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.