Jhabvala: Searching for the Pure (like Water Drawn from a Well)

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a German-born British and American Booker prize winning novelist, short story writer, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. The New York-Delhi Nexus. Jhabvala lived in India for 24 years (1951-1975). In 1975, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust, which was later adapted into a movie. She moved to New York the same year. She had "remained ill-at-ease with India and all that it brought into her life," and wrote in an autobiographical essay, "Myself in India," published in The London Magazine, that she found the "great animal of poverty and backwardness" made the idea and sensation of India intolerable to her, a "Central European with an English education and a deplorable tendency to constant self-analysis"–accompanied by a searing intelligence and astute insight. After moving to New York in 1975, she lived there until her death becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. No Country was Truly Hers. Jhabvala was born in Cologne, Germany (her father had moved from Poland to escape the draft), from which her family fled to England in 1939. In 1948, her father committed suicide after discovering that 40 members of his family had died during the Holocaust. However, she would never become Anglo-Saxon. "No country was truly hers. She never took root anywhere, but kept her trunks ready and her ornaments few, ready to move on...Her fascination was that of the sharp-eyed outsider."   Escaping Repressed English Manners. Post-war England was a drab, rationed place. So in 1951, she was thrilled to be swept out of it by a Parsee Indian architect, Cyrus Jhabvala, her husband until she died. Still, she could never be Indian. She tried to assimilate; but for all her attempts, she remained as  "awkwardly conspicuous as those pallid, withered Westerners who came to India to find spiritual peace and caught dysentery instead." Though she had cease to live there since 1976, India held sway in her work. In "My Nine Lives (2004)," she has fictionally left New York and returned to live in Delhi. She remained attracted to India's holy songs, "pure like water drawn from a well. There, at night, in a burial ground, she found herself in a group of people singing songs of 'unrequited longing.'  At last, shyness laid aside, she fitted in. But she was exiled still." Most of this material is from: Rugh Prarwer Jhavbala,  The Economist/April  13, 2013, p. 94. Writing stories about displacement and culture clash, she had a sharp eye for the nuances of class and ethnicity.

Manet: Father of Modern Art.  Thursday, April 11, I saw via cinema the exhibition, Manet: Portraying Life, presented by the Royal Academy of Arts in London with host Tom Marlow. According to some art historians, Manet in his work accomplished the transition from the realism of Gustave Courbet to impressionism.  He was among the first to paint scenes of contemporary urban life, not previously considered worthy subjects of depiction. Part of but Aloof from the Crowd. His painting, Music in the Tuileries Gardens, composed in 1862 is an example. The band is playing (but unseen); and a fashionable crowd has gathered in a public park to listen to a concert. The composition represents Baudelaire's argument that modern life was heroic and as worthy a subject as any taken from the classical world. According to Baudelaire, the visual experience of the city, the spectacle of the city, conveyed the essence of modernity; and integral to this is the crowd. After all, people made the city and sets its pace; and with a population explosion unprecedented in history, life in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century had never been faster nor more crowded. An artist wishing to record the hustle and bustle of this new city life, according to Baudelaire, needed to be at least part of its crowds and possessed with the means, both intellectual and financial, to remain aloof from them. This artistic type he named the flâneur, meaning "stroller" or "loafer." By placing himself at the extreme left of the painting, critics suggest, Manet is deliberately identifying himself as a flâneur, the gentleman-dandy situated both within and removed from the crowd. Distancing. Also, Manet identifies himself with the artist, Velazquez, famous for bringing a greater psychological complexity to art and for scrutinizing in his paintings the relationship between the observer and the observed. Moreover, Manet, like Velazquez, surrounded himself with the great and the great personages of the contemporary art scene, including poet Charles-Pierre Baudelaire. He also includes several family members. The loose brush stroke and quickly executed masses of color in Music in the Tuileries Gardens suggest the spontaneous energy of the moment, even while few members of the audience appear to be engaged with each other. Manet desired to make the estranging quality of self-awareness an essential part of the content of his work. "Manet is the first painter for whom consciousness itself is the great subject of his art. A tableau vivant constructed so as not to dramatize a particular event so much as the beholder's alienation [Michael Fried, Manet's Modernism (U. of Chicago Press, 1996)]."

Rio Chama

Vision Quest. A vision quest is a rite of passage in some Native American cultures. The ceremony of the vision quest is one of the most universal and ancient ways to find spiritual guidance and purpose. A vision quest can provide forgotten or repressed understanding of one's life purpose. A traditional Native American vision quest, according to Wikipedia, consists of a person spending one to four days and nights secluded in nature. This provides time for intense communion with the fundamental forces and spiritual energies of creation and personal understanding. During this time of intense spiritual communication a person can receive profound insight into themselves and the world. This insight, typically in the form of a dream or vision, relates directly to their purpose and destiny in life. Over spring break (March 23-29) I went to New Mexico looking for a bit of the wild and remote. I wasn't expecting a "road to Damascus" type experience. I usually don't have sudden epiphanies of transformation. However, I did hope to find moments of solitude and freedom from the distraction of politics and teaching at my college.

Bulto

Christ in the Desert Monastery.  My first venture in quest of seclusion was Forest Service Road 151, which leaves Highway 84 and continues 13 miles to the monastery. It is winding, steep, and narrow at many points with a dirt and clay surface. It follows the Rio Chama which forms a beautiful canyon, surrounded by miles of government-protected wilderness, guaranteeing and promoting plenty of aloneness and quiet. On the return trip, I drove into a side-of-the road camping area. Conditions were rough; but the gate was open so I supposed my Chevy Captiva SUV would be able to handle them. As I took what I thought was an alternative exit, the front wheel  on the driver's side dropped into a deep rut and the bottom of the car got wedged on the crown of the track as I tried to free it. I had to sit a long time by the side of the road waiting for a potential ride–there aren't that many in this neck of the woods, so to speak, until finally I got a ride back to the monastery. There, after stating my case to an eremitical, very other-wordly looking monk seated in the gift shop, a  neuro-surgical engineer and his son on retreat agreed to help me, which turned into quite a task. 

Ranging cattle

The passenger side wheel had to be jacked up, dirt taken off the crown, so that the car could be eventually backed out. I was out, however, by early afternoon.  I explored one more unimproved road off highway 221. The scene here was more desolate; area preserved for habitat and not primarily for scenic value. In all these locations, I met with the occasional cow and calf, since some territory designated as wild or wilderness is still open to livestock grazing–due to conflicting needs of wilderness and wildlife preservationists v. ranchers and livestock owners. I followed the route until I came to a mostly dry riverbed. A dip where the road crossed, however, was filled with water. Since I didn't have a 4-wheel drive or skills in navigating mud, I turned back and called it a day. I had put myself into challenging experiences for the day and come out unscathed. How could I know what false confidence that would breed?

Mountain Snow in March

Headed for Albuquerque. On March 28, Thursday, I set out for Albuquerque. I wanted to take back roads to get there and see other secluded and insulated, isolated parts of New Mexico. I first drove to Coyote, a collection of settlements labeled a village, and turned south (315/217 Rio Arriba County) to start over the mountains to Jarosa, Jemez Springs, and Santa Ana Pueblo. The scenery was stunning, with some pasture lands at the lower levels, more fir trees at a higher elevation, becoming interspersed with small populations of birch. The day was beautiful; the sun was out with mild temperatures for March. I met with some patches of snow. Since they seemed shallow and partly thawed, I made it through them. Still, I finally met one in which my car got mired down; and there was nothing I could do to get it out.  Where the snow was most melted, it had the consistency of mush. 

Cerro Pedernal

Yet, at deeper levels or when it was compressed, it had an ice crystally quality. Not knowing what else to do, I started the walk back to Coyote. I wasn't afraid. In a way, it seemed a sort of test for how I might react in future situations where I would meet the difficult and unexpected. Surveying the situation, calling on my inner and outer resources, I would find a way out of the unknown. I may have been closer to Jarosa; but it was over the mountain top; and I had no idea of exactly how far it was or what I would find there. The way back to Coyote was downhill and formerly traveled terrain. I saw no one and no other buildings, except an uninhabited cabin, until I reached some farm homes close to Coyote. There was the occasional aluminum can, which one can hope rusts and rejoins the environment at some future date. It took me two and a half hours; so at my walking pace (1 mile in twenty minutes) it must have been about six and a half miles. As I passed a neat, wooden and barb wire-fenced field, I saw a small farm house with a little travel trailer nearby. I walked the gravel drive way and was met by three loudly barking dogs. I was quite uncertain, until I got closer and a man I would get to know as Siriaco Ireya, came out of the trailer. 

Chamisa

He was older, missing several front bottom teeth, and walked with a limp. The dogs proved to be all bark and no bite. After the initial noisy welcome, they quickly lived up to their reputation as man's best friend. Siriaco said that he would be able to help me out. We got into his pickup and started back up the mountain. He lives next to his brother, whom we met in his jeep as we drove. They spoke entirely in Spanish. Siriaco said he had seen me go by earlier in the day. Conversation was limited, since his first language appeared to be Spanish. Freeing my car impounded in the snow patch took some doing. The bottom of the car was impaled on a pack of snow; and all the tires would do was spin. 

Cholla Cactus

With a chain and much yanking and banging, we finally got the car pulled back–only to have it swoosh into a side ditch. Nonetheless, this allowed Siriaco to drive his truck through the patch, hook the chain to the front of my car, and with me steering, ultimately pull the car to the center and through the snow-covered spot. With Siriaco having driven his heavier truck through the area several times, it was broken up enough that I could drive across and eventually proceed with my travel plans by a different route. Heading over the mountain to Jaroso didn't seem advisable at this time of year, since I wasn't sure I had passed the worst of the snow impacted ground.  I was amazed Siriaco had been able to function so well. He refused any expression of concern for himself, saying that I wouldn't find any different resources in town. 

Sandia Mountains

He had had a stroke and walks with the limp mentioned and has a partially paralyzed hand and lower arm. He is named after his grandfather, who lived to the age of 92. In all, he has seven sisters and two brothers. I gave him $20.00 for helping me; and he seemed more than happy. This was a completely different situation from the one which had occurred the previous day. Then, I could sense that the physician-specialist would take no payment. He was at the monastery to meditate and improve his karma, hoping to "become a better person," he said. He did agree, however, to take a donation from me for the monastery. He reduced the amount I initially offered, saying the monks would be happy with far less–a sum equivalent to what I gave Siriaco. On two different days, I had examples of how people lived their lives, met its challenges, and reached out to help others in contrasting ways–both inspiring. 

Cross on Monastery Grounds

Near Albuquerque and Meeting Navajos. Near dusk I reached Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort, which bills itself as offering a step into the sacred lands of the Santa Ana Pueblo. There is a replica of the traditional pueblo, originally named Tamaya, in the hotel. Otherwise, the hotel behind a huge casino complex is a colossal compound with disneyesque adobe decor, nothing authentic about it. The view of the Sandia Mountains from my room was tranquil and soothing.  The next day as I filled up the gas tank of my rental car on the way to the airport, I saw a Navajo couple also refueling. The woman's hairstyle was striking. The bangs, combed down from above the hairline of her white hair and cut blunt-straight across just above the eyebrows, fronted a top knot of long hair drawn up from the back. I had sat next to a  Navajo of unmixed ancestry on my flight to Albuquerque. She speaks her tribe's language and has to drive 150 miles from her home on the Navajo Reservation in the Four Corners area for groceries. Her home has running water but no electricity. The Navajo call themselves Diné. What I find in New Mexico is new areas to explore and diverse people to know and learn about. It's always fascinating. 

Abiquiu Morada

Recovering from PTSD. I'm writing this only now, since I visited my mother the weekend of April 5 to see how she fared after cataract surgery. She was dealing with health issues and had escalated, without my prior knowledge, what was supposed to have been a small get together for a few people (I had brought a special cake for it; and she had emphasized it should be a small one) into one twice the size. In spite of her having maintained that she couldn't handle or want a large birthday party, a number of the guests arrived bringing birthday cards. The maneuverings she went through to find the right room, make sure we got extra cake and ice cream, to make sure the right decorations were in the room, to make sure that the politics of it worked out right, etc., left me utterly exhausted, not to say burned out. 

Morada Bell

This along with the changes a child has to see in a parent as they get older was more than I could handle. I'm still in recovery. So my journey in solitude, contemplation, and spiritual discovery in wild and remote areas has only just begun. The vast and the dreadful have a great affinity to one another...a wild solitude where we are afraid of being alone....Savage lands that are uncultivated, landscapes ruined by the desolation of war, lands forsaken and abandoned–all partake of the quality of vastness which gives rise to a sense of secret horror within us....–Seigneur de Saint-Evremond, Dissertation sur la Mot de Vaste.  What will fill that sense of horror is what I will continue to search for. I've learned that there are all sorts of tests life might confront me with. The most pungent life trials are far different than those I might encounter in a set-up situation in a physical, material semi-wilderness.