Northern Light

The swami said that she was saddened that I'd closed down the blog, because at least that way she had some contact with me; and fff and R wrote so touchingly that I couldn't resist (you'll all regret this!)....

There is nothing more wonderful than the light after the rains. Saturday was a uniformly grey and rainy day; the flags on the long poles outside the expo. centre fluttered as if they'd taken up a renewed sense of possibility. Inside, it was if old Lahore was trying to remember itself, reassemble what has been lost, as old bookseller after another poured in, setting up shop. Booksellers from old Anarkali and Regal chowk, the British Pakistani owner who asked me if I'd read Hugh's Didascalion...all so encouraging after it had appeared we'd be swamped by books offering religious commentaries  pamphlets discussing important issues such as whether it was Islamic to eat with one's left hand or piss standing up. And then the young girls, lapping up the latest fiction, the aunties furtively buying 50 shades of...

The day had begun well. Still half asleep I'd heard a small number of black birds (perhaps no more than seven or eight) swoop down just outside my window and it was like a breath of fresh air or a burst of Spring rain, a sudden gulp of excitement. Coffee and sticky cinnamon roll (er..rolls) followed; then the books. Picked up Chekhov, some Ivan Illich, Bernard Williams's Moral Luck, Roth's Humbling, Dora the Explorer, Kingsley Amis's King's Speech (which I nearly missed and only picked up because I scanned the bookshelf from a different angle, left to right instead of right to left) and DeLillo's Body Artist, from which the following quote comes:

'Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.'

The next morning. The light broke through, opening up the sky, lifting it up so that its greater clarity was equivalent to its more generous spaciousness. Scrambled eggs and weak cappuccino. On to the old zoo and a ride on a particularly grumpy camel with little r who was very amused by the strange beast. "Thank you for sharing your time with us," she said. 

We called out to the hippos who merely blinked their lazy eyes, trying to muster a few thoughts, collect themselves after a deep slumber. There is something opaque and dull about the mind of a hippo. Apart from the pink and grey leathery body the hippo would actually be a very small animal: he has minute bat-like ears, an abbreviated tail, and short stumpy legs. 

It was also strange to notice just how beautiful the elephant's eyelashes were, how exaggeratedly long they were. Gentle souls, one thinks. The one we saw has been trained to accept money with its trunk. The cheeky bugger!

Hippo was little r's first word. Hippo or hap-py. 

The word "hippo" is still funny even though "hippopotamus" is too frivolous a word in English to be in any way helpful.

---Gunter Eich.