Decimals

Childhood – Poste de la Fayette



In moments like this,

The faceless exile takes

Two thumbs to his temple,

Seals his eyes

And retreats inside his self

And deep inside

That same mangrove growing laterally

The sturdy and eternal tree

The only one that faces the onslaught of salt

And survives

Recall: he once decided to live under that marvel

On a dry day there was no better place



Then time did come to a stop

But came back later with a vengeance

Those that were near him

All long gone

When he looks at the constellations

The distance scares him, reminds him

That his childhood is now truly over

His past is a star, too far to contemplate

As far as he knows, unreachable to him

In his dream the pilot flies him over

But then turns back

It is gone my friend, the ocean has swallowed it.


**************


Pamplemousses Hospital 2005



The day he died
His family was at breakfast in Port Louis
He had a stent put in but knew from the language he spoke a day earlier, during a family visit,
That death was now stalking him. It`s arrival imminent
Accidentally, in a flash, he had spelt out, 'i am sorry to you all', to everyone`s consternation. "Ki to probleme garcon, pas tracasser tout pou correct" had said his Father. All is fine. All will be fine.

The next day, alone in this decrepid stinking room in L`hopital du Nord, filled with the stench of dettol and death, he suddenly lost control of his self and left.

Abolqasem ferdowsi, " He raised us from the dust and scattered us in the winds".



*****************


A Meeting – Campement Poste de la Fayette


He stormed out eyes held low

SSR was on MBC TV

Giving his post-election galimachak lecture

"All will be well, Since we won the election, tout pou alle bien zot fitire assire""

Everyone was listening in awe, glued to the set

But he knew it was all bullshit. He was only 9

Then, a most unexpected event.

On the rocks at 11 p.m, he saw her, she was reading Voltaire with a torch in hand

I think she was 19.

They talked till the break of dawn, and the 9 year old fell madly in love

They separated with promises to meet, to swim, to eat

But it never happened.

She was as white as moonlight on a dark Poste de la Fayette night.

He could tell he was so unlike the rest of the rich coastal French folks

She wanted discourse, to know, to feel

"Does you mum cook sachini". Miam…

25 years later, this unexpected event roams the dark corners of his mind

Persists and refuses to leave

He wonders what happened to her, Did she go to Paris?

Is she now a French philosophy professor?

Did she return to the moon. Did she even exist?

Was she Athena, the trickster.

Or did she become another of the upper class Mauritian wife lot

Playing golf in the day, making love at night, just to keep little pretty husband happy

***********************

Champ de Mars - Horseracing


It is corruption packaged as sport at the very highest level. At the age of 17 he developed a sudden inexplicable red hate for it. From being a hard core fanatic to a total rebellious individual. What made him change so much. Was it the fact that he had read Sartre? The answer came to him in a grocery store in Woodgreen, U.K. Here it is: Everyone associated racing with his good name. Eh missie donne moi en tuyau. He had began to play the game too. Pretending to be the all knower in the world of racing, when he was just a nonentity. He is still a nonentity, mind you. But now at least he does not live a world of make-belief. He also gets it. Yes he now gets it. This is a pure business. Although the horse is a vehicle filled with unending beauty. He remembers the look of Port-au-Prince, the black horse with a white star on the front. Sheer undying poetry. The image outlives the flesh. He sees the victory of Exarch and he smiles. Moments of poetry of the body, moments of mechanical beauty, beauty in flesh and blood. Wild Amber where are you ?



But man is bent on suffocating the aesthetics of this sport. This great sport has already succumbed to business, corruption, hate and money. It stinks, and he wants absolutely nothing to do with it.



***************************************************************************


New Orleans 1/28 - 2/1



They call it packaging

Funny how this country manages death

They`ve reassembled Bourbon Street for Mardi Gras
Everywhere else is in fucking shambles
It looks pretty good now,

At least for those who do not want to look

But let me speak to those who see,
Dead city

No need to share beads, play saxo on the street, or show tits

To make us forget.

Capitalisto packagingo.

They are good at it. They make the dead resuscitate, as dead as ever

And hold the carcass with sticks

Tourists roam around the carcass,

"Oh how lovely is creole cuisine" miam miam

But one of them was a Philosopher from Rouen,

Clothilde.

She turned to me and said, "Ca sent la mort ici n`est ce pas"

Adding in French,
Which i translate:
They saw pictures on tv and forgot ! Mother fuckers all of them.

***************************


Silent Rage at Jardin des Pamplemousses




Everywhere you look, vestiges of our colonial past

And everywhere, we stupidly celebrate it

The white monument in the garden to our glorious colonial past makes me puke

On it all the names of our 'good' French and English friends

Why do I care what the 'great' colonial masters did, how they looked and what they wore?

It is all a big bore

Do I really give a toss about Pierre Poivre, supposedly the great inventor of dipoivre ?

And how many indentured lads did he whip. No one will tell you that one.

Why are we celebrating this fake past?

Where is the other past that we do not write about? Show it to me !

And the real history? Did Mahe de Labourdonnais work compassionately for all (really !)

I want to know how he 'really' treated us. Did he keep slaves mi lord?

Did he screw some natives….did he swear…did he beat us…

In this goodie goodie history that we sell, I see make belief !

Shout: WHAT IS MY HISTORY ?

Surely my history is not Bernardin de St Pierre and his farce



Well i keep dreaming of a bill passed by parliament

To remove the statue of 'good' Queen Victoria

The proud and gallant one in front of parlement

All the country will leave work, home and chores for a day

Assemble in front of the house

Each Mauritian (white, black and brown and blue) required to bring a candle

And in a ceremony without pomp, song and dance

Quietly remove Victoria, lift her over our shoulders

All walk to Caudan and dump it in the ocean

In this symbolic act, a definitive break with the past

The start of a new contract with destiny, a new tryst.

The message: we once 'used' to be a colony but we`ve since moved on and on

That our minds should now be free of this silent debt that we supposedly owe Europe

And I hear Tagore sing, "where the mind is held high and free from fear, in this heaven let my country awake".

************************

Marche Centrale, Port Louis


If I tell you how that my eyes went blind on seeing you

No one will believe me

I do not know how I really got there yesterday morning

Let me see

I took the car way down Eugene Laurent Street

Took a left on Leoville L`homme near Magasin Manjoo

And parked

But all this is not important



What is important:

Buying pineapples and apples

A little drizzle, the forecasters were right

People with bags on their heads

Rushing here and there in fear of Indra (rain)

Small puddles like mini oceans everywhere taking shape



Then I saw you in a jerk, a casual look on the side

Hair wet, eyes grey, your beauty intact, immutable

Your Kajol, a black crescent in a deep white sky

In my ears, I hear Sufi chants and Tibetan bells

You are now a mother, I can tell

You can tell, I am a father too

And you barely recognized me

Apples, pineapples now dropped, flying all over the place

We looked at each other for an aeon, aeons

All of bazaar centrale now antartically frozen

The veg sellers lost, mouths open

Newspaper sellers left in a philosophical daze

Until you liberated the whole world with your, 'alo mon cher R'

Moksha !!

Your lips your lips, somebody hold me fast before I drop

Since when did angels buy tomatoes

Could we not have been hand in hand today

'Our' kids surrounding circling, running

But things have turned out to what they are
Metamorphosed into this one casual moment
Me meeting you years later….buying pineapples and apples (Ha !)

And after so many years to contemplate,

That this mystery we call beauty untouched by time, escapes life`s adversities



If I tell you how that my eyes went blind on seeing you

No one will believe me


**************************************


Exiled



I never bothered to see. Until the last day I never bothered to see. This comfort shields and renders blind. Like a slow poison it debilitates you cell by cell, neuron by neuron. You do not want to know, I do not want to want to see. Where does this road lead to. Until I met him I did not (seriously) realize that you have to jump in, to drown, to lose, to vanish in order to find yourself.



Khusrau:

The one who drowns finds himself and is saved

The careful one finally crossing the river, is lost forever.



I still am not there yet, but I wish to come back home. I need to revisit the places and the streets. I need to drop my rucksack in the middle of the road and take a deep breath. Pull in through to the deepest recesses of the mind.



The dream: Images of an unshaven one collecting facts, asking here and there. A journalist in the future, I do not know? Where is he? Then he looks in the mirror, despite all his attempts to fit and become like them, to return home, to be joyous, to dye himself in the color of some beloved, he looks at the mirror and a horrible stamp on his skin. Like the one they put on cattle, a steam mark on his face. The stamp read; Exiled. Never to go, never to disappear. Exiled. It all seems clear now, the looks he got from the locals, the mocking smiles and nonchalance, it is all clear now. He is a nonentity. An exile. Will he be able to return. Which way is home? What is home? He cannot remember anymore.



He walks to Brighton (???). At the very end of the cliff, he looks to the ocean. Down below, waves bursting forth, and behind him the city with no name. He whispers to the winds, exile.

************

Well in this story Paul is a car salesman at Iframac. The country is not as happy as it was in the past with esclaves and colons perennially respectful and enlivened with a sort of inherent camaraderie. As if in the ole days when the colons looked at their slaves, with their deep sad eyes, a invisible voice would say, "work hard work hard my dear friend you will soon be free". Nope ! In this very new adaptation, the country is as racist as ever. Hindus (depends which caste you are of course) hold the country at bay with political gimmicks and intelligent backstabbing, the muslims ever faithful on a higher moral ground instantly rebuking anyone you dares talk or seem to talk against..., the blancs in their castle trying hard to avoid the rest totally pretending they do not exist, and the others well just being others, called population generale (what does this really mean?). Before I forget, did I say Virginie`s father works at Rogers. Both their families are so well off that it makes tears come to my eyes. They meet on Sundays, listen to chansons, go shopping together and the rest. They live in a world that most fellow locals have no flipping idea ever exists, because I have seen with my own eyes that on weekends they run away to far far lovely corners of the island. They even avoid the main roads as there are chemins propriete that open up to them, like Moses opening the seas, and which is accessible to them, only them. Did I say Virgine got a job at MCB ! Yupee ! And guess how reader ?. Daddy knows soooo many people. And Daddy will send her to France soon. May be they will meet up (Paul and Virginie) for a vacation in the Alps , and joined by their families. Then when the great honourable families will all get together at Restaurant Broussard at the Switzerland border, Paul will make an announcement. "Oh Virginie je t`aime, Veut tu me prendre pour epoux, moi Paul ton Paul". There will be claps, confettis in the air, and howling sifflets. And they will get married and dine in the most expensive spots on the island, happy forever, living in a castle in Floreal, and will have many kids, and will never have to worry about servants, jobs, and vacations, bills.

Herewith ends the wondrous story of Paul and Virginie by Bernardin de St Biere.

****************************

I write of an incident that took place when you were around.

On that day, I was not myself. I did not want to bring you to the hospital. Call it selfish. An emergency that is not an emergency is a day wasted, and you were not really sick. I mean sick sick really sick. Science told me you needed simple over the counter medication. But I could not explain. I could not explain. Sometimes, the simplest things cannot really be communicated, transformed in words to another being. What are words if you ask me. What are they for? Can a man/woman really talk to another? I was suffocating in there, and walked in and out many times. I was looking for an exhaust. A valve to open, steam to burst out. I was trapped in there, with all around me coughs, wails, complaints. To sprint out and leave, go hide somewhere where no one knows day and night, right and wrong.


Then when I came out, for air and more air, I saw him surrounded by his wife and 2 daughters. My best guess: He was Iranian, Iraqi, difficult to tell. He was hurt and his nose seem to be hanging on one side. Blood everywhere, but what were they doing outside on a bench. Priority, triage they did not find it so critical those bloody ivy league school nurses. The womenfolk looked, sullen sad and under shock. My imagination worked, did he get hit? Was this a racist attack? Did his blood brother hit him and walked away with the dough. But then the moment came when he looked at me with the deepest saddest eyes, but he was not really looking at me. On the other hand, I was fixed on him. He knelt on the bench, looked to the sky, blood all over his face, and whispered, two hands lifted to the sky, I barely could listen, turned here and there, and opened my eyes, his eyes now slightly upturned towards the sky, "Bismillah e errahman e erraheem al humdo lil-lahi rab-bil al ala-meen". The poetry of the moment was simple, disarming and of a deepest dark beauty. Man bloodied and faced with a dilemma a shock that unsettles him, he is alone, his family is hurt. He is a broken vessel, and he does not have the energy to curse. Who did it ?, Why did he do it ?, How did this all happen ?, all the limited queries do not really matter, this was, as they say, water under the bridge, what mattered most was to interrupt the creator, the generator, the source of it all, as if there comes a time, when nothing matters, when you just want to kneel down and tell him: Help me I just do not get it all !! That was what the injured man was doing. He was pulling the alarm.

Had I been Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Rembrandt I would have jumped on my feet, crazy like all, and walked home without my shoes and get to work on my new piece in my studio, of a man bloodied, with the saddest blue eyes, looking at the sky with open palms, praying. Behind him his loved ones, hands on his shoulder, like they were giving a jerk to his insistences. Simple how life is just to tragically beautiful. A fatal sort of beauty.

****************

Ile aux Cerfs



There a picture in of Ile aux Cerfs

Somewhere in my little miserable office

Always looking back at me

With a smile

Paille en Queue land

Sugarcane land

Everyone who passes by, 'wows at it'

I am proud of it,

"My' little exotic island, "my" Ile aux cerfs



It is a scam isn`t it ?

Think about it.

Truly it is a gross lie



I don`t give a fuck about exotism

For i know nothing is exotic

Exotic is about buying and selling

Prostitution is a better word

I am selling myself and my source

To make myself acceptable to them

A product of some far away fairy land

Where the sand is golden and the water is bleu azure

Where all we do is laze around and get our

Arses oiled under umbrellas

I am protecting myself from any impurity

That the name Africa furnishes

I just want to be a blue eyed island boy
Nothing else,
Just an exotic artifact



Yet it is all a scam

I will walk to the poster,

Bring it down

No more

Sand and sea

Breasts and arses



I want to be a African

I want some responsibility

Give it to me Destiny !

For it looks to me

That nothing truly belongs to us
my poor little Mauritius Inc

**************

Small Notes on a return to the native land (Pt 1)

In 1949 Malcolm de Chazal wrote the following (which i translate) "In no community is the prejudice of color as strong as with the people of color. Remove all the whites from the country, through a mass exodus, or by kicking them out, and the prejudice of color will stay and be felt even stronger. It is like a moral leprosy in our community - A superiority complex that invades and permeates all". Oh how much prophetic can Chazal be. There is however a grave danger that lurks around as i write whilst still in Mauritius. One who returns from overseas for a long period of time (especially USA) should be careful not to point fingers at this and at that because you risk doing exactly what Chazal despises, i.e develop a silly superiority complex, almost like saying oh look at me i have more knowledge and more power that you so i can afford to tell you how best to do this and that.This is exactly what would make Chazal twist in his grave.

I have no plans today to point fingers like a petty bourgeois of 'bad here' and 'good there'. I wanted to make a few general observations as i continue on my journey.

a) In the 'great' Gujadhur family what is taking place is almost like a microcosm of what is happening in the country. People (certain peculiar heritiers) are increasing and the material resources have remained the same or dwindled, hence there are mahabharata-like fights between individuals as they jockey to get what they feel they are destined to have, but the plain truth is that there is limited wealth resources for everyone, now that the family is huge. Similarly the debate about democratization of natural resources, at the deepest level, is taking place in my country because the local population is still growing, and the have-nots are now beginning to ask, "kot mo bout gato!'. (where is my bit of the cake !)

b) Death takes place on a daily basis in paradise. The level of diabetes and cardiovascular problems has reached an alarming rate in Mauritius, and people are getting stents put in like going to the grocery store to buy macachas. Yet the shadow of death lurks behind everyone that goes in to put the stents in. Having personally, as well as had friends, experienced first hand the great 'expertise' or should i say 'betise' of some local doctors, i now solemnly take an oath that i will never get my heart touched on local soil ! So much for my great patriotism.

c) Death takes place on a daily basis in paradise. There were 75 fatalities from Jan 07-July 07 and countless amounts of serious and minor injuries. What to expect in a country where the population is increasing, and the roads seem to be slowly receding. Going from Quatre Bornes to Port Louis during peak hour takes a decade, and the noise of the motocyclettes creates havoc in everyone homes. As Mauritians sit down for dinner, the prickling traffic noise outside remind them that paradise is now LOST ! And the rich may never hear the noise, they stay in large ornamented mansions and read whilst their drivers hop them here and there.

But again, just to remind ourselves, death on the road knows no rich nor poor.

d) In a corner of beautiful Ile aux Cerfs we sat down with some local lads to 'deguster' a grillade. All around us, golf courses belonging to the once-upon-a-time sugar barons now tourism magnates. I was told that according to law only 50 metres as from the shore (pas geometriques) belongs to the public. The rest belongs to the rich and well-connected ones. And Ile aux Cerfs is a jewel in the crown of the cash-rich tourism industry. Strange feelings to describe what i felt. I`m in my country but i`m really NOT in my country. I might as well have been sitting in downtown Manhattan. Nothing belongs to us, everything is pri-va-ti-zed. May be a day will come when we will have to pay to take a shit in the sea, as this part of the ocean would belong to Beachcomber and Sons PVT !

e) Now to some good news. I have been to the North, the East, West and South, and i wish to make a confession. This country is truly a jewel. It is a beauty of 'mille sens'. A beauty that can only be seen to be experienced. My writing will do no justice to it. May be my forthcoming photos will..

**************