Why do Dervishes Whirl?

Jalaluddin Rumi was wandering the streets of Konya, overcome with grief at the death of a dear friend, when he was captured by the rhythmic beat of a goldsmith's hammer. He started whirling, found consolation, and inspired a tradition that has continued for seven hundred years.

Sufi whirling has always been laced with lamentation. Though, arguably, the whirling in the cartoon above, whirling to lament a moment which is about to die, is even more poignant than traditional Sufi whirling. I found this cartoon at xkcd.com.

Incidentally, I did get to see a dervish sema ceremony on my last trip to Istanbul, at the Hodja Pasha Cultural Centre. Real dervishes do whirl counter-clockwise.

Hindi: Turkish :: Turkey : English?

I had been in Istanbul for a couple of days, gamely drinking Turkish coffee to keep my clients company. Now, my soul craved the familiar comfort of a Tall Skinny Hazelnut Latte. I spotted a Starbucks - on Istiklal Caddessi, in the Beyoglu district - and homed in.

The Starbucks had a mix of wooden chairs and cushy sofas, posters promising schools in coffee growing areas, a display of coffee beans in various stages of roasting, chocolate muffins, cinnamon swirls, an easy listening jazz sound, the Beyoglu Starbucks had it all. If a brand manager had dropped in as a mystery shopper, she would have glowed with pride. This Starbucks could have been in London, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Vienna, Athens, or at the Sainsbury’s next to my office. With one exception: they had something on the counter labelled “hindi sandwiches”.

I asked my Turkish colleague what hindi sandwiches were. He explained that the Turkish word for turkey is hindi, so hindi sandwiches are turkey sandwiches. I may have looked a little quizzical, so he continued, “Turkeys are oriental birds. They come from the East. So in English they are called Turkey, because Turkey is to the east of England, and in Turkish they are called Hindi, because India is to the east of Turkey, and Hindi means Indian in Turkish”. I checked with a couple of other Turkish friends, and they confirmed that this turkeys/ hindis-come-from-the-east theory has widespread currency among young Turks. It makes some sense.

I couldn’t buy this theory, because I just happen to know that turkeys don’t come from India. They are not called “chini” in India, either, in the belief that they come from China. There is no native Indian word for turkey. Even after decades of globalization, turkey is still almost unknown in India.

A more plausible explanation is that hindi came to mean turkey in Turkish for the same reason that native Americans were called Red Indians.

Turkeys are American birds. They were first domesticated by the Aztecs. The conquistadors introduced them to Spain, from where they came to Europe through Turkish merchants in Ottoman North Africa. The Turkish merchants called the birds hindi because they thought Columbus had discovered a route to India. Europeans called the bird turkey, because of the Turkish merchants who sold them.

Incidentally, the Portuguese word for turkey is "peru", which may be more accurate than either hindi or turkey.

On Being a Grown Up

"Life gradually became less a search for meaning than a process of optimization: how to put this sentence the best way in the fewest words, how to choose the right things to buy at the supermarket and pay for them in the fastest-moving line, what to do and ingest in order to keep from getting sick or depressed..."

The essential difference between brahmacharya and grihastashram. Taken, a little out of context and beyond all consequences, from In The World, by Elif Batuman, in a recent New Yorker.

Conserving Brutalism? The curious case of the Preston Bus Station

The English love their heritage. I am continuously amazed and heartened at how much care is lavished on everything from prehistoric dolmens, to Roman ruins, to Victorian facades, to Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This love isn't limited to a vanishingly small elite. The National Trust, one of many NGOs that look after England's heritage, has a paid up membership of four million people, not including sympathizers like me (my membership has lapsed).

However, I am discovering that my sympathy for heritage has its limits. I am unable to grasp how a large, concrete bus station in a small town in Lancashire is heritage worth preserving. Yet, there is a movement to do just that.

Preston Bus Station has been declared a "monument at risk" by the World Monuments Trust. Dr Jonathan Foyle, chief executive of the trust, described Preston bus station as "fabulously, boldly expressive of the year it was built". Apparently, this bus station is a prime example of the Brutalist style of architecture, which was in vogue in 1969. The term Brutalist comes from beton brut, French for raw concrete, which was the avant garde architect's material of choice in 1969. I suspect the term has stuck because "Brutalist" captures the spirit of these structures precisely.

This argument is happening about a functioning bus station, not a piece of abstract art. The local council, which wants to demolish this structure, says on BBC's Radio Four that this Brutalist structure doesn't work properly as a bus station: it is way out on the edge of the town and too far away from other transportation hubs like the railway station.

With pragmatism and aesthetics on the same side of the argument, usually there would be only one winner. However, in England, I suspect the Brutalist bus station on the edge of Preston has a bright future. Google found me many web-petitions defending the Brutalist bus station, and none supporting the council's demolition plan.

Haka for World Peace

The Rugby World Cup is on. I am cheering for the All Blacks.

India is not playing, so I can swear allegiance to any team in the tournament. I would, ideally, choose my team based on their skills, tactics, character and creativity. However, sadly, I don’t know rugby well enough to exercise that kind of nuanced judgement. I’ve worked out the scoring system and sort of know the main rules – like you can’t pass the ball forward – but I still find penalties baffling, and I can’t tell a fly-half from a hooker. No, I didn’t become an All Blacks fan because of their game.

Some people think I’m supporting the All Blacks just because they are going to win the World Cup. That is not the case. Yes, the Kiwis are the bookie’s favourite, but I’ve been a sports fan for too long to read much meaning into the bookie’s reading of the tea leaves. My natural instinct is the opposite: to support the spunky underdog rather than the favourite. The truth is, I am cheering for the All Blacks because I love the Haka.

There is a lot to love about the Haka. The lilting melody, uplifting lyrics and the balletic grace of the performers never fails to stir the spirit. But, on reflection, I think the main reason the Haka resonates with me is its political symbolism.

The Haka is obviously a Maori war ritual, yet, both Polynesian and Caucasian Kiwis embrace it as their own. It doesn’t seem to be an in-your-face assertion of Maori pride, like say the Tommie Smith’s Black Salute at the 1968 Olympic Games. It doesn’t seem to be an ironic or mocking adoption of Maori imagery by a dominant Caucasian culture either. Daniel Carter and Malili Muliaina both seem to perform the Haka in the same spirit, with the same pride and conviction.

I sometimes hear about being "tolerant" of other identities in multi-cultural societies. Personally, I don't actually like being tolerant. When I'm being tolerant, I'm just keeping the lid on irritation, resentment or even anger that are simmering beneath the surface. A zestful, whole-hearted embrace of another identity, like the Haka, feels so much better than mere tolerance. Maybe that is the path to genuine, successful multi-cultural societies.

The way John Lennon might have put it:

"You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope one day you'll join us
And the world will do the Haka as one...."

C'mon All Blacks!

Yorkshire Souls experiencing the Brahman

"And then a scholar said, Speak of Talking. And he answered, saying...
In much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings, but cannot fly."

From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran.

The words were on my mind because my family and I were at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park last weekend. We encountered these Yorkshire Souls: these alphabet-lattice figures sitting under a tree hugging their knees. From certain angles, or in certain light, they were hardly apparent, they melted into the background. From other angles, they looked solid.

We walked through the Yorkshire Souls, and their big brother The House of Knowledge, and looked out at the world through their alphabet lattices. The view from inside the Yorkshire Souls was sort of like my view of the world itself. I perceive the world through words, symbols, which automatically distances and separates me from the world I am perceiving.

The way Paul Simon put it:

"...From the shelter of my mind,
Through the window of my eyes..."

The world seen through words and alphabets is maya, only an illusion. I have to step out of the beautiful alphabet-lattice of maya, step out of the Yorkshire Soul, to experience truth, to experience the Brahman. Many spiritual practices are about escaping this illusion of maya and directly experiencing reality: Vipassana Yoga, or the Trappist practice of silence, or the Japanese tea ceremony, or perhaps even the Mevlevi dervishes, dancing themselves into a trance to escape the boundaries of the self. Today, I could taste a little of that sense of liberation, just by looking through the alphabet-lattice of the Yorkshire Souls and stepping back into the sunlight. Wow.

Were other people who came across the Yorkshire Souls similarly reminded of maya and the Brahman?

I wasn't sure. So I asked my daughters what they made of the Yorkshire Souls. My nine-year old said "They must be chatterboxes. They have so much to say." My six-year old was reminded of a trick the children play on Mam'zelle in Malory Towers. Mam'zelle sat on a stool and came away with a bright pink "OI" on her black-skirted behind. Maybe the children played a similar trick on the Yorkshire Souls' beds, so they were completely covered with alphabets. Which makes sense, because the Brahman can be experienced by a chatterbox, or in children's pranks, just as much as it can be experienced in the sanctum sanctorum of St Peter's Basilica, or in an ice-cave at Gangotri.

More pictures of the Yorkshire Souls and The House of Knowledge are here. The Jaume Plensa exhibit that these Yorkshire Souls are a part of is still on, and is totally worth a visit.

Lover's Bridge, Sofia, Bulgaria

I spread my map out across the reception desk, pointed to a scribble on a chit of paper, and asked the concierge, "How do I get to this restaurant?"

"No problem, sir." the concierge gesticulated broadly towards the Hilton Hotel's glass frontage. "Just walk across the Lover's Bridge, through to the end of the park, and the restaurant is just two streets away." He bent down to ink the restaurant on the map.

"Lover's Bridge?" I asked, remembering the Bridge of Sighs in Venice and Pont Neuf in Paris. "It is right here, near the hotel?"

"Yes sir", said the concierge. "Very famous in Sofia. Loving couples always come there. It is very nice, sir. You will see on the way to the restaurant." So I joined my colleagues in the hotel lobby and set off for dinner at the restaurant, half imagining a scenic, pastoral walk over tinkling streams.

It turned out that Sofia's Lover's Bridge is a concrete pedestrian walkway, across an enormous eight lane motorway. It is topped by a McDonald's golden arches logo, advertising a restaurant located in the traffic island between the traffic lanes. It is flanked on either side by government issued informational posters about Bulgaria's cultural and archaeological heritage. There were plenty of business people in suits walking over the bridge on that sunny summer evening; there were also a noticeably large number of young couples holding hands.

I asked my Bulgarian colleagues about this Lover's Bridge at dinner, about how young Bulgarian couples feel about romantic rendezvous a few meters above roaring traffic. They explained that at one time this bridge passed over a stream. During the Soviet era, it was found that the path of the stream was ideal for a motorway through the city. So, Soviet engineers built a motorway over the stream. The stream now emerges from under the motorway a few kilometers away from the city. Despite this, the bridge remains an favourite romantic spot. Nobody really minds cars instead of water. Above all, Bulgarians are a pragmatic people.

It was after dark when we walked back from the restaurant to the hotel. The atmosphere on the bridge was now distinctly steamy. My colleagues and I could not help but observe that love was now blooming on the concrete walkway, while the molten yellow stream of traffic flowed underneath the young lovers. A busker started to play as we approached the end of the bridge. He was playing Californication, by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, in English.





More pictures of my walk across this bridge are visible here.