Back to the travel archive page
Briefs Visits
2 February 2010
Singapore was a delightful surprise. My neighbour Peter in London, who once lived here, describes it as a 'benevolent dictatorship'. It is also reputedly one of the cleanest cities in the world. There is certainly a prosperity that lifts it into such matching realms as Finland or Australia. Even with it being on the equator, I found it comfortable – with the major sadness being the remnants one finds of its former colonial architecture that attest to a bygone beauty that it once must have been. Still, between the mushrooming skyscrapers, one finds the occasional shrine nestled in as well as streets containing restored and reclaimed older buildings now serving as restaurants, bars and the like.
Several decades ago, the Cap 3000 shopping centre just before Nice had an exhibition showing the religious iconography of both the Hindu and Chinese communities of Singapore that portrayed their easy and harmonious co-existence. Consequently, it has been a place I have long wished to visit. And I was not disappointed. Thanks to having high tea at the Goodwood Park Hotel with Heinz Scheifinger, who had written an excellent article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion on the development of online darshan from the Juggernaut temple in Puri, Orissa, we were directed to the colourful section of Singapore known as Little India. We had already been twice to Chinatown and visited such sites as the Hundred Buddhas Temple, the Yueh Hai Ching Temple, the Tien Hock Keng Temple and the Sri Mariamman Temple. We were even warmly invited at one point into a Tamil community mosque and were told that we had honoured their place of worship by our presence. Just before Little India are two adjacent places of worship, the Hindu temple of Sri Krishnan and the Chinese temple of Kuan Lin, attesting to the cosmopolitan nature of Singapore in which worshipers from either community visit both shrines. We arrived at the Sri Krishnan temple just as the late afternoon arti devotions were underway. Later, I found a magnificent Kali temple within Little India itself, and, for me, being in such longtime resonant places was like a coming home.
The previous evening while still in Chinatown, we enjoyed a few rounds of delicious and restorative negronis at a ristorante called Senso. For our second evening, after traversing the stunningly beautiful Fort Canning Park on our return from Little India, we settled for deliciously ice-cold San Miguel beers on the Riverwalk banks of the Singapore River – all in all thoroughly enchanting.
And then it was 'big' India and Mumbai in particular. Here it has been the requisite fresh strawberry juices at Leopold's, an old favourite, that still displays the machine gun bullet holes that occurred during the Bombay terrorist attacks. Padma Sri Carmel Berkson had arranged for us to lodge at the Radio Club in Colaba that looks onto the waters close to the Gate of India. No longer the luxury of the Swissotel Merchant Court in Singapore that had the best internet access I've had on the trip since California, but an interesting and much more local step into the past and with no internet access at all. On our first night, Carmel hosted a Radio Club terrace dinner for us along with the Orissan artist Prafulla Mohanti, his friends Derek Moore and Surya Rath (editor of Art Fair), the journalist Menakshi Raj and Meher Pestanji. Once again, north of the equator with the sun moving in her 'proper' direction and our general orientation back in sync, the balmy dinner on the RC terrace was simply sublime. We are now back at home in the northern hemisphere.
Our second night in Mumbai, we went with Carmel to the first evening of Keli's Chhau Dance Festival. Chhau is an Eastern India dance-drama that involves elaborately colourful costumes and highly acrobatic maneuvers. The Purulia form that we saw is the folk-classical masked village tradition that comes from West Bengal. The themes that were danced belong to the Mahabharata and Puranas, and the final number was a portrayal of the Mahishasura Mardini – one of the central iconic presentations of Hindu India. It was a thrilling opportunity to catch such a rare tribal ritualistic event.
The only thing to do the next day after such an extraordinary evening was to take the hour-long boat ride to Elephanta Island and visit the rock-cave temple of Shiva. I have loved this place since I first visited nearly thirty years ago, and it was lovely to introduce Richard to this awesome and enchanting locus. The more I have been traveling with him, the more I have been able to see the non-self-conscious aura that he has – almost like a visible light that he radiates. Not everyone of course can see it, but some of those I have loved most in life such as Peggy, Betsy and Toni among others have intuitively seen that light from the start.
The Mumbai International Airport with our scheduled flight at 05:35 (which it wasn't) is another story. Swamiji had advised checking into a nearby hotel, but at $85 it would have meant leaving the city much, much earlier than we did or wanted to, and I just cannot rationalize spending such a sum for only a couple of hours during which it would have been doubtful I could have slept in the first place. All in all, I am glad that I was able to revisit India and to reconnect with Carmel. However, a few days here is not enough time to develop the necessary immunity to the confrontational rawness of this land and culture. So it was fun and challenging, but the magic as I have known the magic previously did not quite happen. In addition, while security has long been an issue in India – thanks to both the Kashmiri and Sikh situations, it is now seemingly ubiquitous, and check points are everywhere. The sadness of our times colours here as well.
Nevertheless, we managed to move on and get out and reach Istanbul – our first experience of cooler, even cold, weather. The highlights here have been the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the cisterns (1001 Direk Sarnici & Yerebatan Sarnici) and the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. Eamonn and James had recommended the delightful Hotel Sari Konak in Sultanahmet virtually next door to the Blue Mosque. And the room is warm which here is more than welcomed. The country is, however, Muslim, and the living presences of gods and goddesses are generally absent or deeply hidden. Still, Turkey conveys a more open and gentle form of Islam, and the mosques are not only beautiful but accessible, but what was virtually taken for granted in Bali, Singapore and Bombay is no longer with us.
And we have reached now the eve of our departure to Beirut. All in all, I can say that I adore Istanbul. We also visited the Patriarchal Church of St. George, the Kapalicarsi or Grand Bazar (I bought a pentagram), the Misir Carsisi or Spice Market (I bought some saffron) and, thanks to Toni's suggestion, the Süleymaniye Hamam (pure delight). This is a place to which we both wish to return.
Back to the travel archive page