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Four lines a limerick
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Chicken tikka in Tirana
This war written in mid-2016, following Adam Yamey’s visit to Albania
Tirana
Between 1944 and 1990, the tiny Balkan country Albania was governed by a Stalinist dictatorship. During that period, it was more isolated from the outside world than North Korea is today. My Indian wife, Lopa, and I visited the country in June 2016. We were open to surprises, but never imagined that we would discover what I am about to describe, namely some Indian connections.
The small town of Pukë is in the north of the country. Hardly visited by tourists, it is a pleasant place at a high altitude. During our visit there, we entered a small gift shop to buy a notebook. The shop-keeper looked at Lopa, and asked where she was from. When we said India, she pointed at a small television screen beneath the counter. We saw that she was watching something from Bollywood, but with Albanian sub-titles.
Vlore museu,
Some days later, we were in the coastal city of Vlorë, visiting the house where on the 28th November 1912, the independence of Albania (after about 500 years of Ottoman domination) was declared. We were shown around the building, which is now a museum, by a lady who spoke only Albanian. An Albanian friend translated. As we moved from room to room, we noticed that the lady was becoming more interested in Lopa than the Independence of Albania. She kept touching Lopa and even hugged her from time to time. At the end of the tour, she asked Lopa why she was not wearing something like a sari as the actors in the Bollywood films do on the television shows that she loved. A devotee of Bollywood soap operas, she was thrilled to have a real live Indian in her museum. She told us that Lopa was the first Indian women to visit her museum in the 11 years that she had been working there.
Later, we learnt that Bollywood television soap operas are extremely popular in Albania, especially amongst women viewers. The shows are usually broadcast in the afternoon, so a ‘savvy’ person knows better than to ring an Albanian woman during the hour that such shows are on-air.
Mosque in Korce
Love of Bollywood is not confined to Albanian women. In the southern city of Korçë, we were visiting an old (15th century) mosque, when an elderly man, who was just about to enter to do ‘namaaz’, saw Lopa, and asked if she was Indian. On hearing the answer, he exclaimed: “Rye Kapur”, which was his way of pronouncing Raj Kapoor.
Judging from the excitement that Lopa evoked when meeting Albanians, we guessed that there were probably few or even no Indians in Albania. Our guesswork ended when we met Vijay in the foyer of the National Museum in Albania’s capital Tirana. Vijay, who hails from southern India, lives and works in Albania with his family. He was waiting for his son to return from cricket practice. We were surprised to hear that cricket is being played in a country which has not ‘enjoyed’ the effects of British colonial influence. Vijay told us that not only were ‘ex-pats’ involved in cricket in Tirana, but also Albanians. There is an Englishman who has been training members of Tirana’s rugby club to play cricket. In late June this year, the Albanian team beat the ex-pat’s team by one run.
On the next day, we met Vijay, who teaches computing to Albanians in Albanian, with his family at a café. His wife had specially prepared some Indian snacks for us: chicken tikka and some aloo bhajjis. While we were sitting chatting, another Indian, Vicki, wandered past and joined us. Vicki was working for an Indian mining company, but has recently returned to India having spent a few years in Albania. When we had spent time with our new Indian friends, we got up but before saying farewell, they invited us for lunch the next day.
Apart from having been very fortunate to have ‘bumped’ into Vijay and his family and friends, we were very lucky to have met any Indians at all in Albania. This is because there are currently only about 50 Indians in Albania, and some of them are Mother Teresa nuns.
The following day, we met Vijay and Vicky in the centre of Tirana. A car pulled up, and we all piled in. The car was driven by yet another Indian, Father Oscar who runs Tirana’s large Roman Catholic Don Bosco establishment. He drove us out to Vijay’s flat on the edge of the city. There, we were confronted with a superb warm buffet prepared by Vijay’s wife. As I served myself with chicken biryani, dal, chappatis, channa, and so on, I had to pinch myself to believe that I was not imagining eating home-cooked Indian food in Albania.
PS: Finally, for those with Indian passports who wish to visit Albania, the nearest Albanian embassy to India, we were told by an Albanian diplomat, is in Beijing (China).
Gothic splendour
Ribbed vault-ed ceiling
Ethereal atmosphere
Kings College chapel
Cambridge
City of colleges
Towers lawns and bridg-es
That is Cambridge briefly
Do they speak Welsh?
One of the many patients, whom I treated while I was studying dentisty at University College London, was a highly intelligent senior civil servant. There was much work that needed doing in his mouth, so he visited my clinic frequently and we got to know each other reasonably well. At least, that is what I began to think.
One morning, he arrived for his appointment and sat in my dental chair. After exchanging pleasantries, he said:
“You know those Martians, who have landed in Wales?”
“Mmmm,” I replied.
“Well, I’ve heard that they communicate without exchanging words.”
“Telepathy?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s it”
I turned away from him, ready to wash my hands, when he continued:
“Well, I was wondering whether when they are in Wales they communicate in English or Welsh.”
Feeling a smile coming on, I turned my back to him, and began washing my hands for long enough for my urge to laugh to wear off.
As the saying goes, it takes all sorts…
REQUIEM FOR THE EMBLEM OF POWER
Cork Street, near London’s famous Burlington Arcade, has long been home to quite a number of art galleries. Recently, the greed of property developers has led to the closure and disappearance of many of these. Dadiani Fine Art, a small gallery, at number 30 Cork Street has survived so far. This gallery is hosting an exhibition of works by Paul Wager, entitled “Requiem for the Emblem of Power”. The show, which opened in January 2018, commemorates the centenary of the ending of the First World War ‘WW1’). Althoug the website states that the show was due to finish in April 2018, it was still available for viewing in September 2018. So, you might still be able to ‘catch’ it.
Paul Wager, British, was born in Hartlepool in 1949, four years after the end of the Second World War. According to the gallery’s website, Paul Wager wrote:
“I find myself at the interzone of painting and sculpture; my work is a heavy metal cocktail of male fantasies, obsessive and confrontational. It is a chemical haze of alternative sound and vision, religion and politics, conflict and war, tragedy and loss. A crucible of liquid observations and memories which stimulate my pending offering to the uncharted future of art.”
The works on display in Cork Street reinforce this statement this well. According to Umberto Eco:
“Art now in general may be seen as conveying a much higher degree of information though not necessarily a higher degree of meaning.
However, the Gallery notes:
“Wager’s paintings are a profound statement of information and meaning“
Be that as it may, I found the art works, visually alluring, powerful, and moving. Finely crafted, both in detail and as a whole, and creatively designed, they are fitting, original contributions to the large body of recent creations made to celebrate the passing of 100 years since 1918.
No ordinary ham
Portuguese presunto
pleasure on a plate:
no ordinary ham
Presunto is dry-cured ham from Portugal
Magnetic moments
By nature, I am most apprehensive about having to undergo any medical intervention. Even having my hair cut at the barber gets me worried, not because I am concerned about the final hairstyle but because I fret about what might go wrong. Recently, I had to undergo an MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) scan for reasons that need not concern you, dear reader.
I first heard of magnetic resonance whilst studying biological chemistry as part of my physiology degree course at University College London. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is used to investigate the physical and chemical properties of molecules and is of particular usefulness to organic chemists. On the other hand, medical MRI scanning allows a non-invasive investigation of body parts (including soft tissues) without any dangers such as harmful radiation.
Many people who have experienced MRI scanning have told me how fearful an ordeal it is. Their main concern is having to lie still for a long period of time in a noisy, featureless, confined space in a narrow tube barely large enough to hold a body. When I learnt that I was going to have undergo an MRI scan, I was filled with anxiety. For someone like me, who dreads even haircuts and eye-tests, you can imagine that I was not looking forward to having my scan.
I arrived at the scan and felt like the peanut which stood on the railway track, whose heart was all a flutter (when ‘around the track the engine came… toot toot peanut butter’).
Putting a brave face on it, I entered the scanning room through a reinforced metal door that looked like the entrance to an atomic bunker. I lay on a narrow bed, which turned out to be extremely comfortable. Before being given a set of headphones to protect my ears from the noise that would be produced during the scan, I was asked what music I would like to hear. I asked what was on offer. The choice was between Motown and classical. I opted for the latter.
The bed with me on it slid slowly into the circular tunnel in the centre of the Siemens ‘Magneton’. I continued entering it until only the crown of my head was outside it. When I looked up, all I could see was the grey funnel like rim of the entrance to the machine.
There was a sound like a fog horn, and then the sound of monotonous soporific classical piano music, rather tinny in tone. No decent composer would have had the gall to own up composing this pathetic attempt at ‘classical music’. Nevertheless, it was mildly distracting, and its lack of variety helped me to relax.
Then, the fun began. For reasons that the nurse could not explain the MRI machine produces a series of extraordinary noises, which must have been very loud because I could hear them quite clearly despite wearing the ear-protecting headphones. The first of these noises resembled someone hammering loudly at a building site. This was followed by bursts of sound (each lasting several minutes) that included ‘kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk,…’; ‘boop, boop, boop…’; ‘whooo, whooo, whooo,…’, ‘tak,tak, tak…’; and so on. All the time, the monotonous piano music droned on, barely competing with the miscellany of bursts of weird mechanical sounds coming from the magnets in whose womb I was confined. At several stages, the machine seemed to become over excited, not only emitting noises but also causing the bed on which I was lying to vibrate.
Far from hating the whole experience as I was sure that I would, I found it mildly entertaining. The 40 odd minutes of my scan shot by. Let me explain. First, I was extremely comfortable. Having to lie still on a comfortable bed was very restful and relaxing. It was far more comfortable than sitting for 40 minutes in an aeroplane or in some theatres. Secondly, the noises conjured up various images in my mind. During the vibrations described above, I felt as if I was on a reclining chair in Business Class on a long-distance flight. The odd combination of the repetitive classical music accompanied by the series of ever-changing mechanical noises being emitted by the scanner resembled the music of minimalist composers, notably the compositions Steve Reich. At times, I felt as if I was listening to a bad pianist giving a concert in a busy construction site. Many years ago, I attended a concert of Spanish Flamenco dancing. The endless racket produced by the dancers stamping their shoes on a hard floor was far less bearable than what I heard during my MRI.
At the end of the day, I realised that the horror stories that I had heard about MRI scans should possibly be discounted. I have written this to allay the fears of those who might one day need to undergo one of these investigations.
Royal Academy
Staring at stairs
leading to galleries:
a Royal Academy
Coffee
Awaiting a train
In a Costa café
Destination Cambridge
yamey 