by Tahir Shah
Through each of those years, the extraordinary has been my currency, one that I have hoarded and squandered, and enjoyed with every breath. And in all that time, the months and years in celebration of the peculiar, I have never given any thought or time to considering the exquisiteness of the ordinary form. It had always seemed like comparing consommé to goulash, a delicacy unlikely to satisfy the appetite of a starving man.
But the stray remark at the Casablanca port changed my outlook in the most unexpected way. It coaxed me to appreciate a secret underbelly of ordinariness, a layer of existence so profound, that it is extraordinary within itself.
I have come to believe that we receive things when we are ready to receive them. Like seeds falling on arable land, the right conditions must be present for them to germinate and prosper. Our ability to appreciate takes place in very much the same way. We see, really see, when we are ready to, and not a moment before.
What I find so bewitching is the way the world slips you a jewel when it knows you are prepared to recognize it as a jewel. Equally, you could say there are jewels all around us, but ones that will only be activated for our particular perception in days and years to come.
The amusing thing for me is that, these days, glossy style magazines the world over devote acres of space to their fantasy of Morocco. It’s a destination that’s regarded as wildly exotic, rapturously appealing because it mirrors – or surpasses – our own imagination. But most of the time the media’s fantasy doesn’t reflect the genuine article at all.
To understand this extraordinary kingdom, you must understand the ordinary, and hold it tight to your heart. Three rusty chairs on a terrace by the sea, the shadow of a man moving quickly across warm tarmac, a fragment of graffiti on a mottled old wall: this is Morocco, real Morocco, the place those of us who live here yearn for when we are gone.
On my travels I have crisscrossed this country. I have visited desert shrines and mosques, palaces, bazaars and citadels. And in the wake of those journeys, I have regaled my audience with tales of colour and mystery. But I have never told them of the silent moments: a thousand meals alone with a worn old paperback, beaches naked of footprints, railway platforms in the rain. Such subtlety is rewarding beyond words if you can catch it, like a whisper on the wind.
This morning when I went to meet my friend, the one who’s always late, I asked him something. I asked him to describe the beauty of his land to a person who had lost the power of their sight.
My friend thought for a long time before answering.
He seemed a little nervous, as if I were asking the impossible. Then he glanced out at the street.
‘The real beauty of Morocco,’ he said pensively, ‘can only be seen from the inside out. Search from the outside in and you will never find the truth or the real beauty held within.’
FIFTY-FOUR
The Mango Rains
I BELIEVE IN ZIGZAG TRAVEL.
Never has there been a route to anything more worthy than one which meanders through twists and turns. Over years and many miles I have tried and tested this zigzag approach, making use of the miscellany of material that presented itself along the way.
Of course, what’s important is to be ready to receive.
Blink, and you miss the hidden signs. But, stay alert, be ready at all times, and the most magical rewards can be yours.
Never had the boon of zigzag travel been greater than in my search for the Mango Rains.
On a sweltering summer day an age ago, I was doing research in the back stacks of the London Library on the secret history of the Yezidis, self-styled ‘People of the Peacock Angel’. It’s a subject that has captured my attention for as long as I can remember, a family obsession – one that has led to all manner of escapades through five generations.
I was sitting at a low desk nudged up against the wall.
One eye was on the patterns of peeling green paint, the other on a rambling Victorian text about the Peacock Angel. I felt myself drift into a kind of psychotic state. Experience has taught me that this separation from reality is the perfect moment to grasp a path.
Rather than forcing my concentration back on the rows of hand-pressed type, I allowed it to meander. My gaze roamed over the shelves above me. Dusty leather bindings, gilt bands and faded script.
All of a sudden, and uncertain why, I reached up and picked out a book. It had brittle calfskin covers and smelled of faintly of beeswax. Opening it at random, I read:
The Mango Rains are an elixir all of their own. Some search their entire lives yet never have a hope of finding them. While others locate them without ever looking for them at all. Without having made a search, those who arrive too easily misunderstand the true essence of the treasure they have found. The best way to come upon the Mango Rains is to never stop looking and to question everything that passes before the eyes.
The book didn’t reveal much more on these elusive rains, except to say that there was the chance to find them anywhere on Earth – so long as the searcher was prepared to recognize them.
For months, I dropped everything and scoured a dozen libraries for any mention of the Mango Rains.
I learned that the people of Suriname regarded them highly for the way they assisted in ripening the mango crop. And, I came to understand that the Portuguese in Goa had claimed they alone could cure those ailing from venereal disease.
As ever, my library research proved one thing: that the only way to reach conclusions was to abandon the books and set off on the open road.
I travelled through Africa and Europe, through the Americas, Asia, and beyond. While on these journeys I wrote about the people I met, and the situations in which they found themselves. Ever fascinated by observation, I found myself ripened, my rawness chapped by a new education, a kind I never thought possible. And, the more seasoned by travel I became, the more I wrote, and the more perceptive I found my observation to be.
Best of all, one horizon gave way to another, and one journey led to a dozen more.
On the savannah of the Rift Valley, I met a Samburu warrior. He was tall as a tree, his nimble form covered in bright beads and scarlet skins.
I asked if he had ever heard of the Mango Rains.
He led me to his village. It was a day’s walk through scrub and long dry grass. When we got there, he took me to meet his grandfather, a man so old his body seemed somehow petrified.
My question was whispered into his ear.
After a long while, his eyes opened half way and he blinked.
‘Does he know?’ I asked.
The young warrior whispered again. And, this time, the wizened old man spoke.
‘The Mango Rains are the Devil’s work,’ he said. ‘Continue to search for them and Death will be your end.’
Undeterred, I set out again, roaming the world.
A chance encounter in Tokyo, led me on a trail that took me to heat-baked Alice Springs. And that journey ended at Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon. The great city built on the fortune of the rubber barons was a wild rumpus of a place.
In a backstreet bar, not far from the opera hall in which Caruso played, I met a Swiss anthropologist called Frédérique. Sipping a gin and tonic thoughtfully, he told me the Mango Rains were a figment of Man’s communal fear.
I asked what he meant.
‘What I mean is that you should leave the Amazon. Follow your nose and never doubt.’
‘But I have been following my nose,’ I replied. ‘That’s how I ended up here!’
The Swiss wiped a hand to his lips.
‘Very good,’ he said, ‘but believe me, there will be plenty more bounces before the rubber ball comes to a halt.’
Years of travels came and went.
Destinations with names I couldn’t pronounce, and food that challenged my digestive tract. And all the while, I searched for the elusive Mango Rains.
Then, at dawn one morning I was walking along a beach on Mexico’s Pacific Coast when, quite suddenly, it began to rain. I
t wasn’t the heavy rain of a monsoon, but a gentle drizzle. Best of all, it was fragrant and had the scent of exotic fruit. I breathed it in deep, as if the smell were somehow healing me from the inside out.
As I was standing there, bathed in what seemed like a stream of perfection, a petite woman approached me. She had a postal sack slung over her shoulder, and was going down the beach picking up plastic bottles.
I felt a little embarrassed. But the woman seemed to understand. She laughed, a crazed maniacal cackle of a laugh.
‘It’s good!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes, yes, it’s wonderful,’ I said.
‘It’s sent by God. Rich or poor, it’s sent to us all.’
I nodded eagerly.
The woman began trudging towards a plastic bottle half buried in sand.
Some distance from me, she turned her head and called out,
‘Thank God for happiness! Thank God for these Mango Rains!’
FIFTY-FIVE
The Mother Teresa Bandwagon
A HUNCHED FIGURE weaves his way through Calcutta’s unending gridlock traffic.
Suspended from his neck is a broad tray, brimming with the usual assortment of tempting novelties with which to entice choking motorists. But instead of peddling fluorescent pink toothpicks or bottles of homemade rat-poison, the hawker is offering far more sought-after merchandise.
His tray is teeming with the latest in Mother Teresa kitsch.
Statuettes and baseball caps, ash-trays and candlesticks, calendars, alarm-clocks and cartons of incense: all bear the unmistakable, saintly image of a frail woman in a white sari with a royal blue hem.
Mother Teresa may be dead, but her spirit lives on, and her name is more strongly linked with Calcutta than ever. But, just as Princess Diana’s legacy is awash with souvenir mugs and signed margarine tubs, Mother Teresa’s memory is falling victim to her adoptive city’s notorious blend of ingenuity. Everyone in Calcutta, it seems, from shoeshine boys to politicians, is clambering aboard the Mother Teresa money-making bandwagon.
In a bustling corner of central Calcutta, big plans are afoot.
S. S. Gupta, the city’s former mayor, is busy co-ordinating elaborate schemes – all with a distinct Mother Teresa bent. A bulky, round-headed man, he defines his devotion to the cause in a silky, vote-winning voice:
‘I met Mother Teresa many times when I was mayor – I even had my photograph taken with her,’ he says. ‘Now that she’s dead, I have founded an organization called the Mother Teresa Memorial Committee.’ He pauses to spit a mouthful of paan into a bucket beneath his desk. ‘We want to mark Mother Teresa’s first death anniversary in a special way. When Mother became a Nobel Laureate she became an icon of the world. As such, she belongs to us all!’
Mr. Gupta’s committee is striving towards numerous big-budget goals. It plans to confer an annual honour – the Mother Teresa International Award – on a person who selflessly aids the needy. It is lobbying for Park Street, Calcutta’s central thoroughfare, to be renamed Mother Teresa Sarani. And a Mother Teresa souvenir publication, replete with innumerable deluxe advertisements, is in preparation.
But of all Mr. Gupta’s plans, the last is the most ambitious. A vast bronze statue of Mother Teresa has been commissioned by the committee and is under construction. If Mr. Gupta has his way, the towering effigy to Calcutta’s most famous adopted daughter will be installed on a plinth in the centre of the city.
Across town at Mother House, the headquarters of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, there is unease at the committee’s plans. The Missionaries have reason to be anxious. Within hours of Mother Teresa’s death, the Sisters’ planned funeral proceedings were hijacked.
Instead of a dignified burial, attended solely by the Sisters, the event was turned into a media extravaganza staged by Calcutta’s Municipal Corporation. Mother Teresa’s casket, which was carried upon the very gun carriage used in the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi, was borne for eight miles through the streets of Calcutta. Never before had the city seen such a panoply of red-turbaned Rajput soldiers, immaculate Gurkha warriors, celebrities and statesmen.
Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa’s successor, is too preoccupied with paperwork to pay much attention to Mr. Gupta and his Committee. But forty years of pupilage under the indomitable Teresa have taught her to be resilient and now, for the first time, she has spoken out.
‘I completely disapprove of this committee,’ she says, ‘and of its having an office and a bank account. In her lifetime, Mother depended totally on divine providence and did not allow any fundraising whatsoever to be conducted using her name.’
Quiet and unassuming, Sister Nirmala appears to have all the qualities necessary to carry on Mother Teresa’s work. She was born in Bihar state of Nepali parents, and only converted to Catholicism in her teens after watching the carnage of Partition. An early disciple, she joined Mother Teresa in May 1958 and has worn the uniform white and blue sari with a crucifix pinned to the left shoulder ever since.
She draws on decades of experience in missions deep in the Venezuelan jungle, in New York’s slums, and in Calcutta. When not dealing with the administration of the charity’s five hundred and fifty-nine missions spread among a hundred and twenty countries – Sister Nirmala spends much of her time praying at Mother Teresa’s tomb. It is set at one end of the meeting hall at Mother House.
‘Mother is not far away,’ she says softly. ‘She might have changed her residence from Earth to heaven, but I can feel her presence and guidance all around me.’
A year after her mentor’s death, Sister Nirmala still seems preoccupied by the loss. ‘My feelings for her death are still so fresh,’ she explains. ‘We knew that she could go any day, but when it happened it was a shock. She died at about 9.30 p.m. She had done a full day’s work and had had dinner. We were all around her when she died. A doctor rushed in, but could do nothing to save her. She wanted to die in her house, in her room – in Mother House.’
Nirmala and all the Sisters are praying that Mother Teresa be canonized. ‘I very much expect her to be made a saint,’ she muses. ‘We all pray for that. Mother wanted to become a saint – indeed she challenged us all to become saints, saying that it’s a beautiful thing! For some it is a long process with many years of wait involved, but,’ Sister Nirmala continues with a glint of expectation in her eye, ‘for some, it doesn’t take so long.’
If Mother Teresa is to be canonized, some of her belongings will have to be taken to Rome as holy relics. For now, her few possessions have been left in her bedroom exactly as they were on the night she died.
Not far from Mother House, in a dingy back-street office, sits Dilip Basu, the self-proclaimed king of Mother Teresa kitsch. No one could be more desperate to lay their hands on Mother’s personal chattels than Mr. Basu.
‘It’s impossible to put a market price on these relics,’ he fawns, stroking his scant waxy beard. ‘There are private collectors in Europe and America with crores of rupees to spend on such items. The Sisters could give me a few of Mother Teresa’s possessions and I would auction them to the highest bidder on eBay. The money would go to charity, of course.’
While his optimistic negotiations continue with Mother House, Mr. Basu has much else to attend to. His desk is cluttered with prototype Mother Teresa products and typed orders. ‘Look at these!’ he shouts, waving a fistful of papers, ‘I’m having orders from all over the world… you see, everyone loves Mother Teresa!’
Mr. Basu’s business is booming. Forty extra staff have been taken on at his factory to keep up with demand. A dozen of them are devoted to the most popular line of all – plaster Mother Teresa statuettes with Mona Lisa smiles. The ruthless commercialization of Mother Teresa’s image may be surprising, but, as everyone in the small plaster knickknack business knows, Calcutta is a world centre.
The future for Mother Teresa kitsch is looking rosy.
Dozens of new products are being developed at Mr. Basu’s factory. The international market
shows no signs of saturation. A spectacular range of new products for the coming year – including Mother Teresa soap flakes, shampoo, pencil-cases and lampshades. And the pièce de résistance: an embarrassingly low-quality rendition of a Mother Teresa Barbie doll.
FIFTY-SIX
The Penniless Trillionaire
IMAGINE OPENING A CUPBOARD in your home and discovering a fortune greater than the United States’ defence budget.
Is such instant and incalculable wealth only found in dreams or fairy tales? Perhaps so, or in India, where practically anything is possible.
G. Vidyaraj, an ageing and penniless farmer’s son, lives in a rented flat in Bangalore, southern India. Born some sixty years ago into an impoverished farming family, he moved to the city in his youth to begin a career – determined to seek fame and fortune.
Now an old man, still penniless, and suffering from a catalogue of ailments, he sips a cup of green tea and tells the extraordinary tale of how he became one of the richest men on Earth.
A cautionary tale par excellence, it’s a story in which an immense fortune has brought nothing but worries, obsessions, and envy from those all around.
‘My ancestors were direct descendents of the Vijayanagaran kings,’ Vidyaraj begins, in slow and precise English. ‘Our family was once in the ruling class, and through the Jagirdar lineage their history goes back more than seven hundred years. Heirlooms were passed down from one generation to the next. Seemingly worthless objects, but nonetheless each was worshipped by our family for centuries.’
A special room was set aside in the farmhouse where Vidyaraj grew up. The strange assortment of icons, idols, and other objects that filled it fascinated Vidyaraj as a boy.