Our first evening meal was at Konoba Insula. We ate alfresco, sitting along a wall in the narrow, impossibly narrow Popovica Ulica. It was well past 8 pm and dusk was quickly turning into night. For lunch, I had grilled bass in sesame seed and that night I had seafood risotto. There was much…
Writing in cinnabar red ink
We arrived by train at the station in Oranienburg, the self-same station that the inmates of this concentration camp arrived in. They would have been met by SS and marched to the camp, a distance of just over 1 km. The houses along the road are detached dormer-type homes with shiny glazed roofs. The…
Vallejo on the 1550 to Euston
My train is hurtling towards Euston. It's that time of the year when all the trees are freshly green and resplendent especially in the full afternoon sun. We've just gone past Rugby. There are no more stops before Euston. The fields to my left have yellow buttercups bordered by Mayflowers. There's the occasional hedge of…
Octavio Paz and Me
I don't believe that I've told you how much I was influenced by Paz. Here was a writer who was constantly seeking the gap between what is real and known and that indefinable domain of the imagined and ephemeral. And in that gap, even though words too are deficient and far too inadequate to the…
Titan Arum
It takes 11 years for Titan Arum to grow from a seedling to this remarkable 2 m fleshy spike and 3 m circumference of leaf-like structure. And, there we were standing before one of these monsters, barely 48 hours away from the spectacular inflorescence. The inflorescence itself lasts 48 hours if you’re lucky and is…
Our Bell Boy
Our Bell Boy, Raymundo, was not a boy at all but a full-grown man. He was a small, that is to say, short man, of slight build and weathered oak complexion. He was a Philippino. He carried our luggage up to our room on the first floor of the Atlantic Hotel. We are in Florence for…
Archaeology of Hatred
I had thought it was all down to hatred but I was wrong. Hatred was merely a conduit, a means of garnering support, by inducing division and ratcheting up difference. I don’t mean that the Great Wizard or the Great Leader have no hatred or that J Cess is not polluted. In fact he is…
Court of Chaos
Pericles in the funeral oration for the first Athenians to fall during the Peloponnesian War said Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it…
Dystopia
This has nothing to do with optics. You and I can see pretty well. We are not beholding an illusion. The spectacle and performance before us, the displays of deceit and dissimulation are real enough. And the fast moving evolution of events, the rush as of Rapids approaching a precipice, a cataclysm, this is real…
Apocalypse Now
It has been the most remarkable few days. There’s been an underlying undertow in the air, an unseen wave that clutches at the feet, sweeping the sand away and undermining security. If you’ve ever stood at Bar Beach in Lagos with Atlantic high rollers surging towards you and crashing down, foam and spume everywhere, droplets…
