | p. 38 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)


Doubinsky, Sébastien. “Poems by Sébastien Doubinsky.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3

(2012): 38-43. Web.

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"Poems by Sébastien Doubinsky" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a






Misleading Columbus

Flying over the clouds' strange landscapes

I think of you and the limited geography of your heart

and I remember the Columbus I thought I'd be to your soul

but you gave me false maps and a rotten ship

and the new continent I thought I had discovered

turned out to be but my hometown again

with its gray skies, narrow streets

and cold hearts



Bus Ride

She sits next to me

with her beautiful dark hair

and blue tourist eyes

and I can say

nothing

do

nothing

think

nothing

because I am not

in love with her



Butterfly Panic

The day the butterflies invaded the city

they warned us through the radio

like in some old science-fiction movie

"Do not touch these insects, they are poisonous.

I repeat, do not..."

That night I went for a walk

in the mild worried evening

and all the people who sat outside the cafés

were watching intrigued scared amused

the poisonous snow-flakes flicker

around the bright neon globes

and they were wondering how long

they were going to live

these goddamned beautiful butterflies



Foghorns

the first load of spring has finally arrived

the city slowly warms up under the hazy sunlight

by the harbour you can hear the foghorns wailing like deer in heat



Essaouira

To Philippe Sendek

white walls twisting into narrow dark streets

and behind them the blue whispers of the sea

the sun crashed through the rooftops like a madman's orchestra

we talked about literature

and a thousand other useless things

compared to the wind... the wind...


Malay Roychowdhury | p. 44 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Malay Roychowdhury

Roychowdhury, Malay. “Poems by Malay Roychowdhury.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics

1.3 (2012): 44-7. Web.

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"Poems by Malay RoyChowdhury" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a





Malay Roychowdhury

Local & Global

Who has smeared

On your groin

The ink of love

Abantika

Who has scratched

On your cheeks

With thorns of rose

Abantika

Who has drawn

On your waist

Whipped up clots

Abantika

All your lovers

Gnaw at you

In every spot

Abantika

What I love

Is complete you

Top to bottom

Both your sides

Abantika



Translation from the poem in Bangla: “Local aar Global” by Arup K Chatterjee



Six Haikus

Gravitational force

Wave, particle, calculus –

Womanless Newton

Someone turns around

Inquiring about the time

Earth stops for a while/ Earth stops in orbit

Call it the cell-phone

Colourful, with video games

Foreign lady’s voice

Footprints on sandbank

Lone river fears to wash it

Lives in Autumn’s drought

First dawn of monsoon

Dad’s sandals in balcony

A peon rings the bell

Wife leaves the clothes drying

Kite stuck in the terrace wires

Song of afternoon

Translations from the haikus in Bangla by Arup K Chatterjee



Nonfiction


Lotourism | Katrin Siff Einarsdottir | p. 49 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Lotourism:

Low Impact, Low Cost, Localized, & Lonely – The Ecotourist on a Budget and Redefined

by Katrin Siff Einarsdottir

Einarsdottir, Katrin Siff. “Lotourism: Low Impact, Low Cost, Localized, & Lonely –

The Ecotourist on a Budget and Redefined.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3 (2012): 49-

53. Web.

Licensed Under:

"Lotourism: Low Impact, Low Cost, Localized, & Lonely – The Ecotourist on a

Budget and Redefined" (by Katrin Siff Einarsdottir) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is

licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0

Unported License.




Lotourism: Low Impact, Low Cost, Localized, & Lonely – The Ecotourist on a Budget and Redefined

by Katrin Siff Einarsdottir

I studied ecotourism and wrote my masters dissertation on the discrepancies

between defined and actualized ecotourism since I have always battled with

the ‘ecotourist’ identity. I liked to think I was an ecotourist, also called an

alternative tourist, sustainable tourist, or an environmentally friendly tourist.

But then these terms lead us to more definitional inconsistencies, since "eco"

and "environmental" and "sustainable" are all buzzwords overused and often

misunderstood.

After completing my thesis, I realized the term ecotourism is a vague,

green-washed term, whose definition is undecided among academics, and

sometimes unidentifiable in practice. I like to travel, and I love the natural

world we live in, but often-times carbon emissions and ecological impact

contradict my obsessive compulsive desire to go all over the place, taking

boats, planes, cars and buses at an unsustainable rate. It’s easy to feel guilt

about my carbon footprint in spite of being unclear where I can accept

accountability for planes and buses that will take their routes with or without

me.

However, it is possible to have an ethical travel consciousness without

identifying as an ecotourist. Ecotourists pay more for greener experiences and

off-set their flights by planting trees. But for sustainable tourism to become a

thing of elitists is unfair. Ecotourism has also been set aside from culture

tourism, offering strictly nature and adventure getaways in wild areas, but

humans are an intrinsic part of nature and the true ecotourist should still be

touring the cities and villages people call home. Mass tourists take their flights

and book their all-inclusive hotels or cruises but travel intensively for only one

or two weeks. My travel style has fused and forgiven aspects of both styles of



tourism, into something I have coined “lotourism”. It is a philosophy of travel

for the weary backpacker who wants to see the world and everything in it.

They do not pay more, but pay less, and see more, over longer periods of time,

with fewer modes of transport taken by traveling locally and avoiding long-

haul flights.

I had the idea to invent a new word to describe the way I travel since it

doesn’t suffice to say I’m a backpacker, just a traveller, a tourist, or an

ecotourist. I want a word that describes my travel mentality and approach to

seeing the world in a more sustainable way. I have a dialect of English my

friends call Katrin-speak, but this isn't a word I'm pulling from that English

vocabulary - it’s more like a philosophy of travel that I've adopted and want

more people to share. "Lotourism” is a theory of tourism that isn't captured by

any other one word.

I like to think I travel sustainably, but not just sustainably natural-

resource-wise. I am financially resourceful, traveling with minimal luggage,

staying with locals, and traveling slowly but steadily over short-haul distances.

I can live off $10 a day or less in some places. I never stay in hostels or hotels,

but couchsurf and make new friends everywhere I go. I have one small

backpack and all my possessions and necessities for 3 months in it, a 35L-20kg

bag.

I’m not really a backpacker, since I avoid backpacker hostels and hate

being defined by the stuff in a bag on my back. I’m not always a tourist, since I

try my best to camouflage into my surroundings and see things from a local

perspective. I adopt the local way of living, eat where locals eat, dance the way

they dance, dress as indiscriminately as possible, and don’t say much unless

I’ve learned the local language since I never want to be that white girl

screaming English in slow motion to someone who has no idea of what I’m

saying. I'm definitely a traveller, but so is the American guy sitting in business

class flying to Dubai for a 2 hour business meeting before returning to London

via Dakar for dinner in England's most authentic Turkish restaurant. So I've

realized there are different types of travellers, performing different types of

travel, and when asked how I travel, my new answer is "I'm a lotourist."

Lotourism, in a nutshell, is like ecotourism, but redefined and on a

budget. It is travel that is low-impact, low-cost, localized, and lonely.



1) Low-impact: your footprint on the natural environment is minimal,

which means your carbon footprint is low, your use of exhaustible or non-

renewable resources is low, you create minimal or no waste, you do not

contribute to the degradation of natural environments, your touristic activities

and choice of transport/accommodation/or anything else travel-related is

based on an educated, informed decision to be of as low-impact as possible.

Your footprint on the local or host culture is minimal, which means you learn

and engage in cultural exchange so far as you do not negatively impact any

local traditions or customs, you are a low-profile and low-maintenance guest,

imparting little change or judgment excepting what is beneficial or desired for

cultural exchange.

2) Low-cost: you travel on a tight budget, which requires you to avoid

tourist traps like all-inclusive vacations, hotels, and organized tours. You avoid

shopping and buy almost nothing but necessities, spend your money on simple

travel (preferably terrestrial, like trains or buses, going short distances rather

than long-haul flights), and stay with locals that you know through friends,

family, or travel communities like couch-surfing. You don’t buy souvenirs or

foods made of unsustainable resources (i.e. rare wood products, turtle shell

jewellery, eating rare or endangered animals) but contribute to local arts and

crafts or culture in other ways. You avoid renting cars or hiring taxis and take

the local transportation, or better yet, walk more. Cycling or hitch-hiking are

also lotourism friendly.

3) Localized: you stick around in an area long enough to know it, see

every corner (especially outside the city centre or touristic attractions) and the

surrounding suburbs or country side. You stay where you want to be, living a

day approximating the usual life there. You spend your money in such a way

that financial resources go directly into the pockets of locals (locally-owned

businesses, local guides, surrounding farms instead of imported/mass

produced foods) and you support the local economy (avoiding international

tour operators or foreign-owned companies in all your purchasing decisions).

4) Lonely: last but not least, you travel alone, travel by yourself to be

better immersed in your surroundings, alone with your thoughts and feelings

to fully absorb, process, and understand your new environment. Be vulnerable,

meet local people, avoid speaking your own language, catering to the needs of

a travel companion, or doing anything that you don't feel like doing or going



anywhere you don't feel like going. Leave your Lonely

Planet/Frommers/Fosters/etc. at home and just ask people for help as you go,

talking to as many strangers as you can. Don't stay in hostels where you'll get

swallowed up into a group of other tourists, don't travel with a tour group or

on a big bus with "rich tourists, coming your way" printed on the license plate.

Travel more spontaneously, irresponsibly even, at the mercy of a local tip, with

the adrenaline-rush of taking the wrong bus or the long bus, ending up on the

wrong train, showing up in a place you have no clue about, learning from

scratch and not a guide book. You can go for as long or short as you want, book

one-way tickets, have undefined destinations, a flexible schedule, and a trip

planned only one day ahead at a time

So, for any other lotourists out there, get the word out on the new word.

And, if you understand the idea, agree with the philosophy, and like the way it

works in travel, spread the word so more lotourism can exist in this globalizing,

traveling world of ours.


Vignette | Sanchari Sur | p. 54 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Vignette:

by Sanchari Sur

Sur, Sanchari. “Vignette.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3 (2012): 54-8. Web.

Licensed Under:

"Vignette" (by Sanchari Sur) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.




Vignette

by Sanchari Sur

It was still not morning yet. Calcutta was slowly waking up to a day that would

be as busy as any other day in the life of the city. Close to the tram depot, the

newspaper boys busily sorted their shares from a vendor. In a while they would

all be on their way, aiming rolled papers perfectly to land in verandas of any

floor possible. The chaywalla boiled milk in a large pan. This would suffice for

his day’s sell-off tea. The roads smelled of the night gone by of sleep; of peace.

And yet she had woken up very early and walked all the way to the Tram

Depot. She had to take the first tram down Chitpore Road, not on compulsion.

It was her desperate bid to get back to what she believed were her roots – her

city, her old, laid back, backdated Calcutta.

Sitting at this old, run down tram depot waiting for her tram to start,

she looked around. Even the driver and conductor gave her strange looks when

she asked when the train would start. With her appearance and gait, she was

perhaps the least expected passenger, particularly at this time of the day. She

The wooden seats, the bell, the rope hanging from it passing from one

compartment to another, the dented steel bodies, the numerous half torn

advertisements inside the compartment! All misfits in the fast pace of the

metro city! She was in a system that no longer held heritage as one of the

important things. Business was like any other system, that made money and

had no connection whatever with heritage, unlike what they claimed. Perhaps,

it was her in selfish interest that she had proposed a joy tram ride for a group of

donors who were coming for a visit to the city.

“A joy tram-ride?” everybody had looked at her as if she had gone mad.

“And what would we sell them this way? Broken vehicles, drooping wires, 18th

century fans that hardly work, snail’s pace? For heavens’ sake, Lady!” It was a

heritage that no other city in India had. It was a heritage that this mystic city

had continued to nurture over centuries. True, it might have lost its old glory,



but Calcutta Tramways still remains a heritage that makes any Bengali proud.

But it did not appeal to the bosses. They genuinely felt that it was not

necessary to make them go through the torture of a heritage ride. A well

prepared presentation in an air conditioned banquet hall should be enough,

they had said. But she was not convinced. And when she went on arguing, they

had said, to her surprise, that it was time to leave heritage behind and go ahead

with time.

She did not have to give them any more answers, but she had to find

answers for herself. Slowness, as is the greatest complaint against the heritage

vehicle, is what stood at a stark contrast with the life around the city which

outgrew it. And yet, like an old yet steady man, the tram both runs and walks

considering the speed of modern vehicles around it. Riding a tram, she had

always felt was like going back in time! As the tram left the depot, the loud

rumbling of the metal wheels on the metal tracks drifted her mind to a time

when she could or could not have been there. Back in the time when this semi-

dilapidated piece of vehicle was not considered useless and a burden! And it

stands as a silent witness to all the changes the city has gone through over a

century and more. It connected her to history. The glory of those days filled

her with a strange optimism that she had not felt in ages. It was a time when

the adjoining areas had no resemblance to their modern day appearance.

As her tram ambled past Lal Bazar, she could almost smell the blood,

tears, and breathings of the many who died in the gibbet that had once stood

right on the place her tram was crossing – some innocent, some guilty. This

part of the city always left her a little unnerved, be it the uniformed policemen

or the rows of black police vehicles standing around the gate. She had not

known a policeman, not even talked to one in all her life and she wondered

how they were. Would they be like any of us? Or would their uniforms add to

their personality a certain weight that becomes difficult to understand for the

rest of us mere mortals?

As she pulled her mind away from the uncomfortable feeling, she heard

the faint and melancholy strains of the Azaan at the Nakhoda mosque just

down the road. She realized it was a Friday, hence her luck at this hour. It grew

louder and more touching. Even though she did not understand a word of it,

almost instinctively she pulled the dupatta over her head. The green columns

that could only partly be seen from her seat shimmered in the morning sun.



The architecture of this grand building always filled her with a certain

reverence that she could never explain. Being out of reach, perhaps, made it

even more enigmatic and inviting. She wanted to feel the peaceful silence of

the prayers that reverberated across each pillar and wall of the age old mosque.

The hymns continued as she passed the red ornate gates of the

illustrious Jorasanko Thakurbari. She curbed her instincts of entering the gates

and take a stroll in the lawns that she worshipped. She remembered how she

had aimlessly roamed around the various rooms and terraces of one of the

many houses wrapped in history. Again, she thought, a silent testimonial to the

years gone by and the times that the city and the country has seen. She was not

a student of history and her sense of dates and events in the past would

probably not have been immaculate, but she had a strange connection to the

years gone by. She could somehow always connect to those times.

She smiled to herself. The sounds of the Azaan, these old city streets,

the history – it was all seeping inside her. And then her smile broadened as one

by one she saw the strangest names on huge posters on both sides of the road

as her tram passed the Jatra Para. It had always remained the same, except for

the newer trends of names and faces. Long Live Chitpore Road and Long live

Calcutta Tramways, she prayed silently! Smiling and overdone faces of actors,

less and more known, adorned both sides of the roads while other hoardings

announced forthcoming live performances. The concept of Jatra had always

been a mystery to her – the sheer grandeur and overdoing in terms of make-up,

acting, voice modulation and all other aspects – and how it had kept

generations of spectators in awe in all of rural Bengal! She wondered what

brought actors even from Mumbai all the way to Bengal to be a part of this

tradition. “Tradition,” the one word that wove all the feelings from the

moment she started her journey, was what kept her going and rooted in this

century old city, with an equally old transport system, heritage architecture

from an age long gone, a tradition of acting that has remained in its own glory

even after so many ages have passed – it all culminated into her being, a true

Calcuttan!

As she approached Kumortuli she realized that it had not struck her that

Durga Pujo was round the corner. The entrance to the potters’ colony and all

around it had been strewn with half made images of unadorned Durga idols

slaying their respective Demon King. She loved the smell of wet earth as



slowly, layer after layer it created the goddess and her carrier, and it had always

remained the same. Just like the huge ‘Bahon’ that was now carrying her

through her trip down history and heritage! From one of the by lanes she

could see the river that had been the life blood of the city for centuries, and her

mind leapt in joy. She would complete her journey in a while and she knew

where it would be. A cup of tea at the Kumortuli Ghat and she could start life

again; older and wiser like the many existences she lived through her ride

today.


Review – Makarand R. Paranjape’s Acts of Faith: Journeys into Sacred India | p. 59 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650| Online ISSN 2278-9650)

Review –

Makarand Paranjape’s Acts of Faith: Journeys into Sacred India

by Arup K Chatterjee

Chatterjee, Arup K. “Review – Makarand R. Paranjape’s Acts of Faith: Journeys into

Secret India.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.3 (2012): 59-65. Web.

Licensed Under:

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K Chatterjee) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.




Review – Makarand R. Paranjape’s Acts of Faith:

Journeys into Sacred India

by Arup K Chatterjee

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have

been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a

falcon, or a storm, or a great song. (Rilke, 76)

“I realize unexpectedly that I have become a pilgrim without a God,

a wanderer from city to city and from village to village seeking a

place where the mind may find rest, but finding none”…Travel, at

this point, takes on a totally different dimension, resembling the

age-old metaphor of the round of lives that we go through,

travelling from birth to death. This is no longer the travel of a

European adventurer visiting distant shores in search of conquest

or wonder, but the travel of a soul from life to life, in search of

everlasting peace or freedom from process. (Paranjape, 91)

And here comes the turning point in Paranjape’s travels.

The subject in the excerpt is Paul Brunton’s book A Search in Secret

India, published in 1934. Brunton’s travels in India follow a travelogy of

lavishness. In the beginning of the book, according to Paranjape, Brunton

attributes “higher powers of observation and logic” to the Western traveller.

This prepares the ground for the dialectic between the Orientalist, who is

Brunton, and the Oriental(s), especially Ramana Maharshi, which is soon to

follow in Paranjape’s analysis. However, another crucial matter is how

Brunton’s estimation of the Western traveller qualifies the latter as the rightful

colonizer of the land. Colonialism, to begin with is not an oppressive force. It

begins with the independence in economic and political subjectivities to travel

and trade. This is also the birth of the technical. It is this technique that

Brunton prides his nation with, that to reinforce and reinscribe he visits India.



Yet, quite the opposite is to be faced with. Braced with the complacency of Raj

Brunton is forced to a realisation of his loss of svaraj. In his encounters with

Ramana Maharshi that follow he undergoes bhanganyaya, “the deconstruction

of the body itself”; he is drawn to the brink of a nervous breakdown. His

pursuit of the picturesque or the spectacular weakens considerably as he

begins to travel inwards. The sacred and the secular or the colonizer and the

colonisable are no longer entities that lie outside of his body. They are no

longer objects of his speculation. They are the constituents of his very spirit, as

they always were. “Brunton is no longer a traveller; paradoxically he is no

longer a pilgrim”. The traveller has been transformed into the spirit that

impregnates objects as they are seen in the eyes of a traveller. This spirit is

consciousness itself. One cannot be conscious of it. As soon as Brunton claims

consciousness over it, and in turn his own sagehood, he loses the spirit. He

becomes “boring” and “incomprehensible” in Paranjape’s terms; in effect he

loses the very journey on the road to svaraj.

Paranjape’s next subject of inquiry is Roger Housden’s Travels Through

Sacred India. It is sharply at odds with Brunton’s text. Housden’s travels do not

trail the classic bildungsroman that the average European traveller in search of

the picturesque populates. His India is the most secret insofar as it is the most

open. It is susceptible to globalization and liberalization, both that bring in

illusions of its progress and purdahs on its naked demographic, economic and

as such spiritual disparities. Housden does not discover, establish, or revive

spirituality. Neither is Indian spirituality presumed as an a priori space. Instead

it is treated as a manifestation of the individual spirit. “‘The sacrality of the

place is interior to the pilgrim, as well as being externally located at some

physical place’”. With regard to this Housden’s Travels problematize the

metamorphosis of the concept of pilgrimage into one of tourism, in the

Hinduism of this modernity. The spirit of such pilgrimages having now

become a secularizing force merely adds to the utility of the site or the

monument. Housden therefore celebrates not the promise of the unknown but

the unknown in the ordinary. While the standard practice in any travel

discourse is to specialize or glamourize the travel site Housden functions

through a deglamourization of it, or by delineating the deglamourizing effects

of modern touristic consciousness. However, he does not discriminate either



the pilgrim or himself from the tourist. No travel itinerary can be without

mercenary suffixes.

Situated today in globalization, or an order of fragmenting nationalities,

travel writing is on an untenable course. Such is the popular doubt, and

consequently there has been a huge decline in theoretical and philosophical

writings on travel and travel literature in the last ten years. The reason behind

this is that the travelled is seen as calculable, and therefore exhaustible. That

globalization is detrimental to travel literature is a surprising notion. Topology

is finite while experience is not. While representations of racism, colonialism,

imperialism or linguistic and cultural jingoism that emanate out of travel

writings are symptoms of a temporal disturbance of identities, the moment of

the travel experience is timeless. So, racism for the other, for instance is nothing

but a trope to identify with what the ego recognizes as the privileged self. This

however, follows in the deferral of the transcendental ego and the

phenomenological intersubjectivity that is at the heart of a travelling

consciousness. Tourism thus becomes not only “predatory” as Housden and

Paranjape call it, but also cannibalistic because it feeds on the human essence

that has been de-subjectivised and de-linked from the essence that the

travelling self is a part of. In other words, the spirit of a non-dual human

consciousness undergoes an endless series of dualistic differentiations and

categorizations as othered from the self. So, the self rather occupied in

differentiating itself from the other starts substituting the other with whatever it

travels. Even the individual other becomes a constant signification of a persona

or an identity of a class. Subsequently, from the traveller’s eyes cultures,

communities and traditions get essentialized. And this is something that still

happens, something that is as true of the foreign as the native traveller. “‘What

matters – what will set apart a pilgrim from the ordinary traveller – is whether

you are willing to make the tirtha, from this world of mundane reality to one in

which the journey, the goal, and the pilgrim himself, are all expressions of the

One Divine Whole’”, where the finite and differentiating self is just a part of

the infinite other, the spiritus mundi. “‘(T)he divine, rather than being

somewhere above and beyond life, is…even in the squalor that seems to be its

very antithesis.’”

Paranjape’s comparative analysis of Brunton and Housden is just

preceded by a chapter that describes the general politics of travel writing. In



Rushdie’s words “‘Adventuring is…by and large a movement that originates in

the rich parts of the planet and heads for the poor’”. Looking retrospectively at

this chapter neutralizes the perils of such a thesis. To say that largely the only

travellers have been people with wealth or patronage is historically true.

However, it is an aggressive thesis that delegitimizes the phenomenological

development of the anonymous pedestrian. So, the thesis is true only insofar as

it has crushed those travels that did not undertake passages across oceans,

rivers, continents or constituencies. In the modern imagination travel is

undoubtedly a matter of prosthetic movement over distances traceable on a

small scale map. It does not account for daily travels to and from the school or

the workplace. Paranjape metes out justice to those pedestrians by

hierarchizing the humilities contained in travel. He privileges the pilgrims and

“other humble travellers”. And it is clear to us, now in hindsight, that not

merely the destination of a sacred place makes the traveller a pilgrim – it is the

spirit whose toils and spiritual development do so. The pilgrim is never pre-

qualified as one. Yet, far from privileging religious processions to holy shrines,

Paranjape deconstructs the very idea of the presumed certainty of this holy

site. There cannot be any certainty principle behind spiritual fulfilment;

sacrality is not an object of discovery to be found on a treasure hunt or at a

given location. Its attainment lies purely in its elusiveness. The point where

svaraj seems to be complete is the point when the toil for it comes to an end.

So the spiritual is in travelling and every travel is spiritual.

Paranjape centres his book by these three chapters which are,

exceptionally, not based on his personal spiritual or physical journeys. In the

rest we find the writer himself travelling. The centre acts as a zone of his

consciousness of history and literature. It is a fulcrum that governs his own

circlings around a God, that is at once sacred and profane. And at the core of it

comes the turning point that was also the beginning: the horrific anxiety of

“Who am I?” Brunton is shown temporarily resigned or reconciled or content

with the charisma of the Maharshi. He is saved from self-destruction, and is

revived. But Paranjape does not resolve, redeem, or explain Brunton

completely, even when he counterpoises him against Housden. The reason

could be Paranjape’s own psychological identification with Brunton that he

uncannily reveals towards the end in his Epilogue, in the form of a partial

disclosure that his student makes to him about his own book of poems which



is itself titled Partial Disclosure. This book, we are told, comprises three

sections. The student reports that in the third section although there is a shift

from the “physical to the metaphysical” and the “carnal to the spiritual” this

dynamic spirituality does not “erase the unresolved tensions of the more

ordinary kind (of love)”. So while Brunton has been a traveller Paranjape has

been the lover. While Acts of Faith definitely makes a “forward movement”

post-Brunton it inevitably makes a “backward” one too by eventually uniting

the higher and the lower quests of the spirit, in the traveller and the lover. As

Paranjape himself says, “‘the republic of the spirit’ is a democracy, not a

dictatorship”. There is no hierarchy here among the low and the high. So, just

as it is noble for Paranjape to live and die as though love mattered, it is noble

for the traveller to live and die as though the travel mattered more than the

arrival. Like ideal love is the renunciation of control over the object of love, so

is travel at its spiritual best when control over its object of travel is renounced.

Both clinging on to life and the site of travel with gaze, superstition and a

temporal eros, are instead moments of thanatos. They secularise life and travel.

They hasten death of the body and the shrine.

Travel literature on India has both seen a boom and a philosophical

decline recently. In that context Paranjape’s Journeys to Sacred India is a

refreshing oddity. The community of spirits is not entirely welcoming, if not a

catalyst of xenophobia, for those interested in secular forms of travel. To them

the book does not glorify the sacred at the cost of the secular. It does not even

differentiate between the two. In this regard it is a modern Indian pioneer to

trace the spiritual cartography of the nation within dynamic system of love and

faith. Objects, spaces and faces reappear in our journeys, not as the same

anymore, but as new personae, for, we ourselves have grown in the process of

our circling journeys.

Round and round we go; what determines whether it is a sacred

journey or not is the quality of our intention (Paranjape, 98).



Acts of Faith: Journeys into Sacred India: Makarand R. Paranjape; Pub. by

Hay House Publishers (India) Pvt. Ltd., Muskaan Complex, Plot No. 3, B-2

Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, 110070. No. of pages 232; Rs. 299.

Other Work Cited:

Rilke, Rainer Maria. “I Live my Life” in News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold

Consciousness, ed. Robert Bly. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995.



Editorial Board

EDITOR

Arup K Chatterjee

Poet, Critic and Researcher

Jawaharlal Nehru University

New Delhi, India

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Amrita Ajay

Researcher, and Teacher of English

University of Delhi, India

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

K Satchidanandan

Poet, and Former Professor of English,

University of Calicut

Former Editor of Indian Literature,

The journal of Sahitya Akademi

New Delhi, India

Lisa Thatcher

Writer

Sydney, Australia



Sudeep Sen

Poet, and Editor of Atlas Magazine

Editorial Director of Aark Arts Publishers

New Delhi, India, London UK

GJV Prasad

Poet, Novelist, and Critic

Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Vice Chair, Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language

Studies

Editor of Journal of the School of Languages

New Delhi, India

Sebastien Doubinsky

Poet, Novelist, and Critic

Researcher, and Lecturer, Aesthetics and Communication

Aarhus University, Denmark

coldnoon: travel poetics (mar '12, 1.3)

Documents

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travel poetics print

terminals of travel

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