Elizabeth

Posted on by Moni Basu


I was working at a table at the outdoor cafe at the Plaza Hotel in Port-au-Prince when the news hit my BlackBerry. “CNN confirms Elizabeth Edwards dies.”

My heart sank the way it would at the news of the passing of a friend. Just the night before, I’d fallen asleep to images of Elizabeth — Anderson Cooper was reporting that she was near death.

A burst of emotions overcame me because for all the stuff you hear about a politician’s wife, all the drama she had been through in the last few years, I remembered a reporter covering her first presidential campaign who was taken with the down-to-earth nature of Mrs. Edwards.

On a frigid winter day, I was among the crowd at the Manchester Public Library at a Edwards campaign stop. John Edwards introduced his wife on stage. Elizabeth, standing just behind her husband in a black pantsuit, stepped forward on the stage and waved to an enthusiastic audience.

“That’s his wife?” asked a woman in the crowd. “She looks so real.” She was not the trophy wife everyone had expected of the candidate known for his good looks and charm.

“I was 25 years old when I first met John Edwards, ” she said when he announced his candidacy a few months before. “He was earnest and energetic and unashamedly sweet. He was principled and wildly intelligent, and he was a tremendously warm person. Twenty-nine years later, John Edwards is exactly the same person. To my great chagrin, he also looks exactly the same.”

But many of her supporters saw her as the smarter of the two. They viewed her as the backbone of the campaign.

“Sometimes I see him getting bombarded with information, so I will tell him to be himself and not to forget to smile,” she told me in an interview I did for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I’ll be the ballast for. . .the people whose job it is to download information to him.”

She told me about the time she met John, how it was not love at first sight, how he eventually swept her off her feet. “He was nice enough,” she said. “Pleasant. But it never occurred to me that he might be the person I would spend a quarter century-plus with.”

But when he leaned over and kissed her gently on the forehead to say goodbye, she was smitten.

It never occurred to us that he would have an affair, father a child with another woman while he was running for president in the next go around. Not after everything she had given on the campaign trail. She had even thought about how she would behave if she got into the White House.

“You get a megaphone as first lady, ” she said. “You have to use it responsibly, but you also have an obligation to use it or the betterment of the country.”

Elizabeth Edwards never got that chance. But I am thinking of her words now as I await results of the Haitian presidential election. And I’m glad I came home from the 2004 Democratic convention with a sign that simply said: Elizabeth.

Tourist

Posted on by Moni Basu

Tourist, don’t take my picture
Don’t take my picture, tourist
I’m too ugly
Too dirty
Too skinny
Don’t take my picture, white man
Mr. Eastman won’t be happy
I’m too ugly
Your camera will break
I’m too dirty
Too black
Whites like you won’t be content
I’m too ugly
I’m gonna crack your Kodak
Don’t take my picture, tourist
Leave me be, white man
Don’t take a picture of my burro
My burro’s load’s too heavy
And he’s too small
And he has no food here
Don’t take a picture of my animal
Tourist, don’t take a picture of the house
My house is of straw
Don’t take a picture of my hut
My hut’s made of earth
The house already smashed up
Go shoot a picture of the Palace
Or the Bicentennial grounds
Don’t take a picture of my garden
I have no plow
No truck
No tractor
Don’t take a picture of my tree
Tourist, I’m barefoot
My clothes are torn as well
Poor people don’t look at whites
But look at my hair, tourist
Your Kodak’s not used to my color
Your barber’s not used to my hair
Tourist, don’t take my picture
You don’t understand my position
You don’t understand anything
About my business, tourist
“Gimme fie cents”
And then, be on your way, tourist.

By Félix Morisseau-Leroy

Now this

Posted on by Moni Basu


Tomas is approaching.

The hurricane is predicted to hit Haiti by Friday. I called my friend Mariot in Port-au-Prince. “Are you OK? What about your family? Are you still living under a tent?”

“No,” he said. They were living with his aunt in Delmas. He had resisted concrete walls until now. What were they to do?

“It’s crazy,” he said. “People have nowhere to go. There is cholera everywhere.”

How do you survive a hurricane when all you have is plastic sheeting for a home?

My heart is breaking. Again. For Haiti.

Balaka

Posted on by Moni Basu




It’s done.

The flat in the building called Balaka (which means swan in Bengali) at 68 B Ballygunj Circular Road is no longer my home. After nine-and-a half years of caring for it from across the globe, I completed the final act of an arduous sales process in Kolkata.

I’ve posted a photo taken out front this week. With me are Kalu and Bimal, two men who have done menial jobs at the building for most of the years my parents lived there.

In that flat, simple and not so large by American standards, I laughed, loved and lost. It was home for so many years.

It was there that my mother regained her verve for life after a massive stroke nearly took her life in 1982. She gained freedom in her small way, learning to wheel herself around the rooms and hallways with ease, poking her head into the kitchen and instructing the housekeeper how to make perfect Bengali fish curry.

Some evenings, she arranged for musicians to come to the flat. We’d sit on rugs on the floor and sing the songs of Tagore. My mother’s voice was gone when she was left half paralyzed, but she belted it out anyway. I sometimes caught her eyes watering. She lamented little after the stroke but I knew she yearned to play again the harmonium and sing the songs she loved most.

In the morning, after she had her third round of Darjeeling tea, she picked up the phone and called our relatives and friends to learn news of their lives. My mother was the glue that held our family together. When she died, I stopped knowing details about my aunts and uncles, cousins and friends.

It was there in that flat that my father sat at the dining room table for hours pruning his bansai plants. He filled the verandahs with greenery. The dahlias bloomed with fierce, spreading hues of reds, pinks and oranges across the view.

Or he sat with his magnifying glass struggling to read newspapers when the macular degeneration in his eyes began to blur his world. He often worked out his mathematical and statistical theories in his head, his hands moving in the air as though there was a chalkboard before him. He had made a name for himself in probability theory. Later in life, when Alzheimer’s began winning the battle, my father could not add two plus two.

Everything changed today when I signed over the final documents to the man who purchased our flat earlier this year. I waited in the West Bengal registration office for a long time, sandwiched between a zillion people in a British-era building now filled with cobwebs and dust.

My friend Vijay (on the right in the registration office photo) made it all happen for us. Without him, my brother and I might have still be mired in West Bengal bureaucracy. I really don’t know how to ever thank him.

But for a moment, after I signed the final document, I felt as though I had wronged my parents somehow. As though I had given away the place where they had found solace. I asked the new owner if I could take the brass nameplate on the door that carried my father’s name. (photo)

Then I descended down the long British Raj era staircase, its terrazo warped by footsteps from many decades. I turned back only once. And left with my memories, brilliant like diamonds.

Coming home

Posted on by Moni Basu


The taxi refused to take the Eastern Bypass — too dangerous in the wee hours of the morning before the sun comes up and lights up the despair of Kolkata. Instead, we took the old route from the airport in the northeastern part of the city to the south.

I had not taken these old roads in a while. But as a little girl, when life was harder, but oh, so much simpler, we traveled to the airport this way and stood on the “viewing deck” to see planes take off and land. It was a rarity then. Flying seemed so exotic, so other-worldly. Now, all I do is complain about sitting in cramped seats as we pass over oceans and continents.

At 3 in the morning, the city is finally quiet.

The thousands and thousands of street stalls and stores (like the ones in this photo of a shopping area near my house) are shuttered. Those who can afford it are sleeping soundly in the comfort of air-conditioning. Most are under whirring ceiling fans that bandy the humidity about — or nothing at all.

The heat has fallen after months of the monsoon, but after the glorious autumn weather in Atlanta, I feel hot. Restless.

I had not expected to pass by the flat my parents called home for so many years. I have returned to Kolkata this time to finalize its sale.I thought I would not have to see it until later.

But instead, we pass by the front gate, the taxi driver unknowing of the burst of emotions within me. I try hard to hold back the tears. I feel them welling. I don’t know whether to look or not. But I cannot control my glance.

I peer at the gate through which the taxi might have driven had Ma and Baba still been here. Ma always stayed up for me, no matter how late. I’d walk in through the front door and see her in her wheelchair, her eyes heavy with sleep would light up instantly at the sight of her only daughter.

She’d have tea ready for me. Maybe a snack. My bed would be made up with fresh sheets, a clean towel hanging in the bathroom.

There is no one waiting for me now.

The taxi driver carries me away from that moment of intimate familiarity to another place. A friend’s flat, perfectly comfortable but with the sting of loneliness. Daylight breaks early here; by 5:30 the city is springing to life again. But for me, today, everything is dark.

Evita

Posted on by Moni Basu






She was a bastard child whose rags to riches story enthralled the entire world. At the tender age of 15, Eva Duarte moved to Buenos Aires to make a name in showbiz. She sang, she acted. She saved all she could to move into a flat in fashionable Recoleta. It was her way of telling the elite that she had arrived.

She had escaped the misery of life in the provinces for one of comfort.

But none of it would have been noted had she not met and fallen in love with Juan Peron and become the first lady of Argentina. The soul of the country. Standing up for the working man, even while she dressed in her furs and pearls.

Whether you believe in her purpose or whether history has deemed her disingenuous, Evita was iconic in life — and death. She succumbed to cervical cancer at the young age of 33.

After a massive funeral, her embalmed body was to be placed at a monument in her honor. But a military dictatorship ousted Peron. The names Juan and Evita became taboo; it was illegal even to possess a photo of them. Evita’s body was taken out of the country.

It took 16 years for it to be relocated. Many say her corpse had been mutilated.

Juan Peron returned to power in the early 1970s; his wife Isabel, who succeeded him as president, brought Evita home. She now rests in the Recoleta Cemetery in the Duarte family crypt. Every day, tourists visiting the cemetery flock straight to her grave, much like they do to see Jim Morrison at Pere Lachaise in Paris.

It’s an unassuming memorial to a woman who lived so grandly. A bigger tribute to her is at the Eva Peron museum, which has a collection of photos, film footage and her things, including her elegant gowns, suits and shoes.

Ironically, I returned from the museum to my flat in San Telmo only to see the movie “Evita” with Madonna and Antonio Banderas playing on television. Well, not so ironic, perhaps. Argentine TV probably shows that film quite often.

I had never seen the Andrew LLoyd Webber musical. I tuned in in time to hear Madonna sing: “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”

The next day, I stood before the pink government house, where so many years ago Evita had stood in victory on the balcony. Where her husband had propped her up when she was too weak form cancer to even stand up. I imagined the roar of the crowds chanting her name. What a time it must have been.

San Telmo

Posted on by Moni Basu





It’s spring in Argentina and on the streets, jacaranda trees were about to burst into full purple splendor.
colonial buildings. We rented a flat for a week in San Telmo, the oldest barrio in Buenos Aires.

San Telmo is lined with cobblestone streets, old-time cafes, tango parlors and dozens of antique shops. On Sundays, the main street is closed to traffic as artists sell their wares or perform on the streets.

I’ve posted a few images of our barrio. You can see the street festival, of course.

And the bars and restaurants.

Of note here are two. La Brigada, featured on Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” show on the Travel Channel. We went there with Raymond Broussard, my sister-in-law Sheila’s ex-husband. Raymond is really into eating all sorts of meats and so we did. Braided intestines and cow testicles were among them. I hope my Hindu family in India does not see this post.

The second place I loved in San Telmo was Taverna Baska, A Basque restaurant recommended to me by Time magazine’s world editor, Bobby Ghosh. Bobby told me to try the octopus. It came perfectly cooked, so tender that it melted like butter in my mouth, and slathered in a delicious paprika sauce. Yum.

More coming on my fabulous trip to Argentina. I’ve posted more photos on Facebook.

Soweto

Posted on by Moni Basu





Hector Pieterson was only 12 when he was gunned down — a hail of bullets cutting short the life of a young black boy and triggering what came to be known as the Soweto Uprising against South Africa’s brutal system of apartheid.

On this gloriously beautiful spring day, I stood at a plaza named after him. A stark monument, a museum, a photograph. All around, life goes on in Soweto, still a world away from Johannesburg, just like it was when Hector was a school boy.

I was a little older than Hector when he was killed. I only learned about him when I entered college, protested apartheid, marched for divestment. Read about Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko.

On June 16, 1975, students were protesting the use of Afrikaans, the language of their oppressors, as the medium of instruction in schools. When police opened fire, Hector fell on the corner of Moema and Vilakazi streets. Sam Nzima captured a black and white photograph of Pieterson’s limp and bloodied body being carried by a fellow student.

I stood now in that very spot with Nathaniel Mudau, a driver who works for CNN in Johannesburg. He insisted we have a photo taken in front of the memorial. So we did. A teenage boy named Karabo snapped the photo and printed it out on a battery operated printer.

Nathaniel showed me around Soweto, where he grew up, where his family still lives. We stopped for lunch at Ethel Maria’s. She grills chicken and beef in her front yard and serves them with salads, rice and porridge mostly to local policemen, teachers and nurses.

Ethel Maria has lived in her two-room shack in Soweto since 1965. She still doesn’t have running water inside the house. Life is still a struggle for her, 16 years after a black-majority government finally took power in South Africa. At 51, Ethel Maria does not harbor hope in her heart anymore.

Maybe it will be different for her children but freedom has meant very little life changes for her. Freedom did not give her a bigger place, respite from work seven days a week

On top of a makeshift grill, she made the best chicken I tasted in South Africa. After the meal, everyone at the table shared a wet towel to wipe our hands and paid her $4 for the meal.

Then Nathaniel took me around Soweto. I’ve posted photos here of the murals painted at a power plant and the shanties that still dot the landscape.

In the days of apartheid, black people were forced to live here. Many awoke at the crack of dawn and spent a fortune on a rickety old bus that took them into Johannesburg for work. Now, downtown Johannesburg is apocalyptic. Abandoned by whites, the wealth has been sucked dry and the one-posh apartment buildings and skyscrapers have stood still in time.

Nathaniel made me put up the windows to the car in neighborhoods like Hillbrow — the crime there makes the most violent parts of Atlanta look like paradise.

Life is much calmer in Soweto. But hard still for most of the residents.

“This is the way my house was then,” said Ethel Maria. But back then, she did not have her Nelson Mandela apron, the one she proudly wears every day when she cooks in her front yard.

BIg Cats

Posted on by Moni Basu




I touched a lion for the first time in my life at Lion Encounter in Zimbabwe. Paul Dube, who has worked here five years, took me around, warning me to always use a stick to distract the young lions, never to run if there is trouble. They will chase you down and kill you, he said.

The conservation park, on the edges of Lake Victoria, is an attempt to repopulate Africa’s wild with lions. Their numbers have been sadly dwindling. There used to be 250,000 lions roaming the wilds of Africa. Now there are fewer than 40,000. In some places, there are no lions left at all.

Dube and his staff of about 60 study the lions at their park — the big cats there are more used to human contact. But they are quickly weaned of dependence and they learn to survive as they would in the wild. Once they are able hunters — when they are about 18 months old — they are released into the bush.

I doubt I will ever get another chance to get so close to these magnificent yet ferocious creatures, save in captivity. Their skin felt like sandpaper — rough and rugged enough to take varnish off wood. I don’t know why I expected them to be soft and furry like the tabbies I once had.

When they yawned, you could see the teeth that can tear apart an antelope, even a zebra, though I was told the giraffe’s kick can kill a lion. A few days later, when we saw adult lions sleeping in the bush at Chobe National Park, a terrible fear set in my heart. And I wondered what I was thinking for having gotten so close to one.

Mosi-oa-Tunya

Posted on by Moni Basu




Mosi-oa-Tunya means: the smoke that thunders.

It’s an appropriate name for what the British named Victoria Falls, the largest curtain of water in the world, a mile-wide cataract in the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe.

My father spoke of it when I was a little girl. He told me one day, I should feast upon this incredible site, one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

We traveled from the town of Livingstone, named after the famous British physician and missionary David Livingstone, by bus to Zimbabwe. We could hear the roar of the water, feel the spray long before I actually laid eyes on nature’s magnificence. There it was, in all its glory. Enormous amounts of water tumbling into a deep gorge, water and sun meeting everywhere to form rainbows.

In 1855, when Livingstone first encountered the fall of the Zambezi River, this is how he described it:

“After twenty minutes’ sail from Kalai we came in sight, for the first time, of the columns of vapor appropriately called ‘smoke,’ rising at a distance of five or six miles, exactly as when large tracts of grass are burned in Africa. Five columns now arose, and, bending in the direction of the wind, they seemed placed against a low ridge covered with trees; the tops of the columns at this distance appeared to mingle with the clouds. They were white below, and higher up became dark, so as to simulate smoke very closely.

The whole scene was extremely beautiful; the banks and islands dotted over the river are adorned with sylvan vegetation of great variety of color and form…no one can imagine the beauty of the view from any thing witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”

My photographs do not do Victoria Falls justice.

If you every have a chance to see for yourself, go! Victoria makes Niagara look like a backyard waterfalls.

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