Sunday, March 29, 2009

Welcome Llew...and Hiya Mates!

Saturday, March 28, 2009
London

Llew's American Airlines' red eye flight from Kennedy airport touched down at Heathrow sooner than he expected. He cleared Immigration in a jiffy, was on the Tube and at my doorstep faster than I could say "Welcome Back"! I was , in fact, in the shower, expecting his arrival no earlier than 10 am. When he buzzed my flat from the door of the building, I did not even hear him. Fortunately, our janitor Martha was around, doing her Saturday morning chores and she let him in. After we spent time laughing over the odd turn his entry had taken, we sat down to breakfast. It was SOOOOO Good to see him again after almost 3 months and he was absolutely delighted to be back with me in London! Then, after he had shaved and showered, I suggested he take a nap for a couple of hours. During this time, I made my way with my strolley backpack to the Sainsbury Central (while the rest of Holborn was slowly stirring to a weekend morning) to do a large amount of food shopping for the tea we were hosting in the evening for our friends, the Fradleys, and for the dinner party we are hosting on Monday evening for a few friends. With Llew back in town, I can finally have friends over and can entertain them--something I tend not to do when I am alone in the city.

Llew who was dead asleep had to be awoken about noon as I did want him to enjoy some part , at least, of what was a lovely Saturday morning. In less than a half hour, we were out of the house and on the Tube heading to the Victoria and Albert Museum as I did want us to see the special exhibit entitled 'Forty Years of the Booker Prize'--an exhibit I had been waiting for Llew to come to London to see with him. London was buzzing with activity as scores of people were out on the town and Kensington was particularly active. We entered the museum through the South Kensington Underground station and the 'subway' or underground passage that connects the station with the museum.

Of course, once in the museum, I could not resist showing Llew the highlights of the collection as well as my own particular favorites. It was his first time in the V&A and he was deeply impressed by the size and variety of the collection and the splendour of the building. In fact, I did take him out on to the main road, Cromwell Road, to give him a sense of the architecture of the facade. We spent the next hour looking at the Highlights. In particular, I wanted him to see three things: The Raphael Cartoons in the Raphael Room, Raphael's painting The School of Athens and Trajan's Column in the Cast Court. This was because we will be in Rome next week looking at the real Column and the original painting and the tapestries in the Sistine Chapel that are based on the water colors that Raphael created for Pope Leo X who commissioned them.

Needless to say, Llew was delighted that I showed him these works and he was as taken by the Highlights as I was. When we did arrive at the Booker Prize Exhibit, we discovered that it was tiny indeed but immensely absorbing. Collected by Peter Straus who is a literary agent and book collector, Llew who is a book collector himself (he does collect autographed hard bound first editions of the Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Award Winners) was fully immersed in the collection and was deepy grateful that I had saved the viewing of this special exhibit for his perusal.

We did not have very much time to linger in the museum and at 3 pm, we left in order to reach home by 4 pm as we were expecting guests for afternoon tea. A few minutes after 4 pm, Matt and Rosa Fradley with whom I had spent Mother's Day on Sunday at their home in Essex, were ringing our doorbell and meeting Llew for the first time. On entering my flat, Rosa exclaimed, "Now this is the kind of flat that one could only live in when in London on secondment!" We ended up having a wonderful couple of hours over warm sultana scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam and an apricot sponge roll cake with steaming cups of English tea. I was so pleased that Llew was able to meet my dear friends who have been so warm and generous to me even since my arrival in London. It is hard for me to believe that I got to know them when they arrived in New York almost two years ago and took not just one but two of my Highlights Tours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. it was then that we exchanged email addresses and have kept in touch. They were very helpful when I was preparing myself for my arrival in London and have been equally helpful ever since I moved here.

Unfortunately, they could not linger too long as they had reservations for dinner with some friends at Gordon Ramsay's Maze restarant. Llew and I warned them not to be surprized if they felt they needed to get to McDonald's afterwards as our own experiecne at Maze in New York (where we had celebrated Llew's birthday last year) was that while the food was superb and very pricey indeed, portion sizes were tiny and though we had three full courses, we came away feeling as if we had barely eaten anything at all.

After the Fradleys left, Llew and I decided to take a walk along "Wobbly Bridge" (the Millenniun Bridge) to the Tate Modern as I was keen to show him the special installation entitled Thirty Pieces of Silver by Cornelia Parker. He had seen her work entitled "Breathless" in the morning at the V&A and had found it fascinating and I was certain he would find the one at the Tate just as intriguing. And indeed I was right. He loved the concept behind her work. When night fell over the city, we took the elevator to the 7th floor to see some of the most stunning views of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral from that unique vantage point. Then, we walked across Wobbly Bridge once more and took the bus home from the opposite bank. It had turned very cold indeed and both of us felt as if a bus ride home would be preferable to shivering all the way down Fleet Street to Holborn.

Back home, we rang the doorbell of my next-foor neighbor Milan Thacker to invite him to our place for a drink. Milan has also been very helpful to me ever since I came to live here and we had never really spent quality time with him. With Llew in town, I thought it best to hang out with Milan and over a beer and some red wine, tortilla crisps and cheese and crackers, we had a very talkative evening discussing everything from the impact of the global meltdown in the States to racism in the UK. As the evening sped on, we asked Milan to stay for a pizza dinner and as we moved to the dining table, our conversation got more animated. Indeed, it was a spontaneous evening full of scintillating conversation and laughter and we had a great time.

It was hard to believe that it had been less than 24 hours since Llew had arrived in London for he had packed so much into the day. The rest of his stay here promises to be just as eventful, though he does want to relax and take it easy and spend as much time as possible getting to know all the lovely people that have befriended me and have proven to be such marvelous company in his absence.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Becoming Jane Austen at Chawton

Friday, March 27, 2009
Chawton, Hampshire

Rolling emerald meadows alive with trundling sheep. Masses of daffodils ablaze in the cool March sunshine. Thatched roofed cottages slumbering along hushed country roads. Serene churchyards filled with mossy gravestones whispering secrets about famous congregations. ...

The only images missing in this Hampshire idyll were swift phaetons drawn by sturdy horses, elegant ladies in elaborate bonnets and empire-line waists and gentlemen sporting ivory canes holding doors open for them.

Yes, this was the world of Jane Austen into which I ventured today together with my colleague Prof. Karen Karbeiner who took her students on a field trip in search of the author of Pride and Prejudice which they are reading for her course. Over the crowded streets of London we went by coach on a temperamental morning that was by turn cloudy, drizzly and sunny. Because we hadn't met for a long while (we have classes on different days this semester), we chatted nineteen to the dozen and caught up on all our individual projects since the semester began in January.

Since it took us a whole hour to get out of London and arrive in the Surrey town of Guildford, it took us another hour to finally arrive in Alton, Hampshire, where the many homes in which Jane Austen lived during her short life are scattered. To read the biography of Austen is to delve into the plots of all of her novels for she drew liberally from her own experiences when creating the characters and incidents that keep us spell bound and entirely charmed by her work. As the coach entered the little village, we saw the first thatched roof cottages that are characteristic of this area and my heart skipped a beat.

Once we tumbled out of the coach and made our way in a sudden drizzle to the 'Jane Austen Cottage'--the little home she shared with her mother and sister Cassandra after her father's death--we knew we had an exciting day ahead. As fans of Jane Austen, we have all read her novels and seen numerous TV and film versions of them. For almost all of us, the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Erle and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is probably the favorite.

To enter Austen's modest cottage is to enter into her Regency world of class divisions and gender inequality--for poor Jane's mother and her children were left at the mercy of the male members of their family as they were forbidden from inheriting property under English Law of the time. We understood why Mrs. Bennet was so obsessed with getting her brood of five well-married to rich men and why this embarrased the senstive Elizabeth. It might so have pained Jane to know that she was beholden to her brother all her life as she never married herself. This came home to us in the lectures we received from the personnel who run the properties which were once associated with Austen's life and owned by her brother Edward Austen who, upon being adopted by their relatives, the Knights, changed his name to Edward Knight. It was Edward who permitted his mother and sisters to live in the cottage he inherited (by a sheer stroke of luck, akin to winning a modern-day lottery) rent-free for the rest of their lives.

The Cottage is notable for the little table (really tiny) and the chair in the parlor that are placed strategically by a window overlooking the street where, it is reported, Jane sat every morning and wrote. This home was incredibly fertile to her imagination for she wrote three of her novels in it. I understand this phenomenon, in a way, because ever since I came to live in this Holborn flat, I have been incredibly productive, churning out these blog entries night after night and doing other forms of academic writing as well. I really do believe that 'place' or 'space' if you like, has a good deal to do with creativity.

At any rate, our tour of the house took us to the upstairs rooms--all so cramped they often seemed like rooms in a doll's house. We saw the poignant letter that her beloved sister Cassandra wrote to their niece to inform her of her aunt's passing. We saw locks of Jane's hair as well as of her father upon whom she doted, many intricate brooches containing locks of hair of her loved ones skillfully plaited and set into the brooch frames--I have not seen this sort of 'jewelry' anywhere else and I found it remarkable indeed--both the sentiment behind the keeping of these trinkets as well as the craftsmanship required to fashion them. We saw the elegant silver teapot that belonged to Cassandra (I loved its unusual shape), the set of Wedgwood china purchased for the house by her brother (imprinted later with the family crest), a silk shawl Jane owned, the patchwork quilt on which she worked with her mother and sister for the bed, a bracelet she owned as well as two exquisite topaz crosses that her sailor brother Charles brought back for his sisters. The family closeness between parents and children and between the siblings was so strongly articulated by these museum pieces that they left me deeply moved. Unfortunately, Jane's bedroom was closed to the public and is scheduled to open up soon for the new tourist season.

As I roamed through these rooms in a world that seemed so far removed from my own present-day reality, I tried to put myself in Jane's shoes and imagine the tenor of her daily life. Outside, in the quiet lane leading to her brother's grand Chawton House, a lone car occasionally left the sounds of its passing wheels but it would have been on foot that Jane would often have strolled to see Edward and his family.

Right across Jane's cottage is one of the most beautiful 'tea rooms' to which I have been in England. Called Cassandra's Cup it was filled with porcelain tea cups that hung from hooks in the exposed beams of the ceiling (most of them gifted to the shop by passing patrons, I was told). As someone who has collected porcelain cups and saucers for almost twenty years and has a collection today that numbers in the hundreds, I was delighted by this space and took many pictures. The eatery had reserved one section only for our NYU group which overlooked the red brick facade and the dancing daffodils in the garden of Jane's Cottage. We sat there eating steaming bowls of soul and bread, toasted sandwiches, jacket potatoes and marmalade bread and butter pudding with vanilla ice-cream (which I was eating for the first time and really enjoyed) and tried to imagine the atmosphere of Alton when Jane lived there. Indeed little can have changed since the time Jane wrote about long summer walks in the sprawling countryside for so tucked-away is Alton that it seems hidden from the rest of Hampshire.

As the sun played hide and seek behind the clouds, we strolled along companionably to the Church of St. Nicholas--the sort of stone country church that we see in British films every time they want to shoot a wedding scene. It had all the ingredients of a film set--lovely flint stone walls, a wooden gate with peaked V-roof opening up to the path that leads to the church door, moss covered gravestones a-plenty and the kind of ambiance that immediately puts you into a past century. Aside from the interior of the church that had a fabulous timber ceiling and some great wood work, superb stained glass windows and hand embroidered needlepoint kneelers, we walked to the back towards the sanctuary where we saw the gravestones of Jane's mother and her sister who died within 18 years of each other. We realized how short were the lives of most people in that day and age and how much we take for granted the ease with which we live well into our 80s today.

From the church, it was only a short hop towards Chawton House whose beautiful flint stone exterior rose up to greet us like an old friend. I had learned at Lavenham about the scraping away of the stucco and plaster to expose these flint 'bones' of grand medieval baronial homes--and Chawton was no exception. But I was more enchanted by the sheer beauty of the landscape that surrounded us--the brilliant green expanses of meadow in which placid sheep roamed freely, the 'haha' or encircling ditch preventing them from venturing too close to the house but keeping them near enough as to appear appealing when viewed from the windows. In this typically "English Style" landscape, I was repeatedly reminded of the vision and handiwork of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown who made this gardening aesthetic fashionable in England. Later, as I roamed through the tiers and terraces of the garden landscaped in the style of Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll with their abundance of English perennials in herbaceous borders--lavender was profuse as were roses and rosemary--I tried to imagine how splendid the place would be in the summer and how much I would love to linger in it. I am looking forward indeed to my week-long tour of England's most famous country homes, estates and gardens that I will be taking with my friend Delyse from Connecticut who joins me here in mid-May.

A scholar named Sally greeted us in the interior of the home and took us on a tour of Edward's unexpected goldmine--Chawton House. To enter Chawton House was to enter the more genteel world of glamorous dances, shopping sprees in Bath and seaside holidays in Lyme Regis. As Jane would have been a guest in her brother's grand mansion, she would probably not have ventured into the private parts of the home--the kitchen, for instance, where the multitude of servants would have served the family's every need with clockwork precision. She would have had audience with her brother and his family in one of the beautiful ground floor rooms with their lavish wood panelling, floor-length drapes, comfortable cushions and impressive mantelpieces. Sally gave us a short lecture on the history of Chawton House that has stood on its expansive lawns from the time of the Domesday Book in the Norman era, long long before it fell, quite by luck, into the possession of the Austen family.

I loved the broad sweeping wooden staircases that presented opportunity to function as a gallery for the display of oil portraits of all the Knights who have owned the house, each bringing their particular stamp to the interiors, none more forbidding than a Mrs. Knight who actually had the church bells of Saint Nicholas ring to announce her entry and exit from the home! We saw the covered Long Gallery in which the ladies took their exercise on rainy days and the opulent dinging room with its carved wooden mantelpiece and table at which Jane Austen most certainly would have sat and consumed meals that would have been presented by a bevy of wait staff. In a tiny alcove that I found particularly evocative of her talent and temperament was a chair in which, it is rumored, she often sat and wrote, and as I took my seat in it, I could imagine her benign presence looking indulgently over my shoulder.

In the huge kitchen, we saw a 200 year old farm house table, so well used that the iron framework in its skeleton is exposed today. Gleaming cooper pots and pans and an antique Flavel stove top (the Aga of a previous generation) greeted us warmly as we took our seats and listened with rapt attention to Sally's wonderful commentary. The best part of Chawton House is that it is not a museum and every single room may be used by visitors today, every chair and sofa might be sat on and every accessory touched and examined. How bemused Jane would have been to know what a literary celebrity she has become and that the homes, even distantly associated with her persona, have become places of pilgrimage for her adoring fans.

It was the library, however, that was the piece de resistance of our trip for it took us into the heart of Chawton and is today a working library in which scholars actually examine the leather-bound first editions of women's writing from 1300 till 1830 that were collected by an American named Sandy Lerner. When she got to know about Chawton House through the Jane Austen Society of North America, she bequeathed her entire invaluable collection to the house. Placed on the shelves of the library today, they are not only a time capsule of the kind of writing to which Jane Austen would have had access and by which she might have been inspired, but they allow the present-day scholar to delve deeply into the hidden recesses of knowledge by personally handling novels that the Victorians might have touched. In a superbly controlled micro-climate that regulates UV rays, room temperature and humidity levels, the books are held in veneration for the coming generations. Both Karen and I thought that we ought to create a project that will bring us to this library to do some research really soon!

The walk that followed in the garden is one I know I will not easily forget. It is superbly maintained and when we reached the potager and vegetable garden behind its high brick walls--how I love these garden 'rooms' created by the addition of walls and wrought-iron gates on these meandering estates, I was reminded of my own garden at home in Southport which will slowly be returning to life now that Spring is around the corner in New England. Later, Karen and I strolled in the 'wilderness'--the deliberately planted area of the estate in which trees and flowering shrubs formed an alle that allowed the residents of such grand homes to pretend as if they were walking in the wilds of Nature--all of which was still very carefully controlled.

Indeed to tour Chawton House today is to glean lessons not only on the life of Jame Austen or the roles played by such baronial manors in country life (I was repeatedly reminded of Audrey Forbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born) but to understand the workings of an English garden, the role it played in the daily lives of people, the privilege and responsibilities of land owners as they lorded it over their estates and servants (nobless oblige)and the manner in which gardening and landscaping techniques are passed from one generation to the next as such charming aspects of English culture are preserved.

Having visited the Jane Austen Center in Bath when I first arrived here in September and having walked through the many locations in which she walked in that grand Georgian city (the Royal Theater, the Assembly Rooms, the Royal Crescent, etc.) I feel fully steeped in the world of Austen. What's more, just a couple of weeks ago, I had traveled to Winchester where I had seen the last house in which she lived for just six weeks before she died and her grave stone and memorial in Winchester Cathedral in which she lies buried. Every single one of these tours have allowed me to follow Jane Austen through the most significant phases of her life and to gain insights into the world she inhabited with all its ups and downs, all its triumphs and disasters, all its color and flavor.

When I got back home and before I fell asleep, I kept thinking of the world into which I had strayed today, the opportunity I was provided to lose myself in an era that is most appealing to me and in which I had always thought I would feel very much at-home (provided, I know, I had the comfort of upper class position and prestige) and the lessons I learned about the private life of one of English Literature's most revered writers.

I hugged to myself the knowledge that in less than 24 hours Llew will be here with me and that together we will share the two coming weeks. That happy thought put me to bed after I had eaten a pizza dinner and made the disappointing disovery that my DVD player is no longer working. Ah, it will be good to have a man around tomorrow to take a look at this and, hopefully, set it right.

Theater Tickets Galore--including Helen Mirren!

Thursday, March 26, 2009
London

In one of the busiest days I have had since arriving here in London, I awoke at 5. 45 am and worked almost non-stop at my PC until 5 pm with only two half hour breaks in-between for breakfast and lunch! I had received an email from my friend Blair Williams in New Jersey urging me to submit essays for his forthcoming anthology on The Anglo-Indian Woman and in a burst of creativity, I decided to start drafting an article. This took several hours of my time as I tried to stay within the 3000 word limit. As always, once my thoughts starting flowing on to the computer, it was hard to reign them in . But by mid-day, I was all done and able to turn my attention to other pending tasks.

I had started the morning going online to try to find some theater shows to which I could take Chriselle when she is here in early May. She had suggested Billy Elliot, the Musical (which I have yet to investigate) and Parlor Song at the Almeida Theater in Islington. However, once I started browsing the Web, I realized (much to my horror) that all tickets for Jean Racine's Phedre starring Helen Mirren at the National Theater were already booked solid. How could that be? I wondered. I did not realize that booking had already begun and I had been waiting to receive a mailing from the National Theater (on which mailing list I am) informing me that tickets were on sale.

I was sorely disappointed and just when I started to search the web to find Phedre tickets on E-bay, I decided I might as well book tickets for the very last day of the show--which was the only day remaining--August 1. I got two tickets in the hope that Llew will be here again and will be able to join me at the theater that evening. It will be a treat for the two of us. Well, I did get my tickets and so I am all set to see an actress with whose work I was familiar long before she became an Oscar winner for The Queen. I hope very much that my long-term plans will fall into place--that Llew will be able to come back again in summer (to take me back to the States, as it were) allowing us to enjoy together my last two weeks in this country.

While browsing for theater tickets online, I also managed to find 2 tickets to a show on April 8--the day Llew and I return from Istanbul. This play by Nigerian Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka is called Death and the King's Horseman and at 10 pounds a ticket, I figured I couldn't go wrong. I have always wanted to see a show at the National --was just never able to get tickets to the ones I wanted to see in the past. So I am pleased that Llew will accompany me to see this show.

More surfing on the web got me the information that Duet for One is moving from the Almeida to the West End's Vaudeville Theater. It stars Juliet Stevenson whom I know Chriselle particularly likes--she had played Kiera Knightley's mother in Gurinder Chadha's Bend it like Beckham. I knew that Chriselle would enjoy seeing her on stage far more than seeing Parlor Song. I decided to give her a call later in the day, to seek her preference. Besides, by going to the theater to book tickets I would save on the commission fee and I needed to get out for a walk later in the day, anyway...

I spent the afternoon transcribing the interview I did with Neville Johnston--a task that always takes ages. Once again, I was struck by his unusual life and the twisted paths it has taken and the manner in which he has maintained his equilibrium and his good nature through it all. Just as I started to feel light headed (for a few seconds, the room actually spun around me), I knew I had to take a break--and then my phone rang. It was my friend Bina calling from Harrow to invite me for dinner to her place on Good Friday. I told her that Llew would also be in town at that time and she delightedly included him in the invitation. Bina was my classmate in high school at St. Agnes' in Bombay and my neighbor at the Reserve Bank Colony in Bombay Central as our fathers both worked at the Reserve Bank of India. I have the happiest memories of our teenage years together and over the years, we have stayed very close friends, despite the distance that has separated us. I am looking forward very much to seeing her again--though both Llew and I will be fasting and abstaining from meat on Good Friday and will not be able to do justice to her dinner.

At 5 pm, I showered really late in the day (yes, I barely found the time for a shower yesterday!) and walked to one of my favorite places in London--Stanford's at Covent Garden. This is a travel book shop to which I was introduced by my English friend Janie Yang. It truly is Paradise on Earth for those smitten with wanderlust! I needed to purchase books on Rome and Istanbul for my upcoming trip with Llew and when that was done, I walked towards Charing Cross to get to the Vaudeville Theater to pick up tickets for Duet for One. I was fortunate to get them for the very first day of the show when the cast and crew will be fresh and ready to hit the lights. With all these tickets and stars to look forward to, I felt very pleased indeed.

I walked back home again and discovered that I am walking everywhere after almost six months as I do not have a bus pass. I did not purchase one as I am leaving for a 10 days trip and didn't want it to go to waste. My legs are still not quite OK though they do feel better. I still have pain when I awake and put my feet down on the floor first thing in the morning and I do have aches and pains in different parts of my legs each day. I really do believe that I will have to go in for surgery when I return to the States in August though the medical community here does not believe that I need it. My GP in the States has recommended some really good foot surgeons and I might go through the entire battery of tests (including X-rays) once I get back home as I have not had a single X-ray here and still have no idea whether I have just inflammation or a tear on my plantar. It is really amazing to me how differently medicine is practised in the UK and the USA. I am grateful for the treatments offered by the NHS here but I do believe that I now need to go to the next stage of recovery in the States.

Back home, I proof read the Neville Johnston interview and sent it off to my office for printing. I also found the Vatican Museum website (from the travel book on Rome) and was able to book 2 tickets online for Llew and myself to the Museums and the Sistine Chapel--which means we will not have to stand in those lines that snake around the place---yyesss! I had last been there 22 years ago, long before the restoration of Michaelangelo's ceiling had been undertaken. I am sure it must be just stunning right now and I cannot wait to see it. We have also procured tickets, both for the Papal Audience on Wednesday and for the Pope's Mass on Thursday when he is celebrating the Eucharist with the Youth in remembrance of the death anniversary of Pope John Paul II. All these things to anticipate in Rome makes me joyous and to know that Llewellyn will be here in less than 48 hours and that I will be able to share all this with him is simply beyond belief. I am now counting the hours until I see him again and I know that we will have simply the best time together as we always do on our travels.

Next, I turned to our itinerary and put in all the details regarding how to get from the airports to our hotels and how to plan our days in each city in terms of sight seeing. It was exhausting work and right after I ate the last of my spinach and ricotta filled ravioli in the gorgonzolla sauce that I rustled up the other day, I dropped like a ton of bricks into bed.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Another Anglo-Indian Interview in Norwood

Wednesday, March 25, 2009
London

I awoke at 5. 45 am today to find light peaking through my bedroom blinds. The days are growing longer--that's for sure--and winter is slowly creeping away. It was nippy in the morning, though, and I had to close my window. In the past couple of weeks, I've taken to leaving my window open at night (so my room is not too warm) and wearing ear-plugs to keep away the traffic noises. It has worked well and I believe I am now sleeping longer.

After proof reading my blog, I began work on the pictures on my hard drive. I needed to edit and caption two sets of them and then back them up on CDs. All this took almost all morning--each set of pictures took an hour!

I then wanted to finish the Claire Jansen interview and after proofreading it, I sent it over to my office for printing. This left me just enough time to take a shower, eat a pizza lunch and leave my flat for my appointment with Neville Johnston, one of my Anglo-Indian 'subjects' in Norwood. He had instructed me on how to get to his house and after hopping on the Tube to Victoria, I took the Southern Rail train to Norwood Junction where he awaited my arrival.

En route, I began grading my students' essays and was deeply disappointed to find that I need to return most of them for redrafting as none of them has a clear thesis statement, a definitive argument, enough scholarly sources or correct citations. At the end of the day, none of them proved the points they were trying to make coherently enough. I do believe that they have too much work to do in every paper and since they must meet assignment deadlines, they tend to do shoddy work. Though, mind you, none of them writes badly. They are fluent and have an impressive writing style; but they don't realize that for a research paper to receive an A grade, it needs more than just a very readable style. So back to the drawing board they go.

Neville was awaiting me outside Somerfield's as planned. I have to say that it has been a rather frustrating week for me work-wise. Not only have my prospective Anglo-Indian subjects cancelled on me at the very last minute, but they seem to have done so for the most trivial of reasons. Granted, they are doing me a favor in giving me the time of day; but to talk to some of them, you would think they are running the UK. I swear it could be easier to get an interview with Gordon Brown than it is to pin one of them down. None of them seems to have the academic understanding to realize that my work is professional and that they need to feel committed if they are going to assist me. Someone cancelled on me because she is going out of town ten days from now and has to attend to chores, she says!

Given then that I haven't managed to accomplish all I intended to this week, it was a joy to interview Neville. A completely unpretentious man with not an air or a grace about him, he responded to me with candor and with sincerity and seemed to have lost none of the hospitable warmth and generosity that India tends to nurture in her sons and daughters. Despite the fact that he has had an unusually large number of challenges in his short life in this country, he has remained optimistic, forgiving and profoundly understanding of the people who made his life what it is today. I felt that there were so many lessons about compassion and forgiveness that I learned from him.

We met in his assisted retirement living facility in Norwood, a 'Council place' (as he described it) where he tried hard to make me feel at home and comfortable. It was the little gestures he advanced towards me that moved me deeply and stirred my own feelings of warmth towards him. And yet, when he spoke to me it was with perception and insight that so many of the other folks to whom I have spoken have completely lacked. Not only is he well-informed about his community and its history but he wears his learning lightly. This man has given so much and will continue to give for the rest of his life and has received so little in return--and asks for nothing much. He was certainly one of the most unusual Anglo-Indians I have met so far and yet one who has most deeply impacted me.

On the way home, while I was seated at Norwood Junction waiting for the train to return to Victoria, he called my cell phone to apologize that he had forgotten to offer me the snacks he had especially bought for me yesterday. I admit that I had started to feel hungry and was grateful for the biscuits that I threw into my bag before leaving the house as I now realize that I am often peckish after these long hikes into the distant suburbs to do these interviews. While so many of my 'subjects' have generously invited me to lunch with them as part of the interview sessions, others have told me point-blank that they cannot offer me too much time! It is this contrast in attitudes towards me and my work that repeatedly strikes me as I continue to plug away at it here in London. Few of them feel grateful that their community which continues to remain almost unknown in the UK is being made the subject of scrutiny through the support of a world-famous university. Perhaps it is their ignorance of academic research that makes them so oblivious to the need to be more co-operative and more committed. Only one of the many individuals I have interviewed so far actually wrote to thank me for the work I am doing and for the time, trouble and attention I am lavishing on a completely obscure and invisible ethnic minority in the UK.

OK, so I guess I have vented enough and hopefully the next crop of 'subjects' to whom I am introduced will make me feel less resentful. At any rate, I got back home and attended to email, had a chat with Chriselle, rebooked a flight to Lyon in May as Easyjet needed to cancel the flight I had booked way back in December and began to search the web for some plays that Chriselle and I might see together when she gets here in early May.

Being hungry then, I heated some pizza and ravioli and sat down to eat my dinner while beginning to watch Lovejoy which my new Anglo-Indian friend John Thomas left for me with my concierge yesterday. The series is set in the 1980s in Suffolk and John, who reads my blog regularly, thought that I might enjoy the series as I had recently visited Suffolk. I watched the first episode and just began introducing myself to the characters and the ethos of the series when my eyelids began to droop and I decided to respond and get to bed.

After writing this blog, I did just that...at the end of what was a very productive day for me.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Museums and the Macabre

Tuesday, March 24, 2006
London

The downside about having a lovely week in Italy is that you are snowed in by the amount of work that descends upon you on your return. I was a slave to my PC all day and only took a breather for half an hour to eat my lunch. I worked from 6 am until 10 am non-stop, energizing myself with cups of coffee and then Greek yogurt with muesli. Then, my second session of the morning began after I had spoken on the phone to my brother Roger in Bombay.

Among the many tasks I completed today was bringing my blog up to date, writing my Veneto travelog, creating an itinerary for our forthcoming tour of the Ancient World--Rome and Istabul--finalizing bookings at our hotels in Rome, Istanbul and for one night at Gatwick airport, completing the transcribing of an interview I had started a week ago with Claire Jansen, rescheduling a number of interviews with prospective Anglo-Indian subjects, sending Llew a list of things I need him to bring me from Connecticut and responding to email as it kept pouring in. Phew!!!

On and on it went until at 3. 30 pm. I only stopped because I had received a call earlier in the day from Paolo, a friend of my colleague Robin Goldfin from NYU, who was given my number by Robin and decided to call and get together with me. Paolo is a musicologist at a university in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and is in England to give a paper at a conference in Oxford this coming weekend. His few days in London have been devoted to walking around the city aimlessly and taking in whatever he can without creating a fixed agenda--so very different from the way I travel!!!

When he called, I suggested we meet at 4 pm at Holborn Tube station as I hoped to finish the bulk of my pending tasks by then. I was right on time and Paolo arrived just a few minutes later. It seems that we had been introduced exactly a year ago in Manhattan at the Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village where Robin had requested me to participate in a Faculty-Student Reading of Creative Writing. I had read an essay I had written about meeting Lady Penelope Chetwode, wife of the late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman, many years ago in India. The essay has not yet been published because I am holding on to it in the hope of publishing it as part of a collection of essays entitled "Close Encounters of the Anglo Kind'.

Anyway, it was nice to see Paolo again and since it was such a beautiful day with the sun shining benignly down upon us, I suggested a self-guided walk from my Frommer's Book and Paolo was all for it. The walk in entitled 'Museums and the Macabre' and seems to be better suited for rainy days as a great part of it is undertaken indoors. Despite the disclaimer, we set out briskly towards Lincoln's Inn Field where we discovered the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons. This building itself is a venerable space, devoted to the granting of the letters that magically added authority behind the names of all the 'specialist' doctors that once treated me whilst I still lived in India--FRCS (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons). This old and celebrated institution was established in the 18th century and John Hunter was one of its founding members and greatest acquirer of anatomical 'pieces' that comprise the bulk of his collection. Since both Paolo and I are 'Humanities' folks, we felt a bit squeamish as we gazed at the extraordinary exhibits that comprise this gallery--body parts of every kind of creature including men and women are placed in glass cylinders and preserved in formaldehyde. There were skeletons galore and all sorts of information pertaining to the study of the anatomy and the many items that were used as instructional tools by the college over the centuries.

Getting out of there, we crossed Lincoln's Inn field where daffodils in various lovely shades of yellow were blooming profusely. In the center is a covered gazebo which is where public executions used to take place in the reign of Elizabeth I. It is supposedly a haunted part of the former 'field' (now park) and the cries of tormented hung criminals are said to be heard at night.

Then, we found ourselves at the famous Sir John Soanes Museum which I had last visited about four years ago and found thoroughly fascinating. Soanes is the architect of the Bank of England building (aka The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street) but his passion was the collection of architectural fragments from buildings all around the world--his favorite being the Neo-Classical style. In this unusual space, the visitor will find a treasure trove of columns, statues, sculpture, figurines, urns, even sarcophagi and a small section devoted to paintings--the most valuable being William Hogarth's series The Rake's Progress.

Since we arrived there just 15 minutes before the museum could close, the guards were kind enough to let us in without paying the entry fee of 3 pounds. Since I knew my way around the house, I led Paolo up to the main highlights including the Paintings Gallery where another guard was kind enough to open up the concealed paintings that hang in a very distinctive way to allow for maximum display opportunity. He told us that this is the only place in the world where such a unique design might be seen. As we toured the 18th century rooms, we were struck by their grandeur and abundance of decorative detail. Paolo was so intrigued by this space that he has resolved to return to it as it "deserves a second look", he said.

Out on High Holborn, we made our way towards Russel Square passing by some lovely squares along the way, each of which had newly flowering trees. We remarked how beautifully London has been planned and designed and Paolo, who was returning to the city after 19 years, told me repeatedly that he "could very well live here". Then, we were at the School of Oriental and African Studies and in Woburn Square and Gardens which, I discovered, to my astonishment, is right behind the Birkbeck College Building in which I teach!!! This is how stupid you feel when you have traversed the entire city on foot but haven't discovered your own backyard, I thought, somewhat ashamed of myself.

Across Malet Street we went towards the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Art--but since it was 5. 30, it had already closed for the day. By this point, I suggested we stop for a drink as we'd already been walking over an hour and a half and I was ready to rest my feet. In the Print Room Cafe, a part of University College, London, to which my Dean Fred Schwartzbach had introduced me several months ago, we found comfortable sofas and sank down gratefully with large mugs of peppermint tea. After a good half hour, we got up again, to complete the last part of the walk which took us into the main building of the university to see the 'auto-icon' of Jeremy Bentham, one of the founders of the college. Since I had seen this rather bizarre exhibit before, I did not find myself overly fascinated by it, but Paolo certainly thought it weird.

By this time, it was close to 7 pm and I was tired and wanted to return home. On my way back, I found that my new found friend John Thomas whom I have interviewed as part of my research had stopped off at my building to leave me his collection of Lovejoy DVDs. John has been reading my blog and discovered that I made a recent trip to Suffolk. Since Loevjoy is set and shot in Suffolk, he offered to lend me his DVDs. I have not heard of this TV series and so I'm looking forward very much to sitting and watching it. In fact, I am so annoyed with Lovefilm.Com who have been screwing up with my account so often of late that I am seriously thinking of cancelling my membership with them. If I have Lovejoy to watch, it will probably keep me busy in the evenings and with the TV programs I enjoy habitually, I don't believe I will miss Lovefilms. com at all.

It was 9 pm when I started to doze off on my couch after a dinner of 'steak pie for one' from Marks. I decided to respond to my body's indication that I needed sleep and after brushing and flossing my teeth, I sat down to write this blog, then went straight to sleep. There is still so much I have to accomplish tomorrow. I had better get all the rest I can!

Monday, March 23, 2009

'Viewing' Arthur Miller at the West End

Monday, March 23, 2009
London

Another Monday! Another new week! Another couple of classes to teach at NYU. Luckily, I felt as if I had caught up with a great deal of pending stuff even before I fell asleep last night--so it was without too much stress that I walked to work this morning. I am told that last week was just glorious in London but this week promises to be nippier. At any rate, spring is not quite with us yet as I discovered when I crossed Bloomsbury Square and arrived at my office in the basement of NYU-London.

Both classes went off well with one working on their research essays on Cornwall, the other on their research essays on Suffolk and John Constable. I focused on citations today--how to do them in the body of the essay and on the Works Cited page as I find that so many of my students do not have a clue! I am hoping that the final essays which are due next week will show evidence of their understanding why we cite sources in research essays.

I ate my sandwich lunch at my desk while juggling so many other tasks. I had to call Aetna Global in the States to find out why my claims for private physical therapy in London have been rejected. Turns out they were pending review and have now been passed in full. I should be receiving a nice fat check in the mail soon! I also prepared a letter for my Ryanair refund for Counter Check-in services at the airport to which, as a US passport holder, I am entitled. Next, I photocopied a large number of the London Walks from the book that the Fradleys lent me yesterday. They are great walkers themselves and I am hoping that, come summer, I will be fit enough to continue my discovery of London on foot.

I taught my second class at Birkbeck College, then spent over an hour in my office before I made my way to the Duke of York's Theater at St. Martin's Lane to get the 7. 30 performance of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. I had never ever seen this play in performance and had no idea what it was all bout. It was the fact that the cast included Hailey Atwell (from The Duchess and Brideshead Revisted) that made me buy a ticket to the play several weeks ago as I am convinced that she will be the great actress of tomorrow.

Well, what can I say about the play that will not sound as if I am in raptures? It was beyond fabulous! My seats were lousy and the stage design being what it was I could barely see a thing. I decided to go and occupy one of the empty side box seats and from there, I had an incredible view of the stage. Not knowing what the play was about, everything came to me as a surprise and I have to say that I was bowled over.

Miller's writing was just scintillating and I do believe that it is more powerful than the far more famous Death of a Salesman of which I have seen many performed versions both in India and the States. The manner in which these British actors articulated the lines was just astounding, their Brooklyn accents never faltering for a moment, their gestures and mannerisms so completely Nerw Yorker that for a couple of hours I truly believed I had crossed the Verrazano Bridge from New Jersey into Staten Island and Brooklyn.

Kenn Stott played the Italian-American stevedore Eddie Carbonne whose obsessive love for his motherless niece Catherine (Hailey Atwell) leads him to betray the two illegal immigrants--Marco and Rudolpho--family members on his wife's side that he 'rats' out on to the immigration authorities because he cannot bear to think of Catherine's marriage to another man. In his gradual disintegration from head of the family to powerless uncle who looks on helplessly as Rudolpho woos his niece, Stott portrays the dramatic tragic hero to perfection. He was more than ably supported by Mary Elizabeth Mastrononio who played his sexually neglected wife, herself evolving from voiceless figurehead to powerful matriarch even as Eddie Carbonne breaks down. This, in my humble opinion, is truly West End theater at its most gratifying and I was struck repeatedly by how ironic it is that I was watching one of the greatest classics of contemporary American drama in London with a bunch of English actors!

I walked home after the show as I have not yet renewed my bus pass and got into bed at 10. 30 ready for a night of restful slumber and the catching up on a lot of pending chores tomorrow.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Mother's Day in Essex

Sunday, March 22, 2009
Bishop Stortford, Essex

I awoke to another glorious day--this time in Essex. It is Mother's Day here in the UK and Rosa's mother Margaret from Manchester was with her at her place. We sat down to breakfast that included toasted Hot Cross Buns from the poem (usually seen around Lent) and then the Fradleys told me they would drive me around some interesting towns in their part of the world.

We drove first to Thaxted, a very old and very quaint town that sits right in the midst of the rolling Essex countryside. It was a good thing that Matt lost his way as we had the opportunity to see the little villages that dot the landscape in the simplest and yet most appealing of ways. At Thaxted, no one seemed to have awoken, except the folks who had found their way to the Norman Cathedral whose spire dominated the landscape. Thaxted also has a windmill, a rather unusual structure in the Essex countryside.

We discovered that the Parish Church of Thaxted dates from Norman times but is in a terrible state of disrepair attacked by woodworm and other deadlier sounding pests. It takes an enormous amount of money to keep such buildings standing in England and everywhere I go, I find on-going fund-raising activity to help support these churches. We arrived in the church at the end of the service and were invited repeatedly to join the congregation for coffee and chocolate biscuits. It is amazing to me how warm and hospitable these places are to strangers and how privileged they feel when you arrive to poke around their ageing monuments. Each woman who had 'mothered' anyone in her life had been presented with a little posy of daffodils and they walked out of the church with vivid yellow flowers in their hands.

Since it was only an easy walk towards the windmill, we passed by the church graveyard and made our way to the rather short structure that probably once ground corn for the area's farmers. The rural idyll was perfect at this point--horses grazing near by in pasture, the red roofs of the village lying almost submerged in a hollow in the terrain, the church spire rising up behind us and a thatched cottage around the bend.

Walking through the village streets with its tiny shops, we returned to our car, at which point the Fradleys decided to drive to Saffron Walden--a market town that dates from the medieval period. The drive continued to be picture-perfect and I have to say I enjoyed this part of our outing as much as I loved the little towns we visited.

Once again, after we parked out car, we went for a walk in the town which seemed far more upscale than Thaxted. This town has many listed buildings and many of them are unique for the 'pargetting' or decorative stucco work on their walls--which I had seen and learned about in Lavenham on my visit last week to Suffolk. I found a great deal of similarity between the landscape of Suffolk and Essex which, I suppose, is not surprising, as the counties kiss each other. When we passed by the beautiful Sun Inn, we also discovered that it was used as Oliver Cromwell's headquarters once upon a time. This was also the spot where I saw my first multiple frilled daffodils in the cathedral yard (yes, there is another Norman cathedral in this town). Indeed, daffodils were everywhere, many abundant banks of them glowing softly in the spring sunshine. People have already started planting their window boxes with primroses and the entire area seemed to be basking in Spring's early abundance.

On the way back, it was Rosa who suggested to Matt that we drive by Audley End House, a grand Tudor manor in the heart of the Essex countryside--a home once associated with the ill-fated Howards who had played such an important political role in the era of Henry VIII. Though the manor does not open to visitors until the end of March, we were able to stroll around the grounds landscaped by the legendary Lancelot "Capability" Brown and see the bridges that he constructed to look like a natural part of the garden. Geese, ducks and mallards paddled busily in the stream that encircles the house and with the sun shining abundantly upon it, it was a perfect spot to stop for pictures. I am very tempted to visit Audley End House, an English Heritage property, and I understand that there is a train from the station of the same name and then a mile walk, if one wishes to get there by public transport.

Mother's Day Lunch at the Fradley's:
Then, it was time for us to return to Bishop Stortford to the Fradley's home where Rosa got busy preparing the herb dumplings to place on the top of her lovely Beouf Bourgignon that was her special offering for Mother's Day lunch. The kitchen filled with the most appetizing aromas as the casserole cooked away merrily and bubbled forth. A little later, we sat down at the kitchen table to a delicious lunch with red broccoli served on the side. Rosa had made olive bread at home to accompany the meal and we used it to sop up the gravy which was amazingly flavorful--what with its combination of beef stock and red wine.

Not too long after our lovely meal, it was time for me to leave. Matt dropped me off at the local British Rail station and off I went towards Liverpool Street Station where I stopped off at Tesco to buy myself some groceries for the week. I was opening my door at exactly 5. 30 pm after what had been a truly exciting week for me--what with my travels in Italy initially and then the bonus day in Essex.

Needless to say, I spent the next five hours unpacking, catching up with my email and voice messages, sorting out items for laundry (which I did before going to bed) and getting ready for my classes at NYU tomorrow as I will be teaching all day. Tomorrow evening, I have a play at the West End to look forward to--Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge--and since the reviews have been uniformly dazzling, I know it will be a long but very eventful day indeed.

Veneto's Lesser-Known Towns

Saturday, March 21, 2009
Cittadella, Castelfranco, Treviso, Italy

Finally, I had arrived at the last day of my travels in Italy. Annalisa suggested we spend the day traveling northwards towards Treviso airport where I would be taking my flight to London rather late that evening (my flight was scheduled to depart from Treviso at 10. 25 pm).
After breakfast and a shower, Annalisa took me shopping to her local supermarket as I did want to stock up on Proscuitto de Parma, Gorgonzola Cheese, Lavazza coffee, almond cookies, etc. for which Italy is famous. After we had done our shopping and I had bought all of the goodies I wanted (including Baci chocolates), Annalisa dropped me off at the city center of Vicenza so that I could go to the Church of Santa Corona to see a particular painting by Paolo Veronese entitled The Adoration of the Magi.

It was another gorgeous day and the streets were packed to capacity with shoppers and strollers enjoying the sunshine. Asking for directions (as I had not brought a map along with me), I found my way to the Church of San Lorenzo first (a Romanesque church) and then to the Church of Santa Corona where the Veronese was quite lovely indeed.

Then, I decided to join the shoppers and went in search of a pair of earrings that I have long admired on Annalisa. I was thrilled to find them in an expensive perfumery but since I had coveted them for ages, I did buy them right away. Browsing through the other fashionable boutiques and jewelry stores, I discovered that the recession does not seem to have touched this corner of Italy at all.

Back home for lunch, I discovered that Annalisa had been busy concocting a delicious chicken dish with olives which she served with polenta. I love polenta and the preparation in a spicy tomato sauce was just what the doctor ordered after my long walk. Soon it was time for me to bid goodbye to her lovely boys and load my bag into her car for our drive northwards.

Cittadella:
Cittadella is a small medieval walled town in the Veneto, which Annalisa thought I would enjoy seeing. She parked her car and we walked towards the town square taking in the age of the solid walls that encircle the settlement. There was a concert of sorts going on in the square with a local group belting out some popular Italian songs. We did not stay long in this town and getting back into the car, we drove off to Castelfranco.

Castelfranco—The City of Giorgone:
Castelfranco lay about a half hour away. This town, too, a lesser-known tourist attraction is famous for its association with the Renaissance painter Giorgone who was born here and spent most of his very short life in its vicinity. He died in 1510 of plague and though he made a small contribution to the history of Renaissance art, it is memorable.

Giorgone’s Madonna:
Our first stop after we had parked our car and crossed the street towards the ancient quarter was the Duomo or Cathedral where the famous Madonna by Giorgone is to be found. Though it was a very sunny day, these small Veneto towns were almost empty. It is not quite tourist season yet and only a few locals were going about their business.

Giorgone’s painting is concealed in a small chapel in the cathedral. A pamphlet gives details about it. It is quite exquisite indeed, the face of the Madonna brimming with innocence and loveliness. Several other visitors arrived to see the painting while we were present and within a few minutes, we made our way out of the Cathedral.

Sampling A Street Market:
We spent most of the next hour browsing through a local street market that stocked every kind of cheese, ham and cookie possible. Annalisa bought some focaccia for Giovanni who loves it and some cheese and as we tasted our way through the entire street, I thought I had eaten enough snacks for the day.

We sat ourselves down by a pavement café and ordered hot beverages—coffee for Annalisa, hot chocolate for me. I have always loved the hot chocolate in Italy but on this trip, I hadn’t yet tasted any. Swirled over with a thick crown of cream, it was very good indeed and I was glad I had bought some Perugina cocoa from the supermarket in the morning.

With dusk settling over Giorgone’s city (there was a nice monument to him right behind us in the square), we got back into our car. It had been a splendid day during which Annalisa and I discussed such a vast number of issues and had resolved to work on the house swap very seriously for next summer. Both of us were grateful to have had this time together and we know that we will always cherish it.

Treviso:
Then, it was necessary to get back in the car and drive to Treviso, which Annalisa informed me, is also a very impressive city. Unfortunately, we did get caught in traffic on the way out of Castelfranco and reached Treviso later than expected. It was dark by the time we arrived there—which meant that I did not get a chance to see a whole lot of it. However, we did need to find a place for dinner and when Annalisa made a few inquiries, we were directed to a ristorante called Tony del Spin.

We had no reservation and were glad that the proprietor allowed us to be seated as he told us that he place was fully booked for the evening. It turned out that the restaurant was one of the oldest and most popular restaurants in Treviso and we were glad we found it. Annalisa had a glass of wine while I stuck to water (as I was afraid that my sulphur allergy will flare up with all the wine I had been drinking in Italy). Annalisa chose a zuppa de pasta con fagioli (soup with pasta and beans) while I went for the gnocchi de patate con gorgonzola (potato gnocchi in a gorgonzola cheese sauce). My gnocchi were indeed so creamy and tender that they just melted in my mouth and the sauce was perfect—neither too strong nor too flavorless and of the right creamy consistency indeed. It made a wonderful finale to my stay in Italy and I treated Annalisa to it. I was so grateful for all the sight seeing she has done with me, the many wonderful meals that she had conjured up in her own kitchen and the comfort that she, Giorgio and her sons had treated me to while I had stayed in their home.

An hour later, she had dropped me off at Treviso airport where I found some NYU students waiting to board the same flight as mine, returning to London after a long weekend in Italy. I would be arriving at Stansted airport at 11. 30 pm, so I was grateful for the fact that my friends Rosa and Matt Fradley would be picking me up and taking me over their place in Bishop Storford, just ten minutes away, to spend the night with them.

Our flight touched down on schedule and a half hour later, Matt arrived to pick me up once I had cleared Immigration. I was at their home in just a few minutes, meeting Rosa and her mother Margaret who had traveled down from Manchester to spend Mother’s Day with them. Over coffee in Rosa’s cozy kitchen, we chatted a little before we called it a day.

My travels in Italy had afforded me the opportunity to re-connect with a country I love dearly and with a landscape of which I can never tire. It gave me the chance to spend wonderful quality time with a dear friend and her family and to add to my professional experiences by lecturing to graduate students at a university in which the renowned Galileo once taught. I felt privileged and very blessed indeed to have had this opportunity and I do look forward to our travels in Rome next week when Llew will be here to join me as we go off on another one of our European jaunts.

Verona--City of Lovers

Friday, March 20, 2009
Verona, Italy

Annalisa was tied up all day today in meetings at the University of Padua. Left to my own resources, I decided to take the train to Verona to see yet another beautiful medieval Italian city. After we checked the train schedule, I found that the 9.30 train would work for me. Breakfast followed (Lavazza coffee, Greek yoghurt with cereal and blood orange juice--fiery red and with quite a different delicious flavor) as did a shower and we were off at 9.00, Annalisa dropping me to Vicenza railway station before we said goodbye for the day.

Because it was a Eurostar City express train, I was in Verona within a half hour (day return was 23 euros). Once at Verona (about 10 am), I found the Tourist Information Office at the railway station and, armed with a map and some literature, I made my way out into the city. Verona is a very walkable city (as most Roman cities are), the main monuments clustered around the banks of the River Adige that flows through it in an elaborate S shape--similar to that of the Thames in London.

I walked briskly down Corso Porta Nuova, so-called because it stands at the corner of an old gatehouse wall--the New Door, in other words. Sunshine streamed generously upon the city and warmed me up as temperatures were still low enough to leave a distinct nip in the air. I walked straight towards the massive Roman Arena, stopping to browse at a local street market at Piazza Bra where organically grown fruits and vegetables, farm house cheeses and home-smoked hams and salami gave the area a mouth watering aroma. I resolved to take some of Italy's gastronomic goodies home to London with me to enjoy them in the comfort of my home.

Last night, the Inspector Morse episode we saw together, Death of the Self, had been set partly in Vicenza and partly in Verona. Annalisa had been exclaiming throughout the screening as she recognized so many of the locations and had personal contacts with some--much to the exasperation of Giacomma whose limited (though very good) English required him to concentrate on every word if he was to follow the plot! The final scenes were set in the Arena in Verona where the main character, an opera singer, performed to a packed crowd. This made me all the more eager to visit the Arena--to walk, as it were, in the footsteps of John Thaw and Kevin Whatley.

The Roman Arena:
But the TV episode had not prepared me for the enormous size of the Arena. I paid the 6 euros entry fee and walked into the world of the Romans for it was built in the 1st century (about 61 AD) and yet exhibited marvelous engineering and construction techniques. How did these Romans manage to do the kind of building they did, I wondered. Then, I remembered slave labor and I ceased to be impressed. The arena was under refurbishment (as so many of Italy's monuments constantly are) and the main 'stage' upon which the opera singer had belted out her arias was hidden behind screened scaffolding.

Nevertheless, the place was atmospheric in the extreme and as I requested fellow travelers to take my pictures against its pink stone stands (most of which are intact). I received a call from Llew (for it was about 11 am at the time). I told him where I was and described the arena and wished we were together. I also did tell him that Annalisa suggested we do a house swap, i.e. she takes over our Connecticut home next summer and we move into her Vicenza apartment at the same time. I thought it was a brilliant idea as Llew has not seen much of Italy at all and but for the few days we will be spending in Rome next month, he hasn't toured the country. Such an arrangement will allow us to see Italy at leisure, especially the Veneto which Annalisa say offers wonderful walking opportunities in the Lower Alps, the glamor of Lake Garda and all these walled medieval towns, not to mention the proximity to Venice.

A Walk Along the River Adige:
Back outside the Arena, I walked along Via Roma towards Castelvecchio, an impressive 14th century castle built by the Scaligeri dynasty that had once ruled Verona in its medieval heyday. It has been converted into an art gallery and museum but I was more keen to explore the city than remain cloistered indoors. As I walked across the Ponte Scaligero that was packed with school groups out on a field trip (as was the Arena), I took many pictures as the huge ramparts of the castle just begged to be photographed.

Once on the opposite bank of the River Adige, I walked eastwards towards the Duomo or Cathedralwith its grand Romanesque portal. Inside, I made it a point to see Titian's Assumption. Every one of these Italian churches in the tourist belt charges an admission fee but, I have discovered, that if you wish to enter to say a prayer, you are exempt from paying the fee. This allows the local Italians to continue to use their churches even during tourist visiting hours.

The walk along the river banks was easily one of the best I took on this trip. Not only was the weather perfect for walking but the streets on both sides are lined by grand pallazos, churches whose spires and domes give the skyline a look that is reminiscent of Salzburg in Austria (one of my favorite cities in the world) and a river that glistened softly under romantic bridges that reminded me of Paris. I crossed the Ponte Garibaldi to buy myself some gelato at a gelateria, quite impressed, if I say so myself, by my rapidly growing facility with Italian: "Buon Giorgno, Signora. Gelato per favore. Una pralline, coppa. Cioccolatto". As Giacommo told me later, it was "Perfect!" I sat outside in the sunshine studying my map and savoring my ice-cream and decided to rest my legs for a while before I set out again, this time towards the Teatro Romano which, Annalisa told me, I must not miss.

The Teatro Romano:
Verona's Theater Romano is reached across one of the oldest Roman Bridges in the city--the Ponte Pietra or Stone Bridge which reveals its age in the exposed stones with which it is constructed. It is a curving bridge that spans the river quite theatrically indeed and leads you across to the heights of the Roman remains of the old theatre, most of whose stands are still intact--thoug the rest of it is in ruins. I paid the 5 euros entry fee and using the map and the directions climbed the many high steps up into the hidden corners of the complex which, in addition to the remains of a monastery (including really evocative cloisters), houses an archeological museum today.

The highlight of a visit to the Roman Theater, however, is the view of the city from the Grand Terrase--an almost 360 degree vista that offers stunning scenes of the city with its uniformly tiled red roofs, its spires and domes, its lazy river and its scenic bridges. It was a perfect day for photographs and snap away I did. Meanwhile, a quick walk through the rooms of the museum revealed marble sculpture, bronze figurines, bits and pieces of ancient frescoes--nothing very special anywhere but all contributing towards the age and antiquity of the space.

Lunch in the Piazza of the Church of St. Anastasia:
It was time next to cross the Ponte Pietra again and go out in search of the Church of Saint Anastasia which I could see clearly across the banks of the Adige. Its tall spire was very prominent indeed and as I walked along quiet, almost deserted cobbled streets and squares towards the Piazza, I believed that it was these walks that I enjoyed almost as much as the sights I had come to Verona to see.

Unfortunately, almost the entire interior of the church is under heavy renovation which makes tourist visits pointless, but it did offer me an opportunity to marvel at the two holy water stoups that sit upon the carved stone shoulders of two I. Gobbi (or hunchbacks), one being a hundred years older than the other. They made a wonderful pair indeed and after I took pictures, I decided to find myself a small ristorante somewhere for a pasta lunch as it was 2 pm by this time and I was hungry.

I could not have been luckier in my choice of restaurant for right there in the piazza overlooking the grand exterior of the church was a tiny place that offered a variety of pasta preparations for just 5 euros. As I settled myself down, a basket of Italian rolls was placed at the table and with the accompanying olive oil and balsamic vinegar that accompnaied it, I found myself enjoying one of my favorite treats in the world--bread dipped in balsamic vinaigrette. When the waitress arrived at my table, I ordered Fettucine con Fungi (fettucini with mushrooms) and a few minutes later, I was presented with a dish that was superb--I sprinkled on the fresh parmesan-regiano that was available and with some freshly ground pepper cracked all over it, it was one of the most memorable dishes I ate on this trip--not to mention startlingly good value for money.

The Attractions of the Piazza dei Signori:
After a 45 minute rest, it was time for me to leave the quiet and serenity of these untrodden paths behind and venture into the main tourist areas of Verona which I did find out to be around the Piazza dei Signori. This area was buzzing with student groups (I heard many high school American accents). The statue of the poet Dante dominates the square which is surrounded by imposing medieval buildings, almost all of which are official buildings today. Just around the corner in the adjoining square, a great deal of renovation work was going on at the Tombs of the Scaligeri family (mainly by way of stripping these monuments of centuries of accumulated dirt and grime) but I did enter the tiny Santa Maria Antica Church which proclaimed its age boldly in its hushed interior.

It was time, then, to go out in search of the Casa di Romeo, yes, the home of Romeo--the Romeo of Shakeapeare's play, for Verona, of course, is the great city of the feuding Capulets and Montagues. I found it on a deserted side street, far from the prying eyes of tourists or noisy student groups, its walls, therefore, free of the ugly graffiti that I saw on all the moinuments associated with Juliet!

I passed next through the Piazza del Herbe (which probably got its name from the early produce markets that were held there each week). In modern times, these piazzas serve the needs of tourists looking for cheap trinkets and souvenirs of their visits. The Plalazo dei Raggioni has an imrpessive frontage and the Lion of St. Mark stands sentinel on a tall column (as it does in almost all these medieval cities in the Veneto). I strolled around at leisure, taking in the atmosphere which has remained unchanged in centuries.

Juliet's House:
Then, since it was not too far away, I decided to pop into the Casa de Guiletta, perhaps Verona's most popular attraction. No one is certain whether this quiet courtyard that houses the famous balcony is, in fact, the house of the Capulets. But the folks who run the visits to the house as a commercial venture swear that there are enough signs inside to prove that the Capulets did own this home. I refused to pay the steep admission charge (10 euros) to stand on the balcony and have my picture taken, but I did compromise in that I posed below the balcony near the contemporary sculpture of Juliet that adorns the courtyard. Graffiti covers the walls of the entrance and the hundreds of students who move through the space made it clear where it came from. Inside, near the ticket kiosk, is a bronze sculpture of Shakespeare and at every venue associated with the play are appropriate lines from Romeo and Juliet for it was this drama that immortalized the couple and keeps the name of the Montagues and the Capulets still alive in Verona today.

San Fermo Maggiore:
It was time then to leave these crowded tourist attractions behind and move into more interesting architectural monuments such as the Church of San Fermo Maggiore which I found by following my map and asking occasionally for directions. This very interesting church is unique because it is actually two churches--a large Romanesque one that has a fantastic ship's keel ceiling and beneath it, an older medieval one which sits on top of more excavated ruins. The interiors of these Italian churches are quite unlike any you can see in the rest of Europe and their architectural details always hold tremendous interest for me.

Juliet's Tomb:
I was left then with just enough time and energy to go in search of Juliet's Tomb, another popular tourist attraction especially among teenaged students. I paid the 4. 50 euros that allowed me to enter an old pallazo at the base of which is a tomb that is supposed to contain the remains of the young girl who gave her life for her beloved. The space includes a museum which houses an exhibit of rather tattered frescoes and marble sculpture but none of it was worth spending too much time over.

I headed instead to area where the crypt is located. You enter the area through a wrought iron staircase which does proclaim its age loudly and enter into a brick hewn space where the single tomb in rather a battered shape can be seen. I had expected it to be surrounded by other tomb stones as I was always led to believe, from reading Shakespeare's play, that Juliet was buried in the family tombs. Well, this is a solitary grave with absolutely no marking around it to suggest definitively that it is Juliet's last resting place. At any rate, the mythology that has developed around the lovers allows such commerically run venues to thrive and though there is no documentary evidence to suggest that it is her grave site, it was certainly atmospheric enough to lead anyone to believe this.

With my feet quite killing me by this point, I decided it to was time to return to Vicenza. I called Annalisa and informed her that I would be taking the earlier train and wondered whether she could pick me up from Vicenza. I did not bargain for the fact that not all trains are express ones. The one I did board was a local and while it did allow me to appreciate the rural parts of the Veneto, it took over an hur to arrive in Vicenza by which time it had turned dark.

Annalisa was awaiting me upon my arrival. On the drive home, she told me that she had had an awful day at work and needed to kick back and relax at home. She decided to take orders from her family for pizza. She called a local pizzeria and ordered a margherita (for Giaccomo), a vegetable one with peppers, aubergine and tomatoes (for Giovanni), a radicchio and Brie one for herself and as we divided the pizzas, I had a chance to taste Italy’s great contribution to international gastronomy and loved every morsel. Over a fruit tart for dessert, we ended our meal and a very full and fascinating day indeed.

I was just as tired as Annalisa was as the sight seeing had taken the steam out of me and it was with great anticipation that I went to bed.

Padua--In The Footsteps of Galileo

Thursday, March 19, 2009
Padua, Italy

The sun rose over another beautiful day in Northern Italy as I prepared myself for the lecture I had to give that afternoon at the University of Padua. Annalisa introduced me to Grancereale biscuits studded with dried fruit that she dipped into her coffee and ate for breakfast. I have always loved Annalisa's coffee and I sat on the armchair designed by Le Corbusier but made by her late father as I sipped it and enjoyed the sunlight that streamed almost blindingly into her living room. Corbusier, of course, is the famous French architect/designer (and creator of the city of Chandigarh in India which, I remember my mother was so keen to see that she took us all on a family summer trip one year to this modern Punjabi city.

At 9.00am, we were ready to leave the house for Padua (Padova in Italian) and with Annalisa behind the wheel, we took the country roads that led us to the ancient city. It was exactly a year since Amy and I had spent a day in Padua on our Italian travels. I had included Padua on the itinerary at that time mainly for two reasons: to see Giotto's marvelous frescoes in the Capella Arena or the Capella degli Scrovegni as it is also known and to visit the pilgrimage site of the Basilica of St. Antony of Padua. We had 'done' both sites last year but had not found the entrance to Pallazo Bo which is the main and oldest building of the University of Padua, the second oldest university in Italy after Bologna. So, this year I was keen to see it.

A Guided Tour of the University of Padua:
Annalisa had arranged for me to take a guided tour of the University with her graduate assistant, a lovely young lady named Francesca whose wonderfully fluent English made her an efficient interpreter during the tour. My own Italian was growing by the day and I was able to add to the few vocabulary items I had picked up last year. However, there was no way I could have understood anything the guide said, were it not for Francesca.

As Annalisa's department of Modern Languages was a ten minute walk from Pallazo Bo which is in the heart of the center of Padua, we walked briskly there to make the 10. 15 tour. It happened to be graduation day in Padua and the university area was crowded to capacity with parents and well-wishers who had participated in the formal events. By the time we arrived there, the informal part of the day's celebration had begun. I have never seen anything like it anywhere in the world. Young grads were covered in eggs and flour, their hands and legs taped with bands of thick cello tape and each one was made to stand in the midst of the mess and read out the poems that their friends had composed for the occasion (most poking fun of them). It was a wonderful lesson in Padovan Cultural Studies and I enjoyed the crazy spectacle. Many of them were posing for pictures with their family members with large laurel wreaths hung around their necks while others were placed up on a stand and were being feted. I stood to watch this for a while after the tour, of course.

The tour itself took us into the oldest part of the university which was founded in the 1200s. It's most illustrious professor is Galileo Galilei who taught here for 18 years and did most of his own research here (leading, of course, to his discovery of the telescope which led, in turn, to his discovery of the motion of the earth around the sun, which led, in turn, to his feud with the Vatican and his imprisonment and later recantation). I recalled both Bertolt Brecht's play entitled Galileo as well as the fabulous film of the same name that was made by Joseph Losey and which I had watched at least thirty years ago in Bombay (Sir John Gielgud had unforgettably played the Pope in that film). The guide took us to some of the most beautiful rooms within the Pallazo whose walls are covered with family crests made of plaster of Paris (hence very heavy) that celebrate the presence of very prominent alumni in the University).

In particular, the tour of Pallazo Bo took us to the Anatomy Theater which was used in the Middle Ages for the dissection of cadavers to allow medical students to increase their understanding of the body's systems. This tiny room which is built like a Roman arena in concentric circles allowed students to stand in tiers and look down into the crevice at the base where the body would be placed for dissection. It is a most unusual room and certainly I had never seen anything like it. Famed for its medical and law faculties, the University of Padua made pioneer attempts to further the cause of medicine and I felt privileged to see this medieval space which is no longer in use.

Next, we went to the Aula Magna, where the university officials met regularly to discuss matters of policy and, for a while, to award degrees. Today, the university's students number in the thousand which makes it necessary for them to find new spaces for the commencement ceremony. However, this was a room in which Galileo sat and discussed matters of policy and the walls and ceilings are covered with frescoes that feature the celebrated astronomer as well as Petrarch, the Italian poet who was also a professor in Padua.

The highlight of the tour was the visit to the lecture hall in which Galileo used to address his students together with the podium on which he stood while delivering his words of wisdom. It had a great deal of age to it--that was easy to see--and a carved marble bust of the renowned teacher in placed on it out of respect for his prodigious contribution to Modern Science . It was 11 am by that time and Llew had taken to calling me at that hour. His call came as I was perusing the podium and I did speak with him for a few minutes before calling off.

Meeting Anja at Cafe Pedrocchi:
Once the tour ended, Francesca and I made our way to Cafe Pedrocchi, a famous Paduan institution, where I had made plans to meet my German friend Anja who is currently on a Fellowship at a university in Venice and would be arriving on the train from there to spend the day with me. I had last met Anja a few weeks ago in Berlin which is her native city. She was the friend who had arranged accommodation for me with her friend Anneke in her wonderfully bohemian flat in the West end of Berlin. Anja's train was late and she text-messaged me to convey this, but she did arrive by 11. 45 am. We had a lovely affectionate reunion and then decided to walk to the Basilica of St. Anthony of Padua as I wanted to get there to make a special petition for my complete cure from plantar fascittis.

A Visit to the Basilica of St. Anthony of Padua:
Francesca and Anja were more than happy to accompany me to the spot and we arrived there about 15 minutes later while strolling along the medieval cobbled streets of Padua's historic quarter in which no traffic is allowed. It was nice to see the grand basilica again with its many domes that give it almost an Eastern mosque-like air. We did not have too much time to linger but I did visit the Chapel of the Relics which contains many parts of the saint's body including his tongue and I did see again the remnants of his brown cassock which is in rather a tattered state at the base of the altar that is decorated in Renaissance style with a profusion of carved marble angels and a multitude of paintings. It makes for a very ornate space indeed and a fitting setting for the gold containers that house the relics of the saint. I also had a chance to pray at the Tomb of St. Antony while Anja studied the frescoes in St. James Chapel which were very recently restored. Anja is an art historian who is working on her Ph.D. on a Renaissance Venetian artist--hence her interest in the chapel's frescoes (which I had seen last year).

Out on the main square, we posed for pictures by the striking sculpture of Guatamelatta, an equestrian statue by Donatello which looks down upon the bus loads of visitors who make the pilgrimage to the shrine. By this time, it was past 12. 30 and we needed to stop somewhere for lunch before returning to the university's Department of Modern Languages for my 2 pm lecture. We did find a very nice restaurant in a square near the Pallazo dei Raggioni and over a lovely pasta with zuchhini and prawns in a light and delicious tomato sauce, we sat on the pavement in the warming sunshine as I caught up with Anja and all her news. It was marvelous of her to come from Venice for my lecture and when she informed me that her partner Andrea would be joining us for dinner later that evening, I was even more pleased.

My Lecture at the University of Padua:
Then, we walked briskly back to the building where Annalisa was awaiting our return past the lovely old stone bridges and the cobbled streets with their oodles of medieval atmosphere. Padua is indeed a beautiful city and I was pleased to have the chance to visit it again. However, it was time for me to turn my attention to the official part of my visit and with the computer set up to screen the film 1947 Earth, I began my lecture on Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India and its migration from page to screen through the hands of film maker Deepa Mehta. The classroom was crowded with Italian graduate students (over a hundred of them) who are taking Annalisa's course on 'Post Colonial Literature, Film and Culture'. They are fortunate indeed that Annalisa's contacts with eminent faculty members of Post-Colonial Literature around their world allow them to have many guest lecturers who bring their own brand of teaching and scholarship to these students' curriculum. For most of them, English is a foreign language and I was instructed to speak slowly.

The lecture took about an hour and went well with the students listening attentively. It was followed by the screening of the film and we decided that after the movie, we would break out into a discussion. All went well with the session and after the screening, Annalisa suggested a five minute break. The Q&A session that followed was interesting as Annalisa joined me at the podium and brought her own insights into the points I had raised about the impact on the Partition of the Indian sub-continent on the weakest and poorest sections of the population, most of all its women. By using fiction--albeit based greatly on her own life and memories of the violence that arose in Lahore--Sidhwa was able to articulate the idiocy of the political decisions that caused so much upheaval in the lives of ordinary people and destroyed forever the communal harmony that had existed on the sub-continent before the British policies of Divide and Rule brought distrust and hatred to the masses.

Spritz and Italian Dinner at Day's End:
Right after the session finished at 6 pm, Annalisa, Anja and I headed off for a drink--or a spritz as they call it in Northern Italy. At a small cafe, we sat down with very refreshing and energizing Camparis and Aperols that were mixed with club soda and served with small hors d'oeuvres which we nibbled. It was a very relaxed start to our evening and at 7. 30 pm, we made our way to the restaurant where Annalisa had made a reservation for us. It had started to rain by this time and under Annalisa's huge umbrella we found our way to the spot where Andrea was waiting for us.

I had a really wonderful Italian meal in their stimulating company. We started with a small glass of white wine but ordered a carafe of house red wine with our meal. Annalisa suggested I go for a crespelle which was a large crepe filled with a pumpkin mousse that was scrumptious and served on a small bed of cheese sauce. Andrea opted for spinach filled ravioli while Annalisa chose a rather unusual dish of local grilled cheese with bacon and a creamy polenta.

Conversation flowed easily as Anja told us about being stopped at Padua station and being interviewed by a television crew on her views about the current Pope. It turned out that all of them (who have been following the news about the Pope's visits to African nations) are riled about his conservative comments everywhere and his interference in Italian politics and affairs of state. Since I had no idea what they were talking about (as I have been traveling so much that I am out of touch with global news), I merely listened but as I have not warmed to this Pope, I could understand where their outrage was coming from for this Pontiff seems to have Foot in Mouth Disease and makes outrageous comments wherever he goes.

Then it was time for dessert and Anja and I stared a bowl of tiramisu while Andrea chose a panna cotta. Dinner was an extremely enlightening meal for me as I understood how my Italian intellectual friends perceive this Pope (very badly, I might add) and how averse they are to his stance on crucial issues.

By 9pm, it was time to say goodbye to Andrea and Anja who were taking the train back to Venice and to thank them to making the journey to Padua to meet me. I settled the bill (having decided to treat all my friends to dinner at the end of a very successful day) and we left the restaurant in a light drizzle and made our way back to Annalisa's car. We arrived at her flat within a half hour and since both of us were rather tired by that point, we were straight to bed.

Venturing into the Veneto with Annalisa

Wednesday, March 18. 2009
Marostica, Bassano Del Grappa, Vicenza, Italy

I was aware of the fact that Annalisa’s boys left for school about 7. 30 as did her husband Giorgio. I decided to lie low in my room reading The Sea while they bustled around with breakfast and at about 8.30 am, I left my room, washed up, and joined Annalisa for lovely Italian Lavazza coffee made in the typical Italian mokas that Annalisa had once presented me on my last visit to her place in Vicenza with Llew and Chriselle many years ago—what was it? Seven or eight years easily, when her boys were so much younger, we had spent just a couple of days in Vicenza. Over coffee, and Grancereale biscuits with Annalisa’s delicious homemade pear jam, we chatted some more and made plans for the day. When we had both showered, we dressed and left her flat about 10. 30 for a bit of sight seeing in the Veneto.

Annalisa and I were classmates 23 years ago at Exeter College, Oxford, at a time when we were both doing our Ph.D. in English Literature. Not only has our friendship survived over the years but it has grown stronger as we both became professors in world famous institutions and continued our research into the Literature of Empire—Annalisa specializes in African and African-American Literature (with Australian Literature thrown in for good measure) while I specialize in the Literature of the Indian Sub-continent with Multi-ethnic American Literature thrown into the mix! In the past couple of decades as we have taught and researched, written and published our books, we have traveled around the world and like the writers whose work we analyze, we have truly became transnationals ourselves.

Over the years, we have had renewals of our friendship in London, Vicenza, Oxford, Venice, and each time we marvel at the paths our lives have taken and the fulfillment it has brought us. It was at her invitation that I was in Italy to give a lecture to her graduate students of Post-Colonial Literature at the University of Padua. But that would be tomorrow…for the moment, Annalisa had taken a day off to show me the Veneto—because, she has known me long enough to know that I am a “compulsive sightseer”—her words!

En Route to Marostica:
So, off we went in her car to see Marostica, passing by the Italian countryside that was slowly awakening to the beauty of spring. We followed the Lower Alps along the country roads passing by the few surviving industries in the Veneto, an area that, Annalisa explained to me, was once very wealthy but is now reduced to poverty through competition from countries like China.

She thought we should head to Marostica, a walled city that is famous for an annual game of chess that is played in the main city square with real men dressed in lavish medieval costumes moving across the giant chessboard that is painted in the center. We walked around the square and then, just by chance, ventured into a small craft store that sold beads. Annalisa’s eye was caught by large silver beads in a contemporary style that she thought would make great ear-rings and before long, she was purchasing both of us a pair that the saleslady showed us how to fashion into dangling costume jewelry. After I bought a couple of postcards, we left the town and got back on the road, headed this time to Bassano del Grappa.

Bridge Across Bassano:
Bassano was about a half hour further away from Marostica and it was mainly to look at a famous covered bridge that we were stopping in the town. The Veneto, is the great region of one of Italy’s most famous architects, Andrea Palladio. It was Palladio who influenced Inigo Jones who brought the Neo-Classical principles of balance and symmetry from Palladio to England after he had spent a long while in Italy—thus changing the landscape of Medieval, Elizabethan and Tudor English styles and replacing I them with the grandeur of Greece and Rome. Inigo Jones, in turn, influenced Christopher Wren—so it might be fair to say that London as it is today is largely the result of the influence of Palladio and, not surprisingly, there is a special exhibit on Palladio right now at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly (which I intend to attend with my friend Rosemary Massouras who is a member).

So, we parked our car, walked down a few picturesque blocks towards the old historic quarter of town in the direction of the River. As we arrived closer to the river banks, we passed by the distilleries that make the famous strong Italian wine called Grappa which is made from the lees of the grape—it is a fiery and very strongly flavored liqueur and in one of the distilleries, I had a little taste but found it much too strong for my delicate palate! The town center is also famous for white ceramics which are made in their hundreds from the kaolin or white clay found in the region.

It wasn’t long before we were at the river and gazing upon Palladio’s brilliant piece of work—the Covered Bridge which is known as the Ponte Coperto or the Ponte Delgi Alpini. It is unique in that it is designed with timber supports that flex to accommodate the swelling flow of the river from the melting snow that rushes down the mountainside in the spring! How ingenious a piece of work is that??? Annalisa and I walked over the bridge (which I thought would have stores on both sides—as on the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno in Florence--but which was not!) The beautiful pastel colored buildings hugging both banks of the river Brenta which lie at the foot of the Monte Grappa made some lovely sights indeed and with the sun shining sportingly down upon us on a gorgeous spring day, we felt truly blessed to look upon this sight.

Back to Vicenza and the Villas of Palladio:
Andrea Palladio’s work is seen all over the region surrounding Vicenza and when Annalisa suggested that we go home for lunch and then take in the most famous of the Vicenza villas, I thought it was a great idea. Back at her place, the boys had returned from school and were famished. Annalisa quickly rustled up a pasta featuring tagliatelle and her home made Bolognese sauce and with her mother-in-law’s marvelous recipe for zucchini with salt and pepper, we had a superb meal—of course, she had served me generously and I was stuffed.

Viewing The Rotunda and the Pallazo Valmarana ai Nani:
An hour later, after Annalisa had caught up with some paper work, I was back in the car with her and heading to the Rotunda, Palladio’s most famous work in the Veneto—which is the region in the extreme north of Italy, just south of the Alps that border Austria. We found a spot to park her car and headed on foot to the Rotunda.

This very simple but very striking building is the model for so many of the world’s most famous landmarks including Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia called Monticello which I have visited and the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. It is basically a cube upon which sits a dome, the center allowing for the construction of a rotunda or round room. As we climbed the steps to the Rotunda (the entry fee was 10 euros for admission to the house and the garden), we overlooked the rolling countryside.

Once inside, a true treat awaited us for the decoration is so lavish and so overwhelming that we were grateful for the fact that the rooms were very sparsely furnished. Palladio was responsible for the exterior structure but the interior was done by contemporary painters whose frescoes leave one breathless. In addition to paintings that reached the ceiling, there was extravagant plaster sculpture, vines, fruit and flowers and other forms of Renaissance decoration that quite assaulted my senses. We were able to tour the rooms but were disappointed not to find any explanatory literature that could have sensitized us to the elements that we ought not to have missed.

Then, we were crossing the streets to the mansion on the opposite side that is known as the Pallazo Valmarana ai Nani because it was commissioned and owned by the Valmarana family (admission fee 8 euros). The story goes that their daughter was a dwarf and in order to make her feel as normal as possible they only hired other dwarfs to run their household. One day, the young woman looked out of the window and saw a handsome prince and realized that she had been fooled and, in desperation, she committed suicide.

The walls of the pallazo are decorated with sculptures of dwarfs; but apart from this very sad story, the attraction of this building lies in the magnificent frescos inside by Giambatista Tiepolo and his son Domenico Tiepolo. While the larger pallazo has scenes that are typical of the older Tiepolo’s style—lovely cloud filled blue skies, classical and ethereal figures blowing trumpets and offering each other tidbits, the smaller guest house is decorated by the son whose style favored the depiction of rural Italian peasants getting on with the daily tasks of life. Each of the villas was just stunning in the range of talent they portrayed of the amazing father-son duo and the manner in which this talent was manifested through the patronage of wealthy Italians like the Valmaranas. Classical stories from mythology were depicted all over the walls and ceiling and the fill the house with atmospheric detail that was just superb.

A Walking Tour of Vicenza:
Then, Annalisa drove me back to Vicenza and since she needed to return home for the arrival of her sons from school, she dropped me in the town center where I decided to use my photocopied pages from the DK Eye Witness Guide series to take a self-guided walking tour of Vicenza.

Now Llew, Chriselle and I had toured Vicenza years ago on what happened to be the coldest January day in 25 years! We had loved it but could not enjoy it as the cold simply numbed us. Armed with my notes and a map, I began to take in the wonders of Palladio’s great city and though the light was fading fast, I managed to see the major landmarks such as the Loggia del Capitaniato, the ‘Basilica' (undergoing restoration), the Duomo or Cathedral, the Piazza del Herbe (completely covered by ugly scaffolding), the grand palazzos along Corso Palladio, the two statues (one of Garibaldi and one of Palladio) on two opposite sides of the old historic town center and the two landmark columns in the Piazza dei Signori that feature the famous Lion of St. Mark and St. Mark himself. The Torre de Piazza or tall tower rises above the square that is surrounded by fashionable stores selling upscale merchandise and I enjoyed browsing through some of them. It was clear to me that Vicenza is a wealthy town and the many designer stores and smart boutiques filled with expensive luxuries proclaimed the Italy of old that so many of us recall from previous visits over the last twenty odd years.

Then, when my feet started to protest, I made my way back to Annalisa’s place and found that she had started to get dinner organized. It was going to be one of those ‘grazing tables’ where all you do is help yourself to a variety of cheeses and cold cuts and salad that is laid out on the table buffet style. You are meant to nibble on it all with wonderful olive ciabatta bread. It made an unusual and very delicious dinner indeed and as the boys and Annalisa and I made companionable conversation, we decided to spend the evening watching an episode of Morse.

taking orders for pizza. She called a local pizzeria and ordered a margherita (for Giaccomo), a vegetable one with peppers, aubergine and tomatoes (for Giovanni), a radicchio and Brie one for herself and as we divided the pizzas, I had a chance to taste Italy’s great contribution to international gastronomy and loved every morsel. Over a fruit tart for dessert, we ended our meal and a very full and fascinating day indeed.

That evening, after dinner, the boys set up a projector that Giorgio that brought home so that we could enjoy The Death of the Self—the Morse episode that they could not wait to watch. As always happens, since I enjoy watching Morse more for the architecture, the setting and the characters that are so splendidly created, I never remember the actual plots themselves and I have to admit that I nodded off for about 15 minutes. However, the boys and Annalisa said that it was a very interesting episode indeed and they were so tickled pink to see their lovely city featured in a Morse episode that their day ended on a very high note indeed.

I returned to my room to read some more of John Banville and get ready for bed.