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Quatre - Septembre is the name of the metro stop in Paris named after September 4, 1870, the date that Napolean fell and the third republic was proclaimed. It opened in 1904, and serves line 3. 

Wikipedia told me this, on the paris metro, on my way from Pereire to the Galleries Lafayette.

I was in Paris last weekend after more than a year. Much seemed the same. Gare du Nord still had the same air of slight industrial grime, the busy parts of the city were as busy as ever, but for the first time, I was only there partly as a tourist. I was meeting two friends - one who had flown in from America, and one who was living in Paris for six months - both people I knew from school.

It was interesting to see the way people live there - the slightly strangely shaped rooms, and the view from the kitchen window over a courtyard. The little street market, where you can apparently get fresh figs even if it is a religious holiday and the baker who has to open because Paris would shut down if there were no bread. 

It rained a lot, specially today morning. The streets were empty and everything seemed grey and very beautiful.  

 I know I've not been posting here in ages - but this is just to say that I have things to write about again. :) 

 

Gion is the old entertainment/nightlife quarter of Kyoto. Its full of nooks and crannies and paper screens, and quiet light in the evening breeze.

It almost seems like it's stuck in a time warp - step away from the modern thoroughfare and suddenly you will be walking between 16th century tea houses. 

The way everything is designed is neat, and small and extremely effective. Space is used beautifully. Boundaries are not created by putting up walls, but by putting down Tatami mats and sliding paper screens. 

A flight is delayed - it was supposed to leave at 1.45 pm and will leave at 3 instead. I will go back to London - and its cold and grey for the first time in six months. 

It feels strange, these last six months. Almost as if the 18 months in London before that were the interlude and Singapore the reality. 

I spent six months working very hard, and living in a nice apartment, not washing my own dishes. People came in and cleaned up after me. I occasionally ironed a shirt. 

I've been in Delhi for seven days now, and I feel shitty leaving. 

It feels odd - this place and time, almost as if it deserved a more dramatic send-off than I am capable of giving it. 

11.46 am. Sunday. 31 January 2010. 

I'm on my third coffee of the morning - but still not truly awake. 

I am not meant for places of worship. By themselves, I mistrust them, dislike them even. Religion to me, is a tool of division and dogma. Too many people do too many bad things in its name. Too much bigotry and hypocrisy is perpetuated in its name. It is too easy an excuse - I was defending my god, my faith, they will say. But what of defending your humanity?

I do respect the right of other people of course, to believe what they want - as long as this does not ask me to adhere to anything.

But history fascinates me, and there's the real clincher - because religion has historically been of (and continues to be) of so much social significance that there are always places of worship where the history overrides the religion. Where crusader knights left their swords, and their signs, and where the Saracens evicted them from. 

I think the middle east is the most fascinating part of the world. It has the best food, the most beautiful women, the most violent histories and even today it is what the world fights over. It is astonishing is it not - that the world still continues to be divided over that one innocuous walled city in Israel?

My memory of that city will always be coloured by an afternoon though. It was windy and cold. e9ki and I had to take a sheroot back to Tel Aviv - a shared minibus. To get to the heavily fortified bus station we had to walk from the old city in the driving rain. It was bitterly cold, the rain was like little needles being driven into our faces - half a km had never felt longer. We laughed and pulled our jackets closer and tried to hide in doorways and little passages.

Once we got on the sheroot - we both fell asleep. I remember waking only once we reached Tel Aviv - still wet, but feeling like I had emerged from the womb. I think I have slept so deeply only twice in my life - the other time was when I did my first all night project in law school. And then we wandered around aimlessly on the wide streets of down town Tel Aviv and wandered to the cafe on the beach to drink hot chocolate.

Can things be better? Perhaps - but they would have to try very very hard. And, even then it wouldn't be that much better.

 Some of my most memorable afternoons were spent in college reading the Economist city guide. This is before the Economist revamped its website and removed this section. The city guide had a description of the nicest hotels in the city, the best restaurants, a cheat sheet on the city, and a section for 'culture vultures'. 

I came across the Widder Hotel on this, in the Zurich guide. Apart from the fact that the design for this hotel is stunning, and I would give my left arm to stay at this - it was much more important for the associations that it held for me. 

In college - it still stood for the world outside - the world that was full of promise and not like the everyday. The world which you could get to if you worked hard enough - where everything was still on offer. There was a magic to the words - when you breathed Paris, Prague, Budapest - you could almost feel the mist in the evenings, the yellow pools of light shining out from a window, or the light rain.

And don't get me wrong - these are truly magical cities - but they weren't the cities of my book and movie fuelled imagination. Or maybe it was just me growing up. 

But on a warm lazy afternoon in college, looking at the Widder Hotel website in the library reassured me. It whispered to me that everything was fine - everything I was pursuing was worthwhile, and that there was a magic world just round the corner.

Maybe its just a combination of work, tiredness and growing older - but nothing seems quite that clear cut anymore.  



 

This is the view from my building at night. Singapore harbour glittering brightly. 




I have many other things to say but I am too tired to write. 

What a great life. 

 Halong Bay in North Vietnam is one of the most magically beautifully places I have seen.  Every grotto, every little cave breathes promise and mystery to you. It is the Asia you dreamed of when you saw "the Beach" and imagined that such places could really exist. 

And sunset on the boat is as close to the twilight of gods as I have ever seen. 

Entrance to a bay in Halong



Sunset