I am fed-up with people residing in Delhi, Mumbai and elsewhere, who insist on telling me how lucky I am to have moved to Goa. One day, while sharing some problematic issues with a friend, I was stunned when the voice on the other side of the telephone, instead of empathizing or helping, said: “ you live in paradise and you’re complaining!”
The Goan landscape is beautiful. My apartment is surrounded by lush green and the complex has a fabulous view. The aquamarine waters of the swimming pool, are surrounded by a variety of palm trees and flowering plants. And, lining the boundary of the lawns, through spaces between the painted white columns of the curvaceous balustrade pillars, atop a low, red laterite stone-wall, I see endless paddy fields and undulating hillocks, with cows grazing, Peacocks, Kingfisher, Bulbuls and Egrets amid rows and rows of towering coconut palms, silhouetted against a soft cobalt blue firmament, dotted with white, cotton-wool clouds, as Eagles, Brahminy Kites, and other birds cruise the idyllic sky. In the monsoon, washed of all its dust and grime, the moistened countryside is even more spectacular and my heart does soar a couple of inches when I see the dewy emerald of paddy, regardless of how many times I notice this scene. Yet I do wonder if there isn’t more to a paradisiacal life than the pleasing passages you drive past while completing chores of the day. It relieves to have one’s mood uplifted this way but it isn’t wonderland, free of the drudgeries of the rest of the world. If any place within it, ever can be.
Our very notions of paradise, come from ancient connotations. Arising from perennial hope of arriving at a place of exceptional happiness and delight, synonymous with pastoral imagery. In early Christian and Islamic ideals ‘Heaven’ is this place of unparalleled relief – presumably from the travails of living such as we in the contemporary world also seek. In the Quran ‘Jannah’ or ‘Jannat’ (Arabic) metaphorically referring to paradise or a ‘park’ is the final abode of the virtuous and believers. It is also the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Hawwa/Eve dwelt. For the classical Greeks, it was a land of plenty where not unlike Islam, the heroic and righteous dead expected to spend eternity. Vedic ideas beheld that profound peace of mind could be achieved through ‘moksha’ or liberation from ‘samsara’. A release from suffering and its cycle of rebirth, was attainable through rigorous spiritual practice or sadhana. While it wasn’t a physical location or allegorical verdant estate, it developed as an ultimate goal of soteriological value in Indian culture, across faiths. And religious cosmological texts explaining the dynamic structure and order of the cosmos, alluding to the world before it was tainted by evil, as paradise, added to the myth.
In Gurgaon, my view from the 8th floor wasn’t as lavishly flourishing as the Goan topography, though I could see the earth’s curve – always in awe of perceiving the horizon bend from end to end. With French windows on both sides of the apartment, I overlooked Delhi in the North and Gurgaon in the South. With this commanding, unfettered panorama I felt like the purveyor of a vast tract of land. Most of what I saw was an alarming rise of the concrete muddle. It wasn’t picture-perfect, far from it. Making peace with what appears – accepting and adjusting to whatever was, held the key for a somewhat harmonious habitation. It took me years to come to grips with the move from Delhi to Gurgaon to appreciate these little things. It didn’t come easy and I imagine the same would be the case here: more effort than reaching instant nirvana (if that was ever possible) by the simple act of relocating to a relatively rural scenery.
The pastoral lifestyle, synonymous with utopia, inspired art and literature typically depicting livestock around open areas of land. Overstressed by emergent urban tyrannies, it was romanticised and became emblematic of a place when people abided in perfect harmony with nature. Abiding in peace and prosperity and with god-gifted plenitude, such that folks did not have to slog for food. Plato recounts this ‘Golden Age’ as the race of humans who came first and were good and noble. When people reputedly matured to a ripe old age with youthful appearance, dying peacefully, and their spirits living on as ‘guardians’. All this probably explains the fable of an abundantly green environ, as opposed to rising concrete habitats, as being a place of imagined, unmitigated cheer.
However, in Goa, despite the leafy surroundings, squirrel-squeak, birdsong and quaint harvesting scenes, I have faced numerous setbacks and unenviable acclimatisation woes. Without house-help to begin with and doing chores, many of which I am still compelled to do, detracts from the contemplative space and expanse in terms of time - so crucial to creativity. In many ways my days are less languid and busier here than they were in the otherwise crushing pace of Delhi and Gurgaon. If everyone thought inhabiting this locale had to be rapturous, why it did not feel so, made me delve deeper into hereditary notions of an illusion that I was being pitted against, as much as something I couldn’t quite refute. Because, some part of me also seemed to participate in perpetuating this fantasy, by chiding myself for not experiencing its purported, unending joyfulness.
The Biblical story of creation, which is one of the earliest descriptions of paradise, is an influential image of the hallowed, unspoiled ‘Garden of Eden’ whose loss is lamented and its blissful purity an archetype to perennially reclaim. It represents the beginning of human time and experience, conjuring persuasive images of virtuousness, unmarked by history. Where, God made man in his own image “and let them (Adam and Eve) have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” Giving them “every plant bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit” for food. And “to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life” was “given every green plant for food”. After which God saw “everything that he had made, and, indeed it was very good”, so he blessed them and said “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Although some scholars say that Eden was a mythical place, the book of Genesis states that the water from Eden “watered Pishon, which flows into the land of Havilah; Gihon, which flows into the land of Cush; Tigris, which flows into the eastern side of Assyria; and the fourth is Euphrates”. The garden is also said to have “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” Along with the “Tree of Life” and “Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.”
Set outside our phase of existence and marking that perfect age, before things went seemingly wrong in the world, such ideologies do explain the general misconception. However, harder to grasp is the habitual harking back to what was and could be, rather than finding empathy and compassion for what is known and possible to understand today. As if there isn’t gladness to be found or given this way.
Moving cities is complicated. Relocating from North to South is even tougher because one encounters language and cultural differences. The rigour I went through in setting up my apartment was nerve wracking (http://reflectionswashedashore.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-question-of-gratitude.html). I barely know anyone here. And even though I was fortunate to get assistance, any sense of wellbeing is tenuous. It doesn’t enable rounds of the social calendar nor doing things I once revelled in and which framed my sense of self. There is an insatiable curiosity to discover the many facets of this sea-skirting land. This, inevitably diminishes precious energy required for seamless domesticity, crucial for professional progress. My household set-up isn’t yet committed or reassuring, with weeks in between of no support whatsoever. I have swept and swabbed and cleaned the loo, cooked and washed dishes, driven around to buy fruit, veggies and supplies, struggled to get medical aid in time and ended up in hospital for a period of three weeks in one month. And two different hospitals at that. I also undertook my very first ambulance ride.
My current part-time maid who comes in for a couple of hours, three times a week, is very sweet, nevertheless even more shaky than I presently feel. She is prone to tears at the drop of a hat and needs me to hold her hand while she tries to cook. There is a laundry service to iron clothes that neither picks up nor delivers and take three days or more to do the job. I still have to make my bed, wash the dishes, cook and more on a daily basis; something I haven’t done for most of my sixty years.
Washing my car is another tricky issue. I’ve tried, however they don’t understand dirt-free as I want it. I discovered a friendly car-wash run by a woman who scrubs them herself. Inconveniently, I have to sit there for a good hour or two till the job is done. That is if Maria is free to do it then. For weeks at a stretch, I drove a white i20 with dirty brown marks and a murky wind screen. Not good! I finally found someone to clean regularly but honestly my un-spotless windscreen, the grimy water marks on side-view mirrors and dust in the gear-shift are a constant source of irritation. Most days, I just swallow the discomfort and drive on. All of this does take a toll and is far from my idea of bliss. On the other hand, I am beginning to consider that the expectation, that any place on earth – no matter how unpolluted its landscape – can ever be a living paradise, is an unrealistic aspiration that I, like everyone else, has unwittingly bought into. And like a stubborn stain, it enters the debate, again and again.
Milton’s famous poem ‘Paradise Lost’ about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, (after the invocation to the holy spirit to inspire the poet), begins in hell. Where Satan and his followers recovering from defeat against God, build a palace called ‘Pandemonium’ to debate further course of action; deciding to explore the new world for revenge. The Romantic poets William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley saw Satan as the real hero of the poem, applauding his rebellion against the tyranny of Heaven. The war between Satan and God is cited as an ‘impious’ civil war, similar to the English Revolution(1640 to 1660), where ‘Eden’ is emblematic of the toppling of monarchy. And pertinently, Blake’s dissent lay with clergy not emphasising that God resides inside oneself, exalting religious authority instead. At the onset of the poem, Milton invokes the life-force to imbue him with consciousness of the beginning of the world, and through this sacred knowledge demonstrate that the fall of humankind into sin and death was part of God’s greater plan, and justified.
Pandemonium and chaos, typified by the urban conundrum can be seen as punishment for waging war against god or the sovereignty over our inured lives. Tempting others to do the forbidden, signifies the revenge of the outcast. Though not quite hell, de-robed of innocence, we no longer can reside in a paradisal land unspoiled by conniving forces. Drawing from circumstance around him, the poet rationalised that hallowed Eden had to be sullied, as with the world he inhabited, which percolates into our own historical legacy. This unfortunate actuality that we mortals endure, is nonetheless, necessarily fictionalized as escapable, by embracing a rural, pastoral geography – even if the inner-scape doesn’t have similar latitude to muse.
When daily errands become a grind, I bitch about this relatively organic and domestic rootedness of my current reality. In doing so, I may well be resisting a healthier routine which could make dwelling here more pleasurable. It does hold me back from all that I have been used to doing and wish to continue with, and is hard to reconcile with. Which brings up the dependence that we, in India, have on domestic help to fuel our career ambitions.
In Gurgaon I had a whole team of people to assist with domestic responsibilities. I didn’t do a thing at home. I didn’t drive, shop, or cook – unless I was entertaining or wanted to eat something fancy. I didn’t have to water my plants nor tend to them, stay at home to ensure the cleaning was done to my satisfaction, fill water bottles and tidy up around me after I had spent the day creatively playing with threads and paint, or hang the clothes out to dry – an endless list of stuff that just got taken care of. I didn’t even have to take out fresh sheets and towels to be changed each week nor put the clothes into the washing machine, take them out, fold, sort and keep away.
Fresh cow’s milk was regularly deposited on my doorstep. Here, in the middle of a village, with a dairy farm just furlongs away, I cannot get fresh milk and use tetra packs instead. I could rattle myself awake at the crack of dawn and cycle down with a canister to get my daily stock, or bully someone into doing it for me, if the lady wasn’t shutting down the farm and hosting Ashtanga yoga and Zumba classes instead.
For twenty-four years, prior to moving to Goa, I had a major domo who’d worked with me from the age of fourteen. He learned to do the filing, the accounts; shopped and oversaw the housekeeping and got all the repair work done. He became adept at tie-dye and other artistic stuff, also assisting with studio work. Even so, he was no angel. He could be insubordinate, bad tempered and quite a handful, so I struggled with those issues there. Yet, his support in respect of all he did take care of, left me enough time to maintain a twice daily routine of exercise and meditation. With yoga every morning, augmented with swimming or cycling, and precious journaling. I particularly miss this regimen. I am putting on weight and don’t have the scope to work out, nor write as regularly as before.
Compared to the tedium here, residing in Gurgaon should have been blissful, but wasn’t. Living has its fair share of ups and downs no matter where one stays. It is not the place but our perception of things within any environment that defines our comfort or lack of it. In the midst of the millennial urban disorder, I would wander barefoot in the parks of the compound. The gardens were not lush nor extravagant but sniffing the delectable and sensuous ‘Champa’, ‘Motiya’ or Jasmine flowers, rooting my body and chakras by treading the grass with unshod feet, did relieve tensions, however momentarily.
Gardens do have an elysian quality and the watering of the four important Biblical areas from Eden, makes one wonder if there was any link to the Char Bagh concept, which the Mughals brought to India. The term ‘Eden’ could be derivative of ‘edinu’ (Akkadian word/ Mesopotamia), itself borrowing from the Sumerian ‘eden’, meaning ‘plain.’ Ironically, in the Quran, ‘the Garden’ is described with material delights. The natural abundance and simplicity of the Biblical garden, is replaced with material grandeur, defying the very notion of ‘plain’. One day in ‘Jannat’, is considered equal to a thousand years on earth. Everything one longs for in this world is promised there: palaces made of gold, silver, pearls, beautiful maidens, precious stones, delicious foods, constantly flowing water, horses and camels of ‘dazzling whiteness’, along with other creatures. It’s a sumptuous haven with large shady trees, mountains made of musk, through which rivers flow into valleys of pearl and ruby, where being is with contentment—without hurt, sorrow, fear or shame, and every wish is fulfilled. A manifestation of ecstasy, wearing sumptuous robes, bracelets and perfumes, exquisite banquets in priceless vessels served by celestial beings, as you recline on couches inlaid with gold or precious stones.
The famed 6th century ‘Baharestan’ or ‘Khosrow’ Carpet, which reportedly covered the floor of the audience hall of the palace in the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon (southeast of Baghdad), takes this Quranic ideal to dizzying heights and is probably the ultimate in its opulent and luxurious evocation of a garden. Made of silk, spanning eighty-four square feet, it portrayed the majesty of flowering spring and symbolized the divine power of the king to regulate seasons, renewing the earth’s fertility and assuring prosperity. Tragically this magnificent carpet hasn’t survived the ravages of time. It was too heavy for the Iranians to carry when Ctesiphon fell to the Arabs, who seized and cut it into small fragments to divide among themselves and sell. But according to written records, it epitomised a formal garden with watercourses, rectangular flower-filled beds, pathways with blossoming shrubs and fruit trees. Gold thread represented sand or golden gravel; and the motifs of fruit, flower and birds were interwoven with pearls and various jewels. The outer border evoking a lush green meadow, was embroidered with emeralds. Its natural abundance symbolized deliverance from the harsh desert and reiterated the divine promise of eternal happiness. For centuries it bewitched Persian imagination, becoming an unparalleled legend in itself, with futile attempts that failed to recreate its famed woven splendour.
The likening of natural beauty to paradise has inspired much creative expression. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last of the Grand Mughals, composed a famous couplet to laud the exquisite landscape of Kashmir saying “Gar firdaus bar ru e zameen ast/ Hamin ast-o, hamin ast-o, hamin ast” (If there is a paradise on Earth/ It is this, it is this, it is this). The poem is now inscribed on the red sandstone walls of the Red Fort in Delhi, where master architects indulged the Mughal dynasty’s love for waterbodies and gardens by creating their own version of ‘Jannat’ through the ‘nahr-e-bahisht’ (stream of paradise) which drew water from the Yamuna River and channelled it, via carved marble waterways and sliver fountains, throughout the palace complex. Where it is said that flowers mingled with gurgling streams and a thousand flickering lamps lent an ethereal, otherworldly quality, making this fort, one of Emperor Shah Jahan’s most poetic residences.
With such unrestrained elicitations of heaven, where nature holds the key, it is no wonder that the millennial mind thirsts and deceives itself into seek the elusive elixir in the shade of trees and viridian hues of the countryside. Conveniently eclipsing the Vedic paradigm of a disciplined sadhana that could relieve us through moksha – the ultimate salvation, liberating mankind from the strife of ‘samsara’ and suffering of ‘karmic’ rebirths.
In Goa, despite the open expanse of an unfettered horizon at the seaside, the unending fields of rice, uncultivated hillsides and forests, as well as the formal gardens within the apartment block, there is a yearning for solace that the external world alone cannot provide. The accustomed practice, which enabled confidence before, has been displaced. The physical relocation has ruptured my sense of calm, where everything known is constantly challenged. Any kind of timetable to fit all that I did before, into the same twenty-four hours is unsustainable. Devising a new system is still bewildering.
I learned to cycle at the age of fifty-six and even considered this venture because I could do so with safety and ease within the compound in Gurgaon. Here, I have waited for copious showers so that the village dogs remain indoors and don’t hound me with speedy chase and fearsome barking. Oblivious to this canine menace, cycling early one morning, driving down a secluded lane with the most awesome view, I was attacked by a pack five . I called out for help, screaming louder than the baying hounds, but not one village door opened. At 8 am on a Sunday morning, I pedalled at the speed of lightening to save my skin and, though I came home unharmed, I was shaken to the core and didn’t have the courage to ride out that way again. Not until a year later, when I chanced upon someone cycling in the neighbourhood and accompanied him. Even so, my stamina is not the same and I just cannot keep pace or pedal on a daily basis as before.
My freedom in doing the stuff I love is curtailed. I cannot get away uninhibitedly, into the wondrous silence of green nor let the salted waves buoy and heal me. Jelly fish or sea snakes have attacked unsuspecting tourists and, hearing all these stories I no longer play in the ocean. I have to work through the day like never before. Housekeeping hasn’t ever been a preferred activity and even as a student I chose to eat less than tasty food in a hostel rather than dust and cook.
A new place, a new language and a new culture create a field of infinite possibilities – a canvas of distractions and, much as I resent doing the chores, I have realised they also discipline me. Even though I had backing earlier on, I have always been a homebody. I like to spend time mulling over things and letting my thoughts and feelings spill like the carelessly poured cup of tea that framed my artistic oeuvre for many years. Here, if I am not bound by domesticity, I could easily bypass the scope for this kind of self-indulgent dialogue, busying myself with exploring picturesque vistas.
I reside in a small flat. It’s irksome and disturbing to have someone around me all day. In many ways, preferable to wash some dishes, feed myself and eat the same food through the week or most of it, rather than endure intrusion into my personal space. That nonetheless makes the changes huge. I feel deposed in a hundred different ways and reconciliation is taking far longer than anticipated. And with each passing day, week and year, the precariousness of life itself draws attention to how little time there is to make my activity all that I want it to be. The demands of the current amendments being unexpectedly challenging.
Maybe the emerald green paddy, the gentle swish of the bamboo, abundant fruit of the cashew tree, roaring crests of the Arabian Sea and a renewed determination to cycle down village paths will eventually reclaim the rejuvenating feel Goa once did evoke; nevertheless I am still mapping permutations and combinations for survival. It’s not just a new city that one is coping with but a whole new way of existing. And, fortunately or unfortunately, Google hasn’t devised a short-cut map for humans off-course to re-centre the Self. It’s an arduous process. Nothing short of a labour of love to create that haven or refuge from the otherwise frenetic wails of living.
“And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,…”
(John Milton)
