Sailor’s Valentine

Music & Lyrics by Susan Oetgen (*with some borrowed from Lisa Hannigan).  Sailor’s Valentine (image above) by Lynda Susan Hennigan.

Verse 1:  A reason to sing: you caught me ready to remember.  I’d take your everything just to try to make a sad song better.

Verse 2:  Surrender and swing!  You taught me love comes like the weather.  What changes may it bring, I would ebb and flow with you forever.

Chorus:  You’re a postcard from the road less-traveled, a phone call from the long way home.  Morning sees you off with nets to scatter.*  Will evening bring you back?  I never know.  How many days does it take a river to wander to the sea?  That’s how long I’ll wait for you to come on home to me.

Verse 3:  Of salt and stone you are king*, but you brought me home again to pleasure.  I’d hold my breath and swim every tide that brings us home together.

But don’t just believe me!  Let Leontyne tell you:

‘Oh! Quand je dors’ Music by Franz Liszt, Poem by Victor Hugo

Oscar Peterson: “Articulate it like you do in speech” (on how to accomplish ‘the two-fingered percussiveness of Nat Cole’).

Fred Hersch: “You have to say ‘Oh, that was great.  Now I’m going to start fresh” (on getting too attached to great concerts you’ve played).

Star of the Sea 1 (Saltwater Hotel)

Star of the Sea 2 (Saltwater Hotel)

Being intimately acquainted with the concept of subways, I was instantly interested in this option.  What could be more familiar in a completely foreign country than underground public transportation?  Commuters in big cities around the world surely have the same needs: affordability, reliable service, basic personal safety and access to a city’s important places.  The Delhi Metro seemed a good choice as much for comparative research as a fellow commuter in a big, global city as for a cheap and useful way to see the sites as a tourist.

It did not disappoint!  The spotless stations; wide, vaulted platforms; and suburb/exurb connectivity reminded me of the DC Metro, while the graphic design of maps and logo reminded me of the London Tube.  The people watching was a tie between the MTA (diversity and sheer number of fellow passengers) and the Paris Metro (their beauty and impeccable style).

But, naturally, the Delhi Metro is entirely its own thing.  For one thing, it’s mad cheap: you can buy a 1-day Tourist Travel Card for Rs100 ($2), plus a Rs50 ($1) deposit, which you get back when you return the card.  It’s got metal detectors: my first time in the system, I stepped blithely up to the men’s line and was immediately waved over to the women’s line by a compassionate and quick-witted lady guard.  And, best of all, the single-sex theme carries through all the way to ‘Women Only’ train cars: I found myself loving their peace and quiet, so much so that I would not at all mind a few Women Only cars on the 4/5 train, especially during rush hour.

Why?  Because, at least as far as the Delhi Metro is concerned, Women Only subway cars are empirically cleaner, quieter, less…full of men.  I adore men, but anyone who enjoys clean, quiet environments and not being stared at by men might reasonably prefer to commute in a Women Only subway car.  Just saying.  But with Tom’s observation about the ‘democratic’ highways of India in mind, I wondered about the social separation of gender underground, and elsewhere in public.  What an intriguing challenge to my cultural assumptions about gender and democracy.  Clearly I’m coming from a very specific cultural viewpoint: gender is such a complicated subject for Americans (New Yorkers?), and apparently, such a simple one elsewhere.  But is single-sex anything really so simple…or democratic?

Not that I’m prepared to answer that question, except to note that the value of traveling (on a daily commute or around the world) does seem to be related to the experience of sharing the lanes.

20120223 Recto: Delhi Metro Tourist Card

20120223 Verso: Delhi Metro Tourist Card

“It is well to be reminded that Gandhi started out with the normal ambitions of a young Indian student and only adopted his extremist opinions by degrees and, in some cases, rather unwillingly.  There was a time, it is interesting to learn, when he wore a top hat, took dancing lessons, studied French and Latin, went up the Eiffel Tower and even tried to learn the violin – all this with the idea of assimilating European civilization as thoroughly as possible.  He was not one of those saints who are marked out by their phenomenal piety from childhood onwards, nor one of the other kind who forsake the world after sensational debaucheries…His character was an extraordinarily mixed one, but there was almost nothing in it that you can put your finger on and call bad, and I believe that even Gandhi‘s worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive.  Whether he was also a lovable man, and whether his teachings can have much value for those who do not accept the religious beliefs on which they are founded, I have never felt fully certain.” (All Art Is Propaganda, ed. George Packer, Mariner Books, 2009).

On the numerous placards hanging on the walls of the museum, one of Gandhi’s quotes really stood out for me: “As I am nearing the end of my earthly life, I can say that purity of life is the highest and truest art.”  I considered this statement while studying his scant ‘worldly remains’ and wondered what Orwell might have thought of it.  Whatever else you can say about him, with regard to asceticism, Gandhi surely walked the talked.  I found that extremely reassuring.  Probably Orwell would, too, although not because he would have valued Gandhi’s asceticism per se, as much as the integrity with which he committed to its practice.  I also found reassuring the single tchotchke to be found anywhere in the house, and next to his writing desk, no less: a wooden carving of the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ monkeys – a trustworthy, if trite, old proverb, which suggested to me that even a saint needs to be reminded daily how to live purely.

20120223 Gandhi Smriti

20120223 Gandhi's worldly remains

20120223 Room where Gandhi died

20120223 Death of the Mahatma, 1 of 3

20120223 Gandhi's room

20120223 Death of the Mahatma, 2 of 3

20120223 Walking stick

20120223 Death of the Mahatma, 3 of 3

20120223 Birla House, Delhi