Highgate

There used to be a cemetery by my dorm at UVa, and occasionally we’d walk through there in the evenings. T’was calm. And so I went to another today. Getting places is always a bit of a challenge for me. But in London when the directions ask you to walk up Highgate Hill to Waterlow Park and onto Swain's Lane, you actually do go up a steep hill into a green park and past a stream with swans in them. For map-barbarians like me, this look-and-feel nomenclature is helpful. So I found myself without any mishaps at a sign that called the cemetery ‘London’s most magical place’. Curious. It’s sylvan [see ode on a Grecian urn] with burial stones from the 1500s to now. The older ones moss-laden. Epithets in Olde English. Newer ones in Arabic and an assortment of East Asian languages. All for beloved wives and husbands and fathers and mothers. And a very few others around strolling among these signs of affection that exist everywhere but are so rarely written to be seen, permanently. I love you.

And then out of nowhere I suddenly stood before a gargantuan stone with a big headed man. "Workers of all lands, unite!" I stood before Marx, momentarily awed, and then I scuttled back home.

http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/

Mongol mongrel

I have for some while believed I must be a descendant of Genghis Khan. My masi sees the hint of Naga in my eyes. And surgeries aside, I have strong limbs. But tis not the physical that binds me to that tradition. It’s the simplicity of laws that he came up with, at least as far as I could gather from the film Mongol. Views on how things ought to be run for which you’d be willing to kill and for which far more importantly, you’d be willing to give up your life. The point is not to be morbid. Or to be under attack for having conceived of the possibility of killing. I'm not sure I have the gumption to be violent. But my greatgrand-dada was a local Benarasi roman rings wrestler. And my dada blew up the famous Kakori train in protest against the British. I have no gandhian remorse for being free of ahimsa at an ideological level for starters.

What disturbed me for a moment was Genghis Khan’s rule that people must obey their Khan. There's that element of totaliarianism that we can never seem to get away from. But then I wondered how he was different from Jesus who told people to give the government what was theirs. And today we have a strong tradition of taxation. Give the Khan what is his and he will provide for you. So many aspects of our lives run by feudal lords still. So at this point, I am somewhat persuaded that this principle was 'democratic' (certainly the democracy that we currently practice) and a precursor to the magna carta that has been given carte blanche as the first instance of institutionalized democracy. Besides he went to war just to bring back his stolen wife who had strong legs and strong everything else. So I am glad to be his descendant.

Quote on Security

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run that outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." Helen Keller

Risk

"If you have build castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." -Thoreau.  Self-sufficient sentiment for the week. I found it on a valuation training manual at work.

Something I wrote and want to read

Each weekday I run two miles uphill from my apartment in Dupont Circle to the National Cathedral and run back downhill gleefully. The sense of accomplishment is constant. I started running three years ago when a friend and I realized we both loved being outdoors. We trained each week and ran the 2004 Rock and Roll Half-Marathon in Phoenix and the 2005 Army 11.5 miler in DC. Flowing along with others, we are absorbed in our thoughts at times and engaged in discussion at others. Weak knees and muscle-cramps give way to a feeling of belonging.

Having grown up on a farm in the outskirts of New Delhi, India, with parents who reared buffalos to escape from the city, I have agrarian sentimentalities. In addition to running, this affection for rural ideals has found a home in travels, in classical cooking techniques, and in the works of the Romantics like Thomas Jefferson, Emily Bronte, John Keats, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and John Fowles. My paternal grandfather, a journalist for the Indian independence movement who survived thirty years in a British jail, would comfortingly tell my mother that a bowl of yogurt and a good night’s rest could dispel any gloom. I would add a run and a few paragraphs of the authors above to his list of remedies.

to-do list

It wouldn't be my blog if one of these didn't occasionally show up. so here goes:
-see serengeti (note to nadiya)
-continue to practice spanish
-become a better cook
-be more flexible (muscular)
-buy an apartment overlooking lodhi gardens
-if the above is not possible, just walk there like everyone else
-subsequently become debt-free
-see more of india
-buy some nusrat fateh ali khan cds

A few certitudes about the city

I’m in love with a tomb. There’s little like growing up next to these redstone monuments and the rainwashed trees and grass all around them. Reminds me of University of Virginia. What was lost when I left school is now returned. The Grounds and the Lawn and the Blue Ridge sunsets were ours from almost anywhere on campus. Most people there felt part of the Jeffersonian virtues of being close to the land and the Humanities. So much of this Delhi is still one to two floor homes where parks and open space abound; caveat being the so much of Delhi that I’m in. And there are a ton of lovely (and suicidal) dogs that sit in the middle of the road in the colonies. It’s been a while, if ever, since I’ve thought that I just want to be stationary.