Welcome to Vilnius

Photos: Ragnar Scheen

You can look, but while you might find seasons in the politics you won’t find politics in the seasons.

Autumn: the tracks appeared to trace a stream below, or several but as the train meandered along hillsides direction was difficult to contemplate.  The morning was reluctant and the wooded valleys were almost drained of colour.  In the yellow of the last leaves and the low grasses was a sense of farewell to the year; and while the white of the birch trunks had momentarily gained prominence and the first snow must’ve fallen by then, winter’s renovation remained awaited.  Primarily it was a landscape descending into brown, into the darkness of pine and wooden Belarusian villages.  It was the story of a border lost somewhere too in the season.

It was rather in the speed of the train, in the slowing, the pausing and the chugging along a little further that the border was at first suggested, as though there might be a schedule to the crossing.  Only when it seemed that the wood and the hillside might stretch beyond the autumn did other evidence appear.  It came in the unlikely form of low concrete posts, set among the trees in pairs, like statues of a long ago out-of-love couple meeting in the forest for old time’s sake, or perhaps to collect wood for the fire of their old age.  In each pair the nearer was painted red and green, for Belarus, while its mate was white with the feature of stripes in yellow, green and red: the stripes of Lithuania.  That old couple came near and withdrew: like the train the border held no steady course.

And it is possible to try to protect the blessings of the past from the uncertainties of the future.  And it is possible to try to safeguard the future from the ravages of the past.

In a pause in the forest the Belarusian guards boarded, to see that the passenger had all he papers they could wish for, including hotel receipts to account for every night in the country.  Beyond the post-couple the Lithuanians boarded, but for them the passport checking felt more as an afterthought, a ‘suppose we should know who is coming into the country.’  Perhaps their preference might more naturally have been to sleep longer, under the blanket away from autumn.

But a passport with a kangaroo on its cover was as the yellow leaves in the woods, it brought a slight energy with it, surprised as they were to see it.  Enquiries were made, assurances came that no visa was required.  Somebody official must’ve checked a nationality list.

The Vilnius station, not an hour from the border, sits upon a hill with the centre of the old town in the cobblestone capital in a small valley below.  There are about 500,000 people in Vilnius, 3 million in Lithuania.

I trailed the other passengers moving down into damp streets.  While for many, they must’ve been coming home; while for others, they must’ve been there a thousand times before: I was busy not knowing where I was going, taking in the charms of history as recorded in the buildings as I followed a random road.  Church spires multiplied as the valley city took over.

Too, I was busy contemplating the need for a scientist, how to, in a new place, locate a pathologist in a diagnostic centre.  It’s not that I’d befallen any illness, fortunately.  I required no tests and indeed it wasn’t just any pathologist that would do.  I needed one called Rita.

Lithuania has a long history.  They say its language is of the Baltic branch and related to Latvian, and that it’s the most conservative language in Europe, the one that’s evolved the least from the Sanskrit roots of the Indo-European language family.  They say there’s a village in Lithuania’s north called Indija, where local linguistic peculiarities have some commonality with languages still spoken in Pakistan’s Baltistan.

Once, at the end of the fourteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe, with territory stretching to the Black Sea.  And in 1991 the country made its mark on history again, as the first Soviet republic to declare independence, a move that cost the lives of 14 Lithuanians when the Soviet Army attacked the Vilnius TV Tower.  But the movement had history’s blessing.  The Soviet break-up started in Lithuania.

In a way it was that transition that paved the way for my need of a pathologist.  When the borders opened, a Norwegian friend of mine Ragnar was sent to the country on business.  As that business over the years developed so did his passion for Lithuania.  He took the country into his heart or maybe it captured him.  But beyond business he contributed in various ways, to promote modernity and development.  He’d taken an apartment in Vilnius and although he wasn’t arriving until the following day I was lucky, because a pathologist called Rita held for me the keys.

I kept in mind my general luck too in finding new addresses in unknown cities.  I kept my eyes on the works of art that were the buildings of the old town.  I took in the signs of each snaking alleyway just as the signs of autumn had taken in me.  There were Northern European style shops playing American background music.  I saw proper supermarkets with metal poles outside to tie your pet dog to.  There were large bookstores, music stores and cafés. 

Although I missed Ukraine already, where I’d been living that year; although I enjoyed Belarus, memories stirred.  It was as though in Vilnius I’d arrived back into a happy Northern European past.  All the same, should a chimney sweep have passed by on the street it wouldn’t have seemed altogether out of place.

There may have been queries with people on the street but I found the alleyway I needed.  Soon I was sitting opposite Rita-in-a-white-lab-coat and drinking a cup of coffee.  There was a book open on the desk between us with multicoloured microscope pictures on its pages.  I wondered how to diagnose my being there: I doubt there are multicoloured microscope pictures that can do that.  Perhaps it was simply the autumn that had taken me in that direction.  Rita picked up the phone and dialled Norway.

When she was able to, she whisked me across the city by car, to Ragnar’s apartment: open-plan, modern and with that wooden, pine-type smell that can easily remind one of Oslo.  It had a peaked wooden roof with no ceiling and on the table was a note, in Norwegian, to me.  ‘Welcome to Vilnius,’ it read, ‘Try the beer in the fridge.  Lithuanian beer is good.’  In retrospect I’d say it was probably the most modern accommodation I’d had for the best part of a year.

The apartment was an art gallery: a fish swimming from a rafter, wooden angels over there and of course, candles everywhere.  I surveyed the room and found again that smile that had been with me since I’d left Belarus, the re-finding of a different Northern European dimension to life.

Ragnar arrived from Oslo the next day.  It was the first time we’d met in five and a half years.  We spoke English, then Norwegian once again, and the hardest part was the ‘yes’, the rediscovering an automatic Norwegian ‘ja, ja, ja’ to replace the Russian ‘da, da, da’ I’d picked up in East Ukraine, although I was never skilled at Russian.

We found a restaurant some floors below street level, in a ‘mind your head’ type of cellar.  They served sausages by the half-metre and beer in tall glasses, by the metre.  We walked around the castle and up the hill to the historic three white crosses that were destroyed in the Soviet era but were rebuilt when the politics turned.

And in the evening we walked to the end of the street to find a forest overlooking a river.  It was a landscape descending into brown, at that time of the year.

------------------------------------------------

“Look! From the glowing west, forceful and angry winds

Are eastward moving with ferocious, headlong haste,

And bringing biting frosts to our Lithuania dear.

My friends, let’s to the house and build a glowing blaze.”[1]

-         From the poem Metai, or The Seasons, by Kristijonas Donelaitis.  This epic poem from about 1765 is considered the first classical piece of fiction written in the Lithuanian language.  From the third part of the poem, ‘Autumn Boon’.

Stay Happily Baltic, with Latvia or Estonia!

Retire eastwards back to Belarus.

Or go for the tropics in Trinidad!

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Welcome to Vilnius

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[1] English translation of the poem is here: http://members.efn.org/~valdas/autumn.html

Zero Point

Sunrise over the Nitelva

Continued from here…

Besides, just as the heart might be found unexpectedly inhabiting some distant delta, the cogs of the brain might turn their first in a snowy land. 

In the free hours in those initial weeks in Norway, at the zero point, I’d taken to exploring and found that up the street from the Rælingen house suburban Oslo gave way to open country which at the time of year was decked white.  There were deep pockets in the landscape of fields and in one I found an impressive oak tree.  Against the grey skies of the Eastland the stem patterns seemed to mimic the shades and arcs of light in the house and the flicker of the candles.

There was a small pine forest and having grown up in a land of eucalypts I was excited to clamber through it, up the icy slopes with a leg occasionally falling deep into a random hole of snow.  I had all the wonder that Bangladeshis do when they say they’d one day like to see snow, and touch it.

Lillestrøm Town Centre

I was wrong about Gunborg and Olav.  Theirs was not a bingo existence; the Rælingen house was no retirement village.  Perhaps I appreciated that best in the summer, because although I was staying in the Westland by then I continued to visit whenever I had the chance to reach Oslo again.  To my astonishment, that summer Olav sprang about the lawn in his sports outfit.  He leapt and stretched as we played the badminton he’d proposed.  It was tiring.

They were members of a swimming club so we’d swum; they liked to walk so we went to see the wild birds in the river flats a little to the south of Lillestrøm town.  They were members of a pensioner’s ski club and one day we all went cross country skiing.  I was part of a team with an octogenarian leader and all other participants over seventy.  There must’ve been at least some arthritis for them to contend with, but the pace was altogether suitable for an Australian skiing novice.  Maybe it was really me who was seventy.

Meanwhile the oak tree had been busily changing its dress, not into a sports outfit but donning a light green hairdo for spring, a mature deep green summer crown and a short-lived autumn cloak of yellow and brown.  It wasn’t only Gunborg and Olav I came to visit in every season, but the equally active oak tree.

But I get ahead of myself.  In the initial days Gunborg and Olav, ironically, spent some amount of energy concerned that I was bored, despite my saying I wasn’t.  They proposed the museum trips and the National Theatre for a play.   They organised for me to spend one weekend with their eldest son Torgrim and his family; but unfortunately, because of the language difficulties, I hadn’t understood that plan.  Just as we were leaving there was a sudden fussing because I hadn’t packed any clothes.  I had no idea I needed to.

When it became apparent I wasn’t going back with them on the same day, I was quite upset about it, though I said nothing.  I thought I must’ve done something wrong.  I was sure they were bored with me.  And I don’t know what their son thought because I was sullen and consumed in thoughts about what bad and probably Australian thing I might’ve unthinkingly done.  It was only when we went down to their tennis court on the next day that it properly dawned on me, that they thought I would enjoy the change.  Their son’s wife Frøydis asked, ‘Didn’t you bring your tennis shoes?  Didn’t they tell you we’d be playing tennis?’  So I played tennis, embarrassed, in bare feet.

Eventually I challenged the Nitelv.  With courage built I followed footprints through the snow covering the ice of the river, thinking I could turn back if the tracks suddenly stopped by a hole; yet without incident I reached the far side.  My Australian parents would’ve been more than a little concerned; but Gunborg had watched calmly from her kitchen window.  She knew the exact temperature from the thermometer affixed outside the glass pane and from past days she knew the ice was thick.

Walking on ice was a skill to learn, not only on the Nitelv but on the footpaths too; and it came in handy, later, in Hatiya, when fearlessly negotiating the muddy back roads of the monsoon.  There’s something similar about the stepping lightly and placing your body weight with care.

There was one morning they managed to tell me to be sure to take warm clothes as it was six degrees.  I thought I must’ve misunderstood.  Six degrees was hardly that cold: a winter’s night in Sydney might be as low.  I asked several times and surely they were saying ‘six’.  Pleased, I thought I might escape the full horse of clothes and sneak away to class in just a jumper; but I didn’t make it three steps.  In winter Norwegians don’t always vocalise the minus in the temperatures, I learnt. 

Of all meals in Rælingen breakfast was my favourite.  We ate slices of brown bread with paté and gherkins, herring in tomato sauce, Gunborg’s homemade apple jam, cold meats and cheeses: there was Jarlsberg with the holes, ‘key’ cheese with the little crunchy brown pieces in it, goat’s cheese and the soft caramel tasting brown cheese for which Norway is famous.  We’d swallow a teaspoon of cod liver oil washed down with milk, orange juice or filter coffee. 

The evenings shared were often given to pointing at things, with me repeating the Norwegian name; not unlike what would later occur in the tea shops of Hatiya as the villagers taught Bangla.  Sometimes we used dictionaries and Gunborg made sure there was a pad by the kitchen table to supplement with doodles the communication struggle.  I practiced the basic phrases from class and learnt new vocabulary.  They also asked things: Olav once enquired if when one had had enough to eat it was possible to say, ‘no thanks, I’m fed up.’  It was the dictionary that divulged why Gunborg’s food was as it was: she’d spent her working life as a home economics teacher.

And it was truly remarkable to have these new, varied and detailed Norwegian memories.  I’d even seen Ingrid from their optometrist business, a tradition their younger sons had continued, appear on a love match TV game show and I hoped she’d find someone nice.  It was strange that I cared about anything so specific occurring at the far end of the world.

I used to wonder about the simplest differences: the thoughts behind the habits and the décor of Rælingen.  Why was the Norwegian concept of how a room should be altogether different?  How had light taken its Norwegian meaning?  What of more complex ideas? 

It is the caveman drawings of my thoughts I write of, the zero point.  Thoughts are culture shaped and predictable most of the time; they’re barely ours.  But in Norway there were thoughts in the curtains, in the spreading of butter upon bread and in the lacing up of boots by the door: new thoughts to be had, everywhere.  And those first days in Rælingen were for my thinking as the fabled first primeval steps of prehistoric animals, from the swamp onto the land.

Sometimes I consider that although my body had been born in Sydney eighteen years earlier, my thoughts are creatures of the icicles that crunched underfoot and dangled from the lampposts at old Fornebu Airport, in Oslo, on that first evening when I met Olav. 

As it happened, like the Brahmaputra's, my journey started with ice.

** Photos from later visit in Autumn 2006.



And speaking of the Clauses, there's no forgetting the brave fisherman, the mother bear from Goldilocks or the riders from the north.




This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Zero Point

Norwegian Light: Article Index for articles about Norway

Norwegian Light

follow the footprints

...continued from the Nitelv and the Oak.

Besides, a journey cannot be a journey without a beginning….

I remember ice. It was a winter’s night we walked across the car park of Oslo’s old Fornebu Airport, when I was eighteen.  Oslo had a light as I’d never seen, of a soft cloudy grey variety delivered in small parcels by the illumination of the lampposts.  It was a light of punctuation rather than words.  The trolley slid and I slipped a bit as I followed my new host father to the space he’d found for the car.  I felt my chin freezing.  Along with the astonishment of being for the first time beyond Australia I held a minor measure of disappointment.  My host father was old.

All the Rotary exchange students from Australia had been met by their families, where we would billet for the first three weeks in an Oslo satellite town, Lillestrøm, in order to attend an introductory Norwegian language course before travelling to our final destinations across the country to spend the year.  I was the last to be met and I wondered if they’d forgotten me, whoever they were.  When he did arrive he was tall and slim, Olav, with cotton thread hair in white and a red glow about his cheeks.  He was the clean cut younger brother of Santa Claus.  Olav wore glasses and must’ve been in his seventies.  I imagined playing bingo in a retirement home. 

He’d brought a jacket I had to put on, doing up the zipper then the outside studs until the collar pushed the underside of my chin.  He’d arranged my scarf and there was a beanie and ski gloves.  I was more clad than at anytime previously for that journey across the car park.  We loaded my belongings into the boot and I walked to the front to get in.  There were barely words in any of this for Olav spoke little English, though he tried.  When I opened the car door he abruptly stopped, eyeing me with surprise, and upon looking in, I realised that by instinct I’d gone to the driver’s side.  They drive on the right here, I scolded myself.  Finding the other side where Norwegian passengers sit I unrobed for the heating.  Off came ski gloves and beanie, jacket studs were unclipped, jacket zipper undone and scarf unwound.

The first glimpses of Oslo were enticing.  There were old buildings of large stone blocks, grey or painted in pastel yellow or light blue and the footpaths were made of bitumen; they needed round blue street signs with walking people outlined in white to direct cars not to go there.  Suburban houses were wooden and starkly painted in red, yellow, blue or black and the road tunnels under the city centre were not neatly tiled like the small number of examples that Sydney had, but rough, cavernous and suitable exactly for the inhabitation of trolls.  The simplicity of train platforms, the ice on the Oslo fjord and the billboards of foreign disposition, especially if they featured the extra letters, with an ‘æ’, ‘ø’ or ‘å’ in them, were marvellous.  There would’ve been a conversation of interest with Olav had there been the means.

But the excitement of the evening scenery was outdone by something unexpected: the driving.  On icy roads it is to be imagined the car would slide a bit but it soon became apparent that the unsteadiness in the weather was more than matched by the unsteadiness in Olav’s steering.  In the forty minutes it took to cross the city we nearly had a few accidents and when Olav changed lanes other cars honked at us, the ones we were set to collide with, causing him to get nervous and swerve jerkily back the other way.  I found myself holding onto the door, no longer embarrassed about having gone without thought to the driver’s side.  It might’ve been the best option. 

I wondered if his lenses were sufficiently thick, not knowing he was an optometrist.

My new home in Rælingen, across the Nitelv River from Lillestrøm proper, sat midway up a small hill at a swing in the road.  It’s not there now. But the house was large, white and wooden with red window frames.  As Olav took a few automobile charges in battlement with the hill, which turned out to be normal for conditions of ice, I held my breath.  He insisted on it: scarf re-wound, jacket zipper closed, studs clicked, beanie and ski gloves on, for the few short steps to the front door.  I found a small area inside with racks and coat hangers and a heated metal stand for shoes, but as I had no knack for tapping boots together to loosen snow, my snow was left to melt inside.  Then all the extra clothes came off again. 

My host mother Gunborg waited.  She had a wrinkly round face and permed brown hair such that she could’ve been Santa Claus’s sister-in-law; and she wore an apron when she cooked.  She spoke no more English than her husband; I suppose it wasn’t the lingua franca of the North Pole.

As usual she’d whipped together some culinary masterpiece in anticipation of our arrival; soon enough I looked forward to every meal.  There were boiled mountain potatoes as a rule, dripped with melted butter.  There was fish or meat, sometimes both, with matching creamy, garlic or gravy sauces.  I liked that the soft drinks were chilled on the veranda to save fridge space.  I liked the taste of deer.

Apart from the white walls, the living room was of deep colours, burgundy leather, heavy cream and browns.  The rich patterns of rugs and the art: the photos, handmade woollen tapestries and prints of classical Norwegian paintings on every wall wherever there was space, gave to the house warmth.  In Australia our living room was painted yellow and had just one painting in it. 

At meal times Gunborg lit a candle in an old candleholder they’d bought in Pompeii, a Roman replica.  In Australia most rooms were lit by just one or a few ceiling bulbs that cast undeniable light across the breadth of space and in Hatiya, I would see later, kerosene lamps and candles held ground from their being no other option.  But in Norway each room had numerous light sources.  There were lamps with metal skeletons that could be bent in strained configurations for reading or sewing, table and free standing lamps in classical or modern design, of ceramic, copper or glass, and candles, regularly lit, on shelves, tables and windowsills.  On the ceilings as often as not were no lights at all.  My Australian father was forever telling us to turn off lights as we left each room, to conserve electricity.  It wasn’t the environment he wished to save but the bill, and candles were out of the question save for blackouts since they would burn the house down when we forgot about them.  In Norway nobody cared about either.  ‘It is dark in winter,’ they said, ‘We need light.’

The Norwegian way of light was initially annoying, absent of the convenience of a single switch, especially when looking for something in luggage for example; and because every lamp seemed to have its switch in a different place.  But after a while I reconsidered.  The grades of shadow from lamp to lamp, the meeting of light arcs and the flickering ceiling patterns of the candles were like people gathering, mimicking the changing shades and arrangements of life.  Light in Norway was a continuous conversation.  Outside, with the night sky turning a soft pink from the reflection of the snow, to such arrangements Norway gave a nod.

Snuggled under the doona on that first evening in Rælingen, on the fold down velvety couch that was my bed, I was ecstatic.  Picturing a globe in my mind I was quite in awe I was now at the top of it.  ‘Norway,’ I repeated to myself, ‘I’m in Norway.’  It was reassurance I really was.

continued...

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Norwegian Light

We need light

▲ North ink black sea ice

              East ►

                                      fire dance water snake

  COMPASS

            the scientific centre

                 ◄ West

                              cloud mountain green life

                                                             drums street rhythm move South ▼

GO!

                            Like a Portuguese explorer

Norwegian Light: Article Index for articles about Norway

The Nitelv and the Oak

Did you hear what the oak tree said to the river?  I’d be lying if I said I heard it but neither would it do not to mention the river and the tree as they are a part of it too, do you see?  The threads of life are many and there’s one, not one but a big knot of events in amongst the wire cage branches and out on the white icesheet looking up in wonder at an ordinary grey Nordic sky.  You won’t understand much at all without the Nitelv and the oak.  You won’t understand my Hatiya without my Norway.

In the low hillocks above the small river that oak tree guards a gully beyond the suburbanised streets outside Oslo and from its enormous, watchtower trunk branches radiate upward and then, spindly and thinner, shower downwards once more in a lattice network that gives to the tree its overall mushroom shape.  That tree must’ve witnessed things: the carving out of small plots of farmland from around its position, the retreat of the pine forest to the tops of the hills, the replacement of deer with a few cows or sheep feasting on the newer grasses that colonise the cleared space of the paddock when the summer comes.

The Nitelv meanwhile cannot be seen from the oak but it’s only over the nearest hills in the broader valley, and the small river is also an historian.  On its flat marshy lands that were once the habitat solely of summer reeds and wild ducks a minor town came to settle, when in the nineteenth century a steam powered sawmill encouraged the populating of the river flats by workers.  Lillestrøm was founded.  These days it’s a satellite town of the capital, Oslo, and alongside the collection of apartments, stores, the culture centre and buildings of civic administration that look a bit 1970s Nordic, amongst the older wooden cottages, there’s a fast train service to the airport and a ticket on it costs more than Situ’s budget for half a trip to Ukraine.

In summer the greenery of the parkland and bike paths along Nitelva’s banks bring cheerfulness to the long evenings.  The sunshine is warmer at that time of year.  In autumn white swans paddle the blackened ponds just out from the deadened reeds nearest the shore, now brown and newly covered in frost and by winter the Nitelv is frozen silent and layered with snow.  It was winter when I first saw it.  Each morning, so it was, I’d resolve to walk across the winter’s Nitelv instead of using the bridge, on the way to Norwegian class.  I’d seen it done in movies, walking across frozen rivers although for me the opportunity was the first of its kind.  But I was worried about falling through a hole in the ice and drowning as also happens in movies; so I hesitated.

Aha! To hesitate is not the story of the oak and the river.

But it was between the two on the Rælingen bank that stood the first Norwegian house.  From its kitchen there were views across the river with Lillestrøm beyond.  There were views further too, as there always are, that our eyes are unable to master, away downstream to the grazing buffalo of Thailand and a hilltop quarter-mosque in the green scrubby jungles of Assam, away downstream to the yellow and red cherries in a water cooler bottle in the steppes of the East and to the pungent steam of stargazing in the vast treeless plateau to the South, that plateau fresh with mud from the unusual event of rain.  There was the view too, of course, to a shack on a strip of road on an island: all the many oak and river aspects, do you see it? 

The first Norwegian house isn’t there anymore.  The land on which it lay was resumed, the apple trees in the garden gone for the building of the high speed train link.

I really don’t know what the oak tree might’ve said to Nitelva, calling out across the few hills between them.  I speak neither oak nor river, so it is, but they must’ve had some interesting conversations over the course of centuries. 

More about the philosophy of the Oak and then the philosophy of the river.

Perhaps adventure calls for a bigger river, a river of legend or a trip to the Bay beyond...

Perhaps more trees are required or you're at a point in your life where you've just had enough of trees and want nothing more to do with them!

Norwegian Light: Article Index for articles about Norway

No Please, No Thank You

It was Gulshan, for dinner.  ‘Do you enjoy living in the East?’ the Australian woman said, her first words to me on that evening, with enough vitriol in her tone to strip rust from a pole.  Why the bitterness?  I was confused.  I rarely think of East and West: and if I did, East might mean Russia or China, not Bangladesh.  Bangladesh is a South Asian nation but mostly I think of it as: Bangladesh.  It requires no reference point.

My Bangladeshi friend Situ was there, thankfully, and in the short conversation that followed she made mention of how she cannot tell the difference between Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis, which might be alright if she didn’t work with these communities in Sydney.  She challenged my saying that Bangladesh was not India and required Situ to attest the fact the two countries actually differ.  And when I suggested Bangladeshis might be flashier in style than at least their Paschimbangan counterparts, she indicated Situ and said ‘I don’t see any gold anywhere!’  She’d been in Bangladesh for less than twenty-four hours.  It was her first visit.

She spoke of her trip, maybe a week, to a village in Western Ukraine.  The scene was of poverty, despair and people who didn’t know how to fix the village water pump.  They had kitchens smaller than her Australian bathroom.  ‘The country’s been ruined!’ she declared, ‘It will never recover.’ Then she almost spat out the word ‘Russians!’  I might not mention such unfortunate inanities except that she was certain her pending visit to a village in Jessore would be identical.  ‘I already know what it’s going to be like.’ 

For an Australian, a visit to a Bangladeshi village is a significant opportunity to learn, not only of Bangladesh but of oneself.  It seemed a shame that such a great opportunity might be lost before it began.

Fortunately we didn’t have to stay.  As we left she was busily telling a young Bangladeshi girl, maybe six years old, ‘In English we say please and thank you!’  She wanted to force the girl to say ‘please’ before handing her a candy.  There was some irony in her instructing on manners and it made me wonder if I had ever been so culturally judgemental. 

The young girl didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to say, ‘Look, it’s there, her ‘please’ is in her expression.  It’s in her shyness which means respect.’  I wanted to say, ‘Leave her alone!’ or ‘How about you learn some Bangla?’  But there was no point.

Reality: if an English-speaker sits at a Norwegian dinner table they’re likely to be shocked.  ‘Pass the salt!’ they’ll say, a little too directly.  On the Norwegian street, passers by stare, while in Sydney it’s usual if you catch a stranger’s eye to look away or smile.  The difference was significant enough that when I first went to Oslo at age eighteen the street staring used to have me scanning my clothes to see if there was something odd.  T-shirt is back to front?

Yet within days I’d learnt that Norwegian phrase takk for maten, ‘thanks for the food,’ to be said after every meal.  I learnt takk for sist, which means ‘thanks for the last time we met,’ and can be said on re-meeting someone.  In Australia there are not similar customs or not in the same way.

Reality: if an English-speaker goes to Iran it’s the locals who might be shocked.  You can’t just say salaam to greet someone; it needs to be a slightly sung, full-hearted salaaaam! to matter.  There might need to be a kiss on each cheek.  Farsi has several phrases for ‘how are you?’  It might be insufficient to use only one; and there are three versions of ‘thank you’, often strung together and with a ‘very much’ thrown in. 

There were other unique systems: Iranians will seat the most important guest furthest from the door and all things should be offered three times and twice refused before being accepted on the third offer, which is the genuine one.  More informally I remember scenes of Iranians passing handfuls of sunflower seeds down the intercity bus, row by row, passenger by passenger, until it reached the foreign guests!  When it comes to the verbal ‘thank you’ alone, Iranians leave English-speakers for dust.

Reality: in Thailand there’s the system of wai-s.  A wai involves palms together and shows differing levels of respect, dependent upon where the fingertips are placed.  A wai above the head is for Buddha or the royal family.  Fingertips that are positioned under the nose are appropriate for elders, under the chin for friends and below the chin for children.  Mere words are not required.

Reality: Bangladeshis are mostly polite, especially in the village; and it might sound strange but I used to wonder how they managed it since there is a deficit of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to an English-speaker’s ears.  It’s because in terms of sophistication, Bengalis leave English-speakers for dust.

Think about all the gestures the foreigner must learn.  There’s the ‘sorry’ pat on the shoulder if you accidentally bump someone in a crowd.  There’s the ‘even sorrier’ arm stroking, often favoured with friends or creditors.  There’s the perhaps old-fashioned ‘very sorry,’ displayed by sticking the tongue out, tugging on ear lobes and doing squats; and I once saw the ‘extremely sorry’ of hitting one’s cheeks with one’s own shoes! 

There’s the sharing a cup of tea to end a dispute and the process of village mediations that must go back for thousands of years.  We can show respect by offering or taking things with both hands.  Splitting bills, as is common in the west, is out of the question and within many a Bangladeshi family the concept of sharing property like clothes or jewellery is taken for granted. 

Think about the degrees of ‘you’ that no longer exist in English.  In place of every aapni, imagine if you put a ‘please’: how much more prolific they would be than in an ordinary English sentence, because aapni is there in every verb.  Tumi and tui may also have politeness when they indicate closeness or caring.

Think about the greetings.  It took me time to properly understand how all the villagers saying assalamu alaikum or namaskar were not simply saying ‘hello’ or ‘good morning.’  Walaikum salam, I could happily respond, without having a clue as to the respect present within the exchange. 

Years ago, it was common after a handshake to put your hand to the heart; and there’s the hand-to-mouth-then-heart gesture if your foot accidentally touches someone, the gesture that makes the villagers laugh when I do it because I’ve added a little signature flick to the end of mine.  Beyond that, there are indescribable smaller gestures, a look in the eyes or a smile of delight: nobody seems to do these things the way Bengalis do.  And let’s not even get started on the jamai, the son-in-law!  These ways of expressing politeness, caring and consideration are harder to fake than the verbal version.

Unfortunately, telling that girl to say ‘please’ is not a neutral act.  It is a cultural imposition that sets the English-speaker’s way as the standard to live up to and be judged by.  Let’s not do that anymore.  This is the twenty-first century and we tried that last century. 

The girl can be polite in the very many local ways available and if she wants to attend English class or go to Australia later, let her learn the petty forms of politeness then: it’s easy to adjust to the Toyota model if you’ve been taught to drive the Mercedes.

It’s understandable the Australian woman didn’t know these things.  What’s sad and embarrassing for another Australian is that she couldn’t imagine she didn’t know.  Then again, she didn’t know the Cold War ended either.

In these heady days of a nationwide reaffirmation of what it means to be Bangladeshi, there’s this minor matter I’d like to throw into the pan: Bangladeshi manners.  I’m busy trying to reduce my use of dhonnobhad, the verbal thank you.  I want to drive the Mercedes!

It's not only about manners of course, but different ways of thinking, perhaps what a culture sounds like, or even perceptions of paradise. 



This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: No Please No Thank You














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Rodent Tourism

She had a dainty nose, small and pointed; her eyes were chocolate brown and shaped as watermelon seeds.  Through the brown silk of her hair could be seen the pink flesh of her small, rounded ears.  Her body was a little plump, overweight; but she was loved.  As she flitted about, like a bridal party attending to its bride it followed her: that long earthworm of a tail.

I’ve never had any particular affection for rats, but this one was the pet of some friends of a friend, many years past in that town of islands, Kristiansund in Norway.  She had free run of the house, the rat, and they seemed not to mind as she scurried up their arm or circumnavigated their necks.  Rats only live for a year or two, they said; so a life-long friendship for a rat is but several seasons.

People are never alone in this world: naturally enough there are other rat admirers amongst us, people enamoured of rodents.  This article is for them, for should one find oneself desirous of rodent-company whilst on holiday, there are options.

Entrance gate to the Kani Mata Temple, Deshnoke, Rajasthan

Deshnoke is a small town of around 15,000 people about thirty kilometres from Bikaner in Rajasthan.  It’s not a town that’d attract much attention, being not dissimilar to any of the other small towns in the brush country of the Thar Desert, if were not for the Karni Mata Temple.

Born in 1387, Karni Mata was a mystic believed to be a reincarnation of Durga; it is said she performed many miracles.  When her stepson Laxman drowned while attempting to take a drink from a tank, Karni Mata urged the god of death Yama to bring him back to life. 

Yama initially refused, but later allowed all of Karni Mata’s male children to be reincarnated as rats.  Alternatively, the 20,000 mostly brown rats that are fed, protected and worshipped at the temple are said to hold the souls of traditional bards called Charans.  Karni Mata is said to have been 151 years old when she died.

Removing one's shoes at the grand silver gates that mark the entrance, it's quite a novel experience to wander a courtyard populated by rats.  At the altar it's possible to seek Karni Mata's blessing, consuming Prasad, the edible offerings shared by the rodents.

The temple is said to reinforce a simple truth: all life is sacred, even rats. 

It is auspicious to see a white rat.  It is auspicious if a rat runs across your foot.  And as I was once told, when bubonic plague caused many human deaths in the towns of Rajasthan, in Deshnoke not a single person died, thanks to the blessings of Karni Mata and her temple of rats.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel, St. Lucia

Across the world in the Caribbean, and it may not be there now for there were plans for it to close, there is or was a budget hotel set amongst a lovely rat garden.  It’s a beautiful establishment in the lush subtropical hills above Castries, the quaint capital of St. Lucia.  The rooms are clean and spacious, food delightful, particularly as the reception area and dining table doubled as the living room of Cherie and her family, the local hoteliers.

A laid back French St. Lucian, there was no question Cherie had a soft spot for animals.  The multiple dogs and cats wandering about were additional family members, so the rats should have come as no surprise.  It was while sitting on the balcony enjoying breakfast, with the paradise of the St. Lucian Caribbean spread out like a blanket beneath, with views all the way to the horizon, Martinique, that they could be seen scurrying about in the garden immediately below: large, well-fed and clean.  ‘People said I should poison them,’ Cherie said, ‘but I didn’t have the heart to.’  If St. Lucia is paradisiacal for human beings, Cherie’s garden is the equivalent for the rats.

And if the St. Lucian pedigree of rat, significantly larger than the Deshnoke and Norwegian varieties, proves insufficient, then far to the south of St. Lucia can be found the capybaras, the world’s largest rodents.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel to Martinique

The Argentine wetland of Estero del Ibera abounds with wildlife, monkeys, deer, caimans, which are an alligator relative; and for me the star attraction: the capybara.  As large as a small goat and tail-less, even for the rat-non-lover this marsh-dwelling rodent is something special.

Capybara wades

As usual I’d imagined hours of weary search and maybe slight danger in the quest to locate the species; in the hope of the sort of fleeting glance that would more than satisfy the visitor to the Sundarbans in search of tigers.  Safaris should be like that, but it wasn’t.

It’s possible to hire a boat from the small town of Colonia Pellegrini to navigate the short distance across the lake to the Ranger Station, headquarters of the National Park.  The boat comes with a guide, who with some luck could be named Gaston, for Gaston makes his living that way.

After not more than several minutes, stepping off at the wharf by the Ranger Station, the expedition was done.  There on the grassy lawn was a capybara.  The creature didn’t bother to look up as we walked close enough to punch its broad flat nose; it was terribly busy doing nothing, what capybaras do best; an almost-statue but for the odd grind of the teeth.  It ruminated on grass as an elderly mother-in-law in a Bangladeshi village might chew paan or betel leaf.

Capybara chews

That capybara was seriously so unfazed by human presence I thought it might be a fraud: that some ranger had tamed one to impress the tourists, that it’s probably called Antonio and sleeps at the end of the ranger’s bed.  I wanted a real, wild, useless capybara.

Soon back on the water, after checking-in at the Ranger Station, with the silence of an oar Gaston sidled the dinghy to within inches of a caiman, the crocodilian as long as the boat.  It floated as though dead: but its eye moved.

‘Australian crocodiles can run as fast as horses on land over short distances,’ I told Gaston.  Actually I’ve no idea if its true but I think I might have heard that on TV once.  He was suitably impressed.

Continuing through the reeds two things became apparent.  At Estero del Ibera there were seemingly-lifeless caimans all over the place, their hardy scaled bodies and jagged long jaws floating about here and there, the reptiles completely fearless of the boat.  And there were genuine wild capybaras, different sizes but inevitably fat, and completely fearless of the boat.  It was incredible.  Giant rat swims, giant rat chews something, giant rat does nothing much in particular: all could be seen at incredibly close range.

Capybara wallows

Completely satisfied with my capybara encounters, I was in a better position to enjoy the overactive river otters and the bird life, the most impressive bird being the ungainly southern screamer, something of a cross between vulture and turkey that nested in reed clumps and though I didn’t hear it, must be in the habit of screaming now and then, presumably in a southerly direction. 

A swamp deer watched with this, ‘yeah, whatever’ look, as we paddled close.  What was it with these Argentine animals?  None had the least fear; had they not met humans before?

Capybara does nothing much at all

The great thing about Gaston was his genuine interest.  He must have done that tour every day and probably still does, but he really seemed to love those wetlands, his backyard.  I imagined his life with slight envy, how tranquil it would be if the most stressful event in your workday was a caiman closing an eyelid, or maybe that gets to you after a while?

For rodent enthusiasts and those who are not, the Estero del Ibera experience can only impress.  There must be few safaris in the world where contact with wild animals is so easy, where you could just about reach out and touch them; and its surprising really, because while it’s illegal to eat capybaras in Argentina, so I was told, they are hunted for their leather: capybaras sometimes become the belts worn by the gauchos, the Argentine cowboys.

Capybara, king of the rodents

Of course there's more to the Caribbean than rats.  And for more adventure, tracking rodents can't compare with tracking fearsome, wild beasts in Eastern Europe or wondering if the wolves will come...

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