Beyond the Middle Place

Hotel rooms, amidst the measured queen size bed, the table lamp and the basket of fruit, have their own passive life.

When I first arrived in Somerset, for months I was at this hotel, unremarkable in every regard except one. It had a large framed print of "Lament for Icarus", the print itself was of average quality. Uneven colors, and not particularly well framed either.

It's a Victorian Nude of course; Icarus lies dead by the sea after his flight to freedom ends in disaster. He is tended by nymphs who hold him and lament his unfortunate death.

Daedalus, imprisoned by King Minos, devises wings built out of feathers and held together by wax, as a means of escape. His son Icarus follows him in flight. Once in the skies, Icarus, apparently convinced of his abilities of flight, gains altitude and the sun melts his wax bonded wings. The young man falls to his death in the sea.

The months I stayed in that hotel room, at times I stared intently at the print, at most other times was oblivious of its existence. On sleepless nights, with a village in slumber beyond the window, Icarus and the lamenting Nymphs often came to life.

No magic realism, no emerging characters, no talking nymphs.

Like a ghost beyond the horizon.
After sleep, after blinding light.

After the fear of heights and the depths of the sea.
A place to rest your head.

The afterglow of life. Beyond the middle place.

Labels: Art, Travel

Sunshine Happiness

A fantasy calendar girl, with backlit hair.
A Colored morning on the church pews.

On a shallow sun afternoon, I built a fort.
Familiar strangers and unaccustomed silhouettes.

Beer on the beach, at the high tide bar.
Two rupee boat rides on the lazy blue.

Sunshine happiness, I knew you one winter.

Labels: Moments and Memories, Travel

From Coast to Coast

They say if you have seen one beach you have seen them all. On the 31st of December 2005, I was by the Arabian Sea at Daman, the southern tip of Gujarat. Exactly a year later I was at delightful Pondicherry on the Coromandel Coast by the Bay of Bengal. A journey of 1200 kilometers in 12 months, almost diagonally across peninsular India.

There were stopovers of course - the confused and cosmopolitan Geneva, officious and idyllic Bern, the icy winds up the Matterhorn, opulent St.Moritz and the quaint stamp sized Liechtenstein.

And as I stood at the Pondicherry Promenade, the warm sea breeze crawled through the fabric of my clothes. The sea smothered the rocks and rose like salt crusted sprays in short-lived revelry.

It doesn't matter where you were, in doesn't matter where you are coming from. You just pause, see the sea, feel the rain, goggle at mountains and keep walking down that winding road towards the bend around the corner.

Labels: Moments and Memories, Travel

Smoke on the water. Fire in the sky.

On saturday the week long Geneve Fete drew to a close. It had rained all evening, the fireworks display by the lake, which officially signals the end of the fete, appeared to be a no show.

At about 9:30, the rain petered down and I made my way towards the lake. I was near Cornavin Station when the fireworks display began. The roads leading to Quai Mont Blanc were cordoned off for vehicular traffic. And suddenly there was a mad rush - people sprinted down the road towards the lake side. It almost felt like one of those disaster movies, when the monster makes an appearance at a crossroad, and people run in the opposite direction.

The Quai was packed. The fireworks were splendid. Gold spangles lit up the night and then slowly melted into the river. Spiraling globes of blue and red, burst upon the sky for a glorious memorable moment and then allowed the darkness to slither back in. The geometric shapes and seemingly random patterns of light, burst upon the night, as the thousands who had gathered looked on spellbound.

The reflections of the fireworks on the lake - created awry images of brilliant light. The hotels which line the lake, had guests out on the verandahs, taking in the spectacle. The fireworks extended their imagery to the shut windows, lighting them up like neon signs on a boulevard.

I looked around at the people around me. There was a sprinkling of locals, those who had driven into town, and people like me, who had come from distant lands. Couples held each other close, families huddled together. And the children in prams, were not sleep and cranky anymore.

And suddenly, almost magically, under the night sky lit up by fairy lamps - Gay men kissing each other, didn't bother me. Neither did the Arab tourist with his retinue of wives and children. The war in Lebanon, felt like a story concocted by the media.

Geneva calls itself - the city where people meet. And for fifteen minutes, those thousands of people, with different languages, religions and color of skin, magically and almost in the most serendipitous kind of way, came to embody the essence of "The United Nations" much more than a building across town would ever be able to.



P.S. Across the lake, Montreux, is known as the Swiss Riviera. In 1971, while Frank Zappa was strutting his stuff, the Montreux Casino caught fire, casting a pall of smoke over Lake Geneva. This inspired Deep Purple's classic song "Smoke on the water, Fire in the sky."

Labels: Music, Travel

My new house, the neighbor’s cat and wishing you were here…

Saturday I moved into my house, my own house.
No.2 Drum Avenue, Glastonbury.

My own house … with tenancy papers. The electricity, gas and water connections in my name. Yeah, I am feeling pretty self important at the moment!

Did shopping to set my place up. It’s a furnished house, so really don’t need to/have to do much. But I bought cream bed sheets, a gray quilt and black towels. Yeah, black Turkish towels… neat and chic.

I made friends with the neighbor’s cat. It’s got a coat of uneven black and white, and it just waddled over the gravel strip which separates the neighbor’s front yard from mine. It isn’t a fat cat, what’s the word…yeah…its "tubby", you know what I mean?

I cooked my first meal in the house, mixed vegetables, rice and an omelet.

And now, after washing the dishes, latching the front door and flicking off the lights. I am in my room, listening to "Wish you were here". Watching the candle burn on the ledge, the flame flicker and the crazy shadow dance...

Yeah I am thinking of you, the girl who makes me feel like a schoolboy. A schoolboy in love for all heaven and hell. All the dreams and none of the fears.

How I Wish you were here…

Labels: Moments and Memories, Travel

Suddenly Stonehenge...

Street, Somerset is two hours down the M5 from Heathrow.
As soon as we hit the countryside, the Rolling Meadows and fields stretched on forever. Having lived in the plains, the landscape flanking major highways and rail tracks is usually flat lands, extending as far as the eyes go.

But this was different, almost as if an artist had run his brush in an undulating continuum. The lush green fields dotted with grazing cattle, interspaced with bright yellow farming tracts of rapeseed and mustard. Nature's eclectic palette.

Most of the way, I floated in and out of sleep. Whenever I woke up, I took in an eyeful of the rolling countryside and then promptly slipped back into slumber.

One of those times, I opened my eyes, to see that we were driving up a gradual incline. For as far as the eyes could see, were fields of green and yellow. It almost felt like cruising in a helicopter, with man's untouched earth stretching on till the end of the world. The car steadily mounted the incline, and the landscape seemed to open out even further. The road soon forked into two divergent paths, and at the vast center of the fork, one could discern large stones arranged in a semi circle.
It was Stonehenge!

It felt surreal, vast meadows and fields and unexpectedly at the heart of all this, the stones of Stonehenge. If it weren't so real, if it didn't stretch across the windscreen, I would say I was being fanciful.

Suddenly Stonehenge.

Labels: Travel

Of Themes, Culinary GlobeTrotting and Solitary evenings...

Now that most of my work ‘work’ is over here at Grevenbroich, I often have the opportunity to leave office at the god blessed hour of six! On such evenings I chart a new leg of my ongoing culinary journey.

Yes, I arrange “theme” evenings for myself.

The guiding principle of such evenings is simple - try out a new cuisine and arrange the other elements of the evening around it. The first step obviously being choosing the cuisine and thence procuring it.

Last Friday for example I went Turkish - I ordered a portion of Mushrooms in Yogurt sauce, garnished with garlic and chilies. To go with that, from the supermarket I bought Turkish Pita bread, which is a cross between a Masala Kulcha and a Pizza. The spread, while not a king’s platter, was representative of authentic cuisine. To wash down the food, I bought a bottle of Blood Wine. Blood Wine is a produce of the hills beyond Bonn, its strong flavored and derives its name from its distinct blood red color and the Frankish legend of Dragon Slayers. The last element of the evening was the music - I played the Nazams of Faiz Ahmed Faiz sung by Abida Parveen.

It was quite an eclectic experience - Turkish food, local German wine and mystical music of the east. I layout the table and put out all the lights, the only light was that from the television which I had set to the Olympics with the volume muted. The evening was rather nice, a wonderful experience.

Spurred on by last week, I charted a new “theme” evening - Authentic Tortellini pasta and ham in a crème sauce, Alt beer to go with it and Bruce ‘the Boss’ Springsteen playing on my laptop. Another eclectic little experience - authentic Italian fare, a lovely local beer and the working-class songs of ‘The Boss’.

As I savored the food and sipped the beer, I laughed at these maverick evenings of my own device.

“…the mistaken heart, its delusions never end, the laws of reason enter the mind after much delay…embracing false hope with both arms, with all its might, to its breast. In the end one day, severing the umbilical cord and sucking the heart empty of blood, it flees; there is then a return to one’s right senses.
But the mind grows restless again…to embrace its next delusion.”

- Robbie T (Rabindranath Tagore)

'The Postmaster'

Labels: Travel

The 'Time of my Life...' ?

It was nearly midnight I was curled up in bed with a book. One of the pleasures afforded by Friday and Saturday nights is being able to stay up and read, without having to worry about the alarm clock dictated routine which normally hangs around one’s neck. My hotel room has a really large window spanning an entire wall. I keep the window open at night, it feels nice to lie on the bed and stare at the square patch of sky. Uneven swathes of velvet in shades of gray, with the odd white cloud floating across it.

The view is pretty unremarkable - a suburban street lined with brown brick houses. A car parked on the street whole night is the only variation one could possibly expect.

The house closest to my end of the street has a stout chimney flanked by windows on either side, there was a party on in full swing, voices in conversation, loud music, laughter and shrieks of joy. The usual “party” atmosphere, really.

For awhile it was irritating, because the loud music was getting a tad on my nerves. But hey it was Friday night right? People can have their fun, cant they?

I ignored all of it and continued reading.

At just about midnight, they played ‘It’s the time of my life’, from Dirty Dancing. What an amazing movie and what a great song!

Dirty Dancing will always be a favorite, especially the music - ‘Time of my life’, the Patrick Swayze number ‘She’s like the wind’ and of course Eric Carmen’s ‘Hungry Eyes’. Patrick Swayze was pretty amazing in that movie, and had this great bit of chemistry going with Jennifer Gray. In fact awhile back, an internet site voted ‘Time of my life’ the number one duet ever.

Anyway I got out of bed and went to the window. The music was loud and clear in the stillness of the night. Dancing silhouettes framed by the window, a chorus of joyous voices trying to sing along with the track but falling woefully out of tune. It was a wonderful.

I lit a cigarette and blew rings into the sky, watching the smoke rise up and coalesce into the night, and all of this with, ‘Time of my life’ ringing out loud.

“Now I've had the time of my life
No I never felt like this before
Yes I swear it's the truth
and I owe it all to you…”

I thought about the last few weeks in Germany, my assignment here - cant exactly do rocket science with Invoices, Sales Orders and Shipping Bills, but having said that, it was good solid on time on budget consulting - nothing spectacular but pretty solid.

Am I having a time of my life? Don’t know really, most things seem to be in key, but there is so much more to learn, so much more to do. And then there is the whole matter of, love.

I looked out into the night; the dancing had become less frantic as the song played out its last notes. But there were loud cheers and shrieks of laughter all around, a bunch of voices sang the chorus slowly, again and again. I joined in too,

"I've had the time of my life
No I never felt this way before
Yes I swear it's the truth
And I owe it all to you
'Cause I've had the time of my life
And I've searched through every open door'
Til I found the truth
And I owe it all to you"

And I thought to myself - I owe this one to them.

Labels: Travel

Churches, Perfumes and a Postcard from the Rhine...

The Köln Dom (Cathedral) looms large as soon as one exits the train station. It’s a mammoth structure built on a raised square. Its twin steeples rise heavenwards characterizing the sky line. While roaming the streets, whenever I was in doubt as to where exactly I was heading (which was rather frequent), I searched the sky line for the twin steeples, from which I re-affirmed my geographical bearings and continued to trudge along.

The Dom was built in stages over the last seven hundred odd years and is the most significant Roman Catholic establishment in all of Western Europe. And before one Gustave Eiffel decided to immortalize the Paris skyline with a structure of steel, the Dom’s twin steeples were Europe’s tallest man made structure.

Köln was raised to the ground almost overnight, when the Allied forces carpet bombed the Rhine Valley. The morning after, surviving Kölners awoke to rubble filled streets and raised buildings, amidst all this devastation though the Dom remained unscathed. Whether it was the selective marksmanship of the pilot who let loose the bombs or whether it was Providence, is something I guess we will never have an answer to.

From that night to how it stands today, Köln like all of Western Germany rebuilt itself, first with the largesse of the Marshal Plan and then by virtue of the strong Deutsche Mark. But Köln did so, with a distinct sense of character and cosmopolitan spirit. Köln struck me as a multi colored patch rug, with the aura of antiquity jostling with the spirit of the modern, the verve of a university town with the officiousness of being at the heart of a trade route, the plurality of a liberal society with the languid air of a small sleepy town.

The high ceiling Dom is filled with soft light, touched as if by an artist’s brush as it filters in through the large stained-glass windows. I lit a candle in thanksgiving for being where I was, and sat in the pews lost in the myriad colors of the stained-glass.

The place brought back memories of the St.Francis Dom in Goa. I have always had two distinct mental compartments about Churches, based on which side of the Christian Schism they find themselves. Catholic Churches have always struck me as cold and somber with the feel of a mausoleum (even if it had an air of gaiety!). On the other hand Protestant churches, have always seemed bright, airy and full of life (even when they were not!). This neat mental pigeon holing has as much to do with aesthetics of Architecture, as with the fact that being Martinian it is almost incumbent on us to be prejudiced against anything even closely resembling Don Bosco, and yes that includes Churches of the Catholic faith. So well that’s me and my blinkered self!

I spent the afternoon, sitting on a grass knoll which lines the bank of the Rhine. It was warm by European standards and people stretched out on rugs, soaking in the sun. Small ferries traveled up to the Köln Zoo and back, docking at the little pier in front of the knoll. I read a short story volume of Saki - mostly small pieces, running into a few pages at most. I had once read somewhere that the most unprofitable job in all literature was to try and write a ‘criticism of Saki’s works’, because ‘there is nothing to criticize, Saki is simply …to be read and …to be enjoyed’.

Kids on skateboards raced along the promenade at the edge of the water, while the sedate elders cycled leisurely. I looked at the ferries, old dull ones with fading paint and small tables unremarkably dotting the deck. There were bright and festive steamers too, with large decks almost at water level, bright streamers running across it and a brass band playing snatches of popular numbers. They reminded me of Florentino Ariza, probably the most uncharacteristic steam ship operator in all the rivers of this world.

‘And how long do you think we can keep up this coming and going?’
Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty- three years, seven months and eleven days and nights.
‘Forever’, he said.

‘Forever’ I thought to myself.

When the first streaks of gray filled the sky and the steamers docked for the night, I set out in search of a Chemist shop attributed to have created ‘Kölnisch wasser’, considered Köln’s greatest contribution to the modern world. Very simply ‘Kölnisch Wasser’, is a sort of perfumed spring water, first created over two hundred years ago for the German Gentry who inexplicably had a strange aversion towards bathing!

The most generous patrons of ‘Kölnisch Wasser’ though, were the fashion conscious French who exotically re-christened it ‘Eau de Cologne’. The name stuck and the French perfumers usurped this little known Rhineland product, making it their own.

Labels: Travel

Inextricably linked by the colonial master

Beyond the Grevenbroich Bahnof are the Turkish quarters. It’s a crisscross of lanes, with Turkish fruit sellers under sun umbrellas, shops on the corners with men huddled around a television, drinking tea in small bell shaped glasses and watching re runs of Galatasaray’s recent matches.

Conversation threads are invariably about Turkeys impending unification with the EU and how prices will soar, making the prospect of returning home, for expatriates such as them, nothing short of a pipe dream.

The Turks have migrated to every major Western European City, where they run the popular Doner-Kebab kind of joints, corner shops or drive taxis. While there is a general levity in the air, due to the way the Turkish are - laid back and high on bonhomie. One cannot help but detect the fact that everybody in a sense is ‘waiting to exhale’.

Last evening I was walking around the place when I came across a small four table restaurant, not surprisingly named ‘A la Turka’. Though small it is a bona fide restaurant serving authentic Turkish fare unlike the Doner Kebab joints, which are Turkey’s contribution to the world as McDonalds outlets are Americas.

I ordered skewered lamb, with salad and Turkish bread (not unlike our Nan). The cook, with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth was a friendly sort. He was quite delighted that he could talk to me in English, unlike his usual customers with whom conversations where exclusively in either German or Turkish. The man worked for many years with the British in Istanbul and through this association, he picked up not only British cuisine but also their language. The average Britt’s obsession with ‘The Indian curry’ is well known, and our cook from Turkey vociferously confirmed the notion. As he said in his slow drawl ‘The British people want to eat Indian curry even with their roast beef and Yorkshire pudding!’

The man took upon himself the professional challenge of rustling up a ‘Curry on the rice’ for me. And if I was to confirm its authenticity as a ‘Good Indian Curry’, it would be a major professional victory and ego-trip all rolled into one. In the man’s own words ‘It would prove that I can cook an Indian curry without ever having entered an Indian kitchen!’

He did rustle up good stuff, a very spicy chicken in thick gravy laid out over a portion of rice. Well it tasted fabulous, but it wasn’t a curry and much less Indian. But I didn’t want to break the man’s heart, and told him it was the best curry I had ever eaten. He was thrilled to bits! It was his professional equivalent of an astronauts’ moon walk. He shook my hand and fawned over me for like ever.

After clearing the plates he sat at my table, and we smoked Marlboros over a glass of Turkish tea. The tea is boiled for hours and has a distinct bitter aromatic taste; it is drunk with a touch of sugar but without any milk. Over Tea he talked about his days in Istanbul and the financial compulsions which had brought him to Germany. He talked fondly of his British Employers, and how shocked he had been the first time his Master asked him to pour milk in the tea. Which I gathered was blasphemous in Turkey’s tea drinking culture. I bid the man good night and in a typical large hearted Turkish way, he bid me a good life.

As I walked back to my hotel, snaking my way through beer gardens on the verge of shutting down for the night, I thought about the unmistakable irony which underlay the entire evening. The way a Turkish cook and I - born in post independence India many years after our Colonial Rulers bid us farewell, were so inextricably linked. And the fact that it took the quotidian curry for us to strike an unusual little bond, a bond based on a shared history of colonial rule and the heterogeneous Occident-Orient culture which emerged in its wake.

It’s been over half a century since the famed sun finally set over the empire, but the long shadows at dusk or ironically the afterglow, will form the sub text of our continuing presents and futures.


Bahnof : Railway Station

Labels: Travel

A City is where a large community is lonesome together...

Firstly the Lonely Planet Guides are good stuff!
The one I am currently using is dated, it’s a decade old but is still good enough to help me get around.

Went to Dusseldorf last weekend - a town and a city co-existing on the banks of the Rhine.
Eighty percent of Dusseldorf was destroyed during the last World War, so most of the city as it stands today is modern architecture. No town halls and stadiums harking back to the Renaissance, more modern office towers with facades of glass and steel.

The modern architecture though, is rather impressive. The Rhine Tower shoots skywards, crowned by a glass revolving restaurant, the view it affords is exquisite. It was a clear day, I saw the Rhine snaking through the forests and lazily circumventing the city, I could see right up to Koln with the naked eye.

The Frank ‘O Gehry towers inclined almost at 15 degrees are pretty neat, so is the media harbor, an enclave of television, broadcasting and newspaper companies from all over Europe.

The highlights of Dusseldorf though, are Konigsallee (Kings Alley, popularly known as just the Ko) and The Alstadt (The Old Town).

Konigsallee is a kilometer long boulevard, closed to traffic and dotted with open air restaurants and cafes. It’s the high street of high fashion!
It is lined by the flagship stores of most leading global brands. Europe’s most celebrated jewelers, perfumers and designers brush shoulders on the Ko, confirming its status as the single most expensive place to shop in all of Europe. If one manages to keep shopping and all its associated stress at arms length, then Konigsalle is a wonderful experience.
I sat at a Café for an hour, and saw the city pouring in and out of the Ko on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Lifestyles of Europe’s affluent were on show, a page out of a magazine peddling high fashion. And there was me, a guy from a country where the per Capita Income is 350 dollars and where famine still makes news once a year.
The only thing that I could think of was Robin Leach, and the way he every week signed of his TV show ‘The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ with that one famous line, ‘Champagne wishes and Caviar dreams’.

I walked down the Konigsalle and then across Heinrich Heine allee (yes the street is named after the man, because he was born in a little house on its edge). A few minutes walk, brought me to the famous Alstadt.

The Alstadt is the only remaining scrap of old Dusseldorf city, its atmosphere is unmatchable. It has the typical Rhineland charm about it - gregarious, convivial and quaint. The Rhine runs along the Alstadt bound by the Rhine promenade. The kilometer long promenade has over 260 beer breweries and inns, giving it the reputation of being the world’s longest bar! There are quaint little family run beer breweries, which have been in operation for over two hundred years. Dusseldorf is famous for its local Alt Beer, a dark colored bitter sweet beer which flows more freely here than water through a faucet. Rhinelander’s drink their beer in small slim glasses unlike Bavaria where it is guzzled in tankards.

The Alstadt captures the spirit of Rhine Land, small wooden door breweries whose porch doubles as a café, large groups of men and woman animated in conversation, with laughter and good cheer hanging over the promenade as the late evening sun warily shines over the Rhine. 

The Rhine like all major rivers, with its still murky waters, stands witness to the rites of passage of man and that of societies which have grown roots by its banks, almost as if it were marking time.

Labels: Travel

 Video killed a lot more than the Radio Star...

Got thirty six odd channels on TV, of those BBC (always) and MTV (sometimes) are in English. Didn’t opt for ‘Kabel’ as they say in Deutsch.

By the time I get back from the Plant, its generally past seven. This far west, the sun sets late and in the evenings its nice to walk around the streets, sit at café tables and drink beer, or sit on the bench under the lime tree and look at the flaky clouds in the sky.

Sometimes when it’s late and there are still a few patrons dining at the restaurant, they leave the stone fountain running.
In the still of the night the water falling on the stones - sounds like syllables from a lost language.
Okay now getting back to what this whole post was about,

The first thing which struck me about European Television is the surfeit of Reality Shows. There are all sorts, gags pulled on celebrities and regular people. Blind dates of all sorts - the plain vanilla ones, girl going out with two guys and then choosing one at the end of the hour, girl and guy out for the evening - making moves on each other based on text instructions from friends, who by the way are watching the whole evening unfold on hidden camera. 

Then there are those ones where a bunch of people are made to co-habit. On one particular currently running series, a dozen people are housed in this cottage up in the Alps. There are hidden cameras all over the place, and the whole show is an exercise in group dynamics really. The viewers are supposed to vote out one person a week, and the last man or woman standing end up getting an obscene amount of money or something. And then there is of course the German version of Big Brother, where an eye in the sky (more like a camera in every corner of the house) just takes over the lives of people.

It is said; the movies introduce or destroy social trends, while television actually mirrors society itself. The whole popular flavor of European Television is all about intrusion into the private lives of people, does that then suggest that the current European generation is one of degenerate compulsive peeping toms?

I think that is just the symptom, the malaise runs deeper. The Western world in general, has seen the whole sense of society, the whole sense of ‘the collective’ really going downhill over the last hundred odd years. Instruments of social cohesion - the extended family, the church, the local council have all woefully disintegrated, producing a generation of very lonely and isolated individuals. People who because they are not in touch with lives apart from their own, have this primal propensity to reach out to people, to see what happens in others lives, to get the inside dig about the fears, loves, weaknesses and passion of others.

Frankly , Reality Television is a reflection of this phenomenon, and the continuous camera totting interest in people’s lives is just a way to feed this overriding desire to reach out.

Look at it this way, in India for example, we still have the family structure fairly intact. We have big weddings - with the motley assortment of cousins, aunts, family friends and all of that. We still meet infrequently at least - for childbirths, engagements, anniversaries and deaths. Our festivals, the pujos or dusshera for example, is still about reaching out. It is still about pandal hopping, having people over in our homes, its still about visiting friends and family. Yes we do light our lamps in our houses at diwali, but then we either go out and meet with people or alternately open our doors to them.

Contrast this with the western world - Christmas is usually spent in the company of the Christmas tree. The mechanisms for social interaction and cohesion is eroding rapidly, society is just a word.

Maybe this entire social critique thing is just me bored and lonely at a beer garden on a weekday evening. Or maybe there indeed is some truth in all of these musings.
I don’t know, but I intend to find out...somehow!

Labels: Travel

The Windmills and the Triumvirate

My white office door has a brick-red name plate which reads - “Spillman, Dieter, Guha”. The first a Nordic, the second a German, and finally I, complete the heterogeneous triumvirate.
 
Doesn’t it sound like an odd little law firm ‘M/s Spillman, Dieter, Guha’?
 
Anyways, the office block is at the end of the Hydro Plant, and over looks the hills. This plant produces Aluminum stuff for a variety of customers, Cola cans for Coke, inner side foil for milk cartons, automotive parts for Mercedes, BMW and Volvo and little rectangular aluminum food containers for one Bangladesh Biman.
 
My office is this large room, with three desks. The one by the door is occupied by a Materials Management Consultant, the German Dieter, he the one of the “funky look”. Odd shaped eye-glasses, flaxen colored suits and perpetual stubble. He is picked up every evening by this blonde, who drives a single-door black Jaguar Convertible. They are quite a number, the car and her I mean.
 
By the window, at two ends of this room are Spillman and myself. Spillman is an auditor, but looks more like a helpless little house dog. He has a cold and is looking miserable, but is waiting with baited breath for his vacation starting Friday, a fact he incants every hour.
 
And finally me, writing this blog from a slightly dated lap top with a German keypad. Quite a challenge it posed initially. Beyond the window is this wide hillock, in shades of green. The dark somber green becomes more vibrant and leafy as it reaches the top. The hillock is dotted with windmills, which are disturbingly still at the moment. Am sure it doesn’t power the Plant or my little laptop.
 
I am waiting for Christian Sielaff, the only German here who can speak in fluent English without having to overtly tax his gray cells or facial muscles, to holler out to me for lunch.
 
The canteen is at the other end plant, a walk of a kilometer at least. Its rather neat and pretty cheap, I had pasta for lunch yesterday with pickled cucumbers and lettuce. I go with Christian not only because he is rather nice company, but also because he painstakingly translates the canteen menu card which is entirely in Deutsch. One afternoon when I did have to go to the canteen solo, with a prayer at my lip I randomly pointed at something on the menu card, hoping at least that it is edible.

Labels: Travel

Under the Lime Tree
 
Am in Rommerskirchen, Germany.
The last few days has been an all together new experience. Professionally, I am thrilled to bits - am doing real get-your-hands-dirty Consultancy. As opposed to sitting in office, pouring over emails and working out abstract business solutions.
 
I am consulting for a Company called Hydro Aluminum; their plant is fifty kilometers outside of Dusseldorf, which sometimes feels like the beyond of nowhere.
 
The best thing about the Consulting is that I am framing solutions in discussion with the actual business process owners - the logistics coordinators, the material managers and the plant maintenance guys. It doesn’t get more real. It’s the heart of business consulting and I am thrilled!
 
I am staying in this village called Rommerskirchen, five kilometers down from the plant. If their ever was an idyllic village, this is one. A population of under 800, no English news papers, no bank, one restaurant, and one non-German inhabitant - me.
 
I am at the Hotel Zur Linde (literally ‘The Lemon Tree’). It’s just off the main road, an old house lined with lime trees, a large patio and a wonderful little stone fountain in front. It has a restaurant on the ground floor, which when the sun is out, opens out into the patio. The house-specialty is Croatian fare. The first floor has three rooms, curiously marked 1, 2 and 4. Yes it is a hotel with just three rooms.
Currently I am its only occupant, so well I have a whole hotel to myself!
 
Last night I put my lap top by the window, and played Dido. Walked down to the patio and sat on a wooden bench under a lime tree, the music faintly floated through the open window and filled the night. It was ethereal.
 
It started drizzling. Typically, European rain - a light awry spray which wafts through the air and kisses the earth. The night was dark and desolate; Dido hung above me from the open window. I closed my eyes and let the whole experience enter all my senses. I could almost see a detachment of Nazi soldiers in their ferret hard-hats, stealthily troop past me from around the corner. Just like the movies.
 
I thought of my life, thought of the day that had ended, tried to peer into the looking glass, but I still could see nothing. I could have lived my whole life like that, the confused drizzle, the cool of the night, a wooden bench under a lime tree and a woman singing songs for me.
 
Phew…
 
This has been the highlight of my trip so far, the black Mercedes which came to fetch me from the Dusseldorf Airport comes in second, a distant second though. 

Labels: Travel