Beyond Belief

The 20th century witnessed the emergence of tourism as an industry. It also effectively killed the traveler. The Marco Polos, Ibn Batutas and Hieun Tsangs whose serpentine caravans slithered through the darkest corners of the soul – the brigands around the corner, the snows plotting an avalanche, the wild stripes of the tiger, the last drop of water - have sired a legacy of winding queues at check-in counters where the only niggling uncertainties concern delayed flights and the availability of aisle seats. A million vacations roll by every year, on the red carpets of air-conditioned transfers and luxury suites, unsullied by the touch of the earth; too stoned from adrenalin trips - bungee-jumps and para-glides - to be able to smell the heady fragrance of the wet soil - drenched by tears of joy and sorrow pouring forth from the clouded layers of history…

Sir Vidia, with his acid tongue and boundless cynicism, doesn’t exactly answer to the description of a seeker. But notwithstanding his conservative tweed jacket and the rakish pipe sticking out of his mouth, he comes close to discovering what has eluded generations of loin-clothed Hare Krishnas and hippies, hoping for a hashish-enabled enlightenment on the banks of the Ganges – the spirit of a land.

Beyond Belief is a continuation of Naipaul’s travels in Islamic countries, a journey that began in 1981 with “Among the Believers”. The focus of the sequel, published in 1999, is on “excursions among the converted people” – or civilizations that have found themselves eroded, and partially erased, by the Arabism that, in the opinion of the author, comes ineluctably bundled with Islam. The cultures that come under the scanner as a result of this purported assault include Persia, Pakistan and the East Indies.

Naipaul’s investigation principally relies on an oft-mentioned diary that weaves together countless strands of random thought, patiently drawn out by the author from minds that do not always share his enthusiasm for clarity, detail and honesty. His language is decidedly more sophisticated than his deductive technique but the frequency of phrases like “The moment had passed” betrays the author’s preference for concentrating his attentions on the complexity of his subject rather than on demonstrations of literary prowess. The grounded-ness is also reflected in the nature of his inquiries – the hard evidence of history, politics and economics is brought to bear upon any inclination towards mystical flights of fancy. Conclusions are gleaned from the grime on the worker’s face, the furrows on the farmer’s brow and the blood in the soldier’s eyes. These islanded tales of humdrum contentment, frustrated indifference and cataclysmic devastation are fused, brilliantly, to shape magnificent continents – alive with rivers of blood streaming down the ages, forbidding forests of fear and horror, deserts of unrealized aspirations and towering mountains of hope.

One is unable to agree with Naipaul’s central thesis. It is difficult to argue, for instance, that Islam transformed Malaysia or Indonesia any more than the waves of Hinduism and Buddhism had done previously. Indeed, while traces of pre-Islamic culture are more than evident in these countries, none whatsoever remains of anything that might have preceded the Indic religions. The conflicts and contradictions that the author rants about are at best an illustration of a general principle that the psyche of a subjected culture inevitably suffers from a schizophrenic fracture, often resulting in a dichotomous ambivalence towards the past. This is no less true of Aryan India or Western Christendom than of Islamic Persia or Pakistan.

However, while Naipaul’s conclusions appear colored by his well-documented prejudices, they leave untouched, his extraordinarily perspicacious insights into the tormented, confounded civilizations he examines. No painstakingly filmed documentary, no detailed travelogue, no exhibition of photographs, not even an actual visit can match the unforgiving clarity of the mirror he holds up to his subjects’ souls.

The traveler has been rescued from extinction.

Sonnet

Dedicated to the master of the form, Sir W. And to a recent memory.

Thinking about Love

It strikes deep but with muted pain
Until, evulsed, it leaves the savaged heart,
Disemboweled of wisdom and possessed again,
By a reckless lust for its lethal shaft.

Secured, it invites the attentions of reason -
Burrowing in vain, through its endless tunnel.
But when it rumbles, weary of the investigation,
Muddy and muddled emerges, reason’s shovel.

Memories strung across its tortuous train,
Sparkle with pearls of laughter and ecstasy.
And others of lustre ordinary, fester in pain.
Bitter, but milder by far, than derailed love’s agony.

Foolish is prudence for damming its torrents, unaware
Of the flood waiting, for the levee to burst in despair.

Version 1.1

New. Hopefully, improved...

Thinking about Love

It strikes deep, but stifles its sting
Until expelled by the apostate heart
And conceited wisdom, in concert inviting,
The bloody vengeance of the uprooted shaft.

Secured, it attracts, the attentions of reason -
Burrowing in vain, through its endless tunnel.
But when it rumbles, weary of the investigation,
Muddy and muddled emerges, reason’s shovel.

Memories strung across its tortuous train,
Sparkle with pearls of laughter and ecstasy.
And others of lustre ordinary, fester in pain.
Bitter, but gentler by far, than derailed love’s agony.

Foolish is prudence for damming its torrents, unaware
Of the flood waiting, for the levee to burst in despair.

Plunging In

Testing the Waters
Che went in first, slicing through the aquamarine waters with a taut, streamlined elegance. A stark contrast with the knots in my stomach - and in my brow, weighed down by 15 kilos of diving equipment…and the dark dread of unfathomable depths…
BCD? Check
Weights? Check.
Releases? Check.
Air? Check.
Final OK?….uhhhh… Lubricated by the terror oozing out of my pores, I sidled down the side of my boat with all the grace of a collapsing iceberg. The sea lapped me up hungrily and flipped me over a few times, forcing me into an abject, umbilical posture of submission.
I suppose my unconditional capitulation was accepted – sanity eventually surfaced and I found myself floating, none the worse for wear, in the middle of the Sulu Sea. A silent prayer of gratitude was sent up to the genius behind such brilliant mnemonics as “British Women Really Are Fun” and “Bruce Willis Ruins All Films”, standing for Buoyancy Control Device (BCD), Weights, Releases, Air and Final OK – PADI’s 5 point pre-dive checklist.

Surfing to Sipadan
The Professional Association of Diving Instructors or PADI is the biggest name in recreational diving, and runs a huge network dive shops around the world. PADI’s Open Water Dive program, lasting between 3 and 5 days, is the most popular launching pad for adventures in diving and seemed to be just the thing for my upcoming vacation. After days of surfing through the infinite list of options on PADI’s website, I found myself heading for Sipadan, a tiny island off the coast of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo that claimed to offer among the finest diving in Asia.

Divers are not allowed to stay overnight in Sipadan and must base themselves either at one of the surrounding islands or at Semporna on mainland Sabah. Semporna, presumably a corruption of the Sanskrit word “Sampurna”, is a bustling fishing town that moonlights as a somewhat reluctant host to the flock of dive-pilgrims and sun-worshippers that homes in every tourist season. A sultry air hangs hot and heavy over its eternal summer, prodded unhurriedly along by the muezzin’s lackadaisical calls and the daily hullabaloo at the fish-market. The Semporna Mosque, an unremarkable structure shouldering a gaudy gold dome, is the town’s sole tourist attraction and the focal point of rows of stilted hamlets that reach out, in search of a livelihood, towards the bountiful sea.

Padding Up
Semporna’s paucity of talking points was probably just as well given the sweat and toil that PADI had in store for me. My welcome drink was inconsiderately substituted by the fat, intimidating tome that was PADI’s course material. I labored through its dreary pages with a long face, eliciting a welcome suggestion that I try the video instead. A troupe of bulging biceps and surfboard stomachs bounded onto the screen, proceeding to tackle a series of potential catastrophes with unflappable smugness…But one of the divers falls apart from his group, his oxygen running out quickly. The currents are getting insistent now, tugging hard at his tired limbs…and the blue deep eventually drags its hapless prey into an infinite, timeless void….

Che broke into my unsanctioned siesta with a sheet full of bathymetric brainteasers…I wasn’t quite prepared for a MENSA test on a diving vacation but did my best to navigate the maze of tables and charts he’d spread around me…It was to take him many exasperating hours before my torpid intellect could meaningfully respond to PADI’s daunting challenge.
Che is a cheerful South African backpacker who’s drifted in from the cold currents around Cape Town to join the many footloose souls engaged in an extended diving orgy at Scuba Junkie, one of Semporna’s leading dive operators. The atmosphere at the dive shop is a very social one, with a Babel of tongues and accents, cut loose by a sparkling array of spirits, transporting the little shack into a dreamy, techno trance, many worlds away from sleepy Semporna…

I went into my underwater training session the next day, tormented by a ringing headache. The key to effortless scuba diving is “neutral buoyancy”, jargon for being able to pivot up and down on one’s fins using only the breath to control movement. It looked straightforward enough when Che demonstrated his see-saw act, hands clasped across the chest, pulling back into a clock-wise direction inches before hitting the sea-bed…but my performance turned out to be rather more spectacular – a deep breath would send me shooting towards the surface and if I exhaled in an attempt to tame my flailing flight, I’d be dispatched in the opposite direction, like a punctured balloon, to a thorny reception of sea urchins. Che drank deep from his bottomless well of patience to impose some restraint on my ungainly underwater acrobatics although I never quite managed to replicate his perfect pendulum-like swing. In the end, however, my little routine was deemed worthy of PADI’s approval and I wasn’t going to fret about the elegance with which the result was achieved.

Atlantis
My newly procured certificate was duly invoked to book myself on the next available voyage to Sipadan. I headed out to the island with the languid sun, ushered in by a balmy breeze, settling heavily on my eyelids. The serene, turquoise waters seemed to rise oddly, in thin reedy stands fanning out into a darker green…Just as I began assessing the state of my consciousness, Che bombed into the sea, working up a wall of water that crashed down on me in a wet and salty assurance of reality - Sipadan’s shaggy mop of coconut trees peeped out of the horizon - it was time to gear up. British Women/Bruce Willis – take your pick…I’d never been very fond of Bruce Willis.
We went down on our amphibious quest, holding our BCD hoses above our heads in a reverential salute to our irascible host, earning ourselves a soft landing on its alien soil. My anxieties dissolved rapidly, in an ocean of stupefied wonder…in the celestial shoals of color that flitted past, darted across, hovered above, lurked beneath…in that hallucinatory expanse of refracted light and refractory senses...
The dive-masters would diligently rattle their oxygen tanks upon every manifestation of the Lord’s liquid imagination - the Lion Fish and his iridescent mane, smoldering inside a marine cave; Eagle Rays striking out of their sandy bed; Reef Sharks dozing on the sea bed, utterly unmindful of the damage to their reputation; Green Turtles ambling up with an outstretched paw…All too soon, however, the pressure gauge signaled the need to ascend. We went up to a depth of 5 metres for the mandatory “safety stop”, recommended for a number of good reasons, one of which is to prevent the lungs from bursting into smithereens as they expand during the ascent!
We hovered there, in suspended animation, beneath a gently shimmering veil that enmeshed the twisted angles of the sun when a rude fish tore into the tranquil fabric with a quick exploratory circle. Satisfied with his reconnaissance, he waved in his waiting comrades, thousands and thousands of them, to form a frenzied, black whorl around us, spinning my benumbed, disbelieving senses into a dizzy climax.

Unremarkable
Barracudas, Che tells me when are back on the boat – the explanation doing nothing to alleviate my delirious ecstasy. We chatter on, towards the Semporna shore. Its unremarkable mosque and unremarkable stilt villages gradually emerge from the setting sun. As does the unremarkable fish market, housing the stinking, bloody piles of the day’s catch…from that, oh-so-remarkable world, a few feet below…

FACTFILE
PADI Dive Certification can be obtained from hundreds of Dive Centres across the world including several sites in India and South East Asia. Check out http://www.padi.com/. Expect to pay about USD3-400 for the course including equipment. Shorter introductory diving courses are also available.

You should be able to swim continuously for 200 metres and float for 10 minutes in order to get a PADI Open Water License – no other prior experience or knowledge is necessary.
Scuba Junkie (www.scuba-junkie.com) and North Borneo Dive and Sea Sports (www.northborneo.net) are the two main dive operators in Semporna. Dives to Sipadan can also be booked through several dive operators in Kota Kinabalu. Visit www.sabahtourism.com

Semporna can be reached via Tawau which has connections to Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu. Tickets can be booked online through an international credit card at http://www.airasia.com/ or www.malaysiaairlines.com.

Staying on the islands around Sipadan (such as Mabul - http://www.sipadan-mabul.com.my/ ) offers a luxurious but expensive alternative to staying at Semporna. Accommodation options in Semporna include the Dragon Inn, built on stilts (50 – 100 USD per night) or in the dorms at Scuba Junkie.

Vegetarians will not go hungry but do not expect anything other than very basic rice and noodles. Make sure your dive operator knows about your dietary restrictions, if any.

Permits for Sipadan need to be booked at least a month in advance. Any licensed PADI dive operator in Semporna or Kota Kinabalu should be able to get it for you.

Ideally at least 24 hours should be allowed before flying out after a PADI course. Talk to your dive operator before planning your trip.

The operators mentioned above are reliable but Malaysia is gaining a reputation for credit card frauds. Talk to your bank for advice on suitable precautions.

Visa on arrival is now available to Indians – check with your travel agent for details.

Arar Asaippadar

After weeks of rushing from one Sabha to the next last December, the opportunity to watch a film on Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Carnatic Music's reigning prince, offered a diversion that was not altogether dissonant with the melodious gales of Margazhi sweeping across Chennai. There’s some reason to question the choice of the subject, given the number of masters, past and present, whose legacies languish undocumented...But the persona of Sanjay Subrahmanyam turns out to be a remarkably effective portraiture of the intensity of Carnatic music.

The documentary commences, very appropriately, with the Kalyani Ata Tala varnam and winds its way through a number of musical journeys before concluding with the song that gives the film its title. Prasanna Ramaswamy’s gift for visual metaphor is breathtaking, - a Begada alaapana tumbles down a frenzied maze of streetlights whereas Husseini floats gently along the backwaters of Kerala. In one of the film’s most striking moments, the clamorous crescendo of Kapaleeshwarar’s nightly “Urgolam” is abruptly muted to allow the gentle strains of Papanasam Sivan’s “Kapali” in Mohanam to waft in – the chaos of darkness yielding to the tranquility of dawn….

With due respect to the director’s talents, however, it is the fiery passion of its protagonist that is the film’s sheet anchor …from the doting father reading out excerpts from “Inspector Gopalan” on the bedside to the wild-eyed, hysterical gayaka, possessed by the raga rasa of Shanmukhapriya, Sanjay is a showman to the core - programmed to perform, designed for the stage. I suspect there’s a good career awaiting him somewhere in the vicinity of Kodambakkam if he chooses to prematurely terminate his association with music!

There are some gripes, of course – the director has a tendency to arbitrarily expand the canvas, probably with an eye on her primarily western audience who will no doubt lap up the dizzying exotica peppered generously over her oeuvre. For instance, one can understand the connection with Nagaswaram, given Sanjay’s (very successful) attempts to experiment with that bani, but the extended dance sequences seem somewhat contrived. Indeed, the film’s sub-consciousness veers more towards Tamil culture rather than Carnatic Music - not a single composition of the trinity that I noticed, in close to 90 minutes overflowing with music! If that was an accident, it was an unhappy one.

Some of the set-pieces also seem highly affected – the first is a conversation between the former editors of sangeetham.com, Sanjay and Sriram, about their soon-to-be-doomed website! In another shot, Nagai Muralitharan and Guruvayoor Dorai ham on endlessly about Sanjay’s vidwat…neither of these need have been spared the editor’s scissor…

Despite the complaints, this is the most evocative cinematic coverage of the performing arts I’ve seen since “Farewell My Concubine” Kaige Chen’s lyrical ode to Chinese opera. Even if you’re not into movies, the awesome alaapana of Shanmukhapriya alone, would be well worth your money.

A DVD will hopefully be out shortly and should set off Sanjay's many fans on a mad scramble for a copy.