Puri, the eighty-second day

Dana, from Berlin who will be too 33 in 1999, had her breast bitten by an Indian after pushing him away. My New Year Eve was a kind of her emotional support.

"I was very satisfied with my drawing while it was not beautiful, simply because it was realistic. I sketched this woman who was ugly and it could be seen as it was, in its ugliness, so I made ​​a beautiful drawing. But when this woman asked me to see it, I pressed my drawing against me so that she does not see how ugly she was." The story seemed to me so funny that a contagious laugh started and we couldn’t stop to cry.

 
Jeremy invited me for a bit (a very little bit) of "Sucre brun". Alcohol and the "biscuits de l’espace" were perhaps not the only reasons for my great comfort.

Puri, the eighty-first day,

Rest day after the efforts of the previous day. Doing nothing is pleasant. "Why won’t we go to the beach? “
It seemed to me that the French were the only ones who use the word "Baba cool" for “Hippie” and I had often wondered why. I got the answer today. A "Baba" is a kind of Indian spiritual master, usually with shoulder-length curly hair and whose ambition is to found his own ashram. By extension, a person full of kindness, generous and able to give some alms to beggars will be qualified by them as "Baba." "Hey Baba! One rupee! " is heard everywhere. Then just to be "cool" is necessary to become a "Baba cool"!
I met two Germans (again!). Very funny. The first is very blond, very muscular, very tall, very little educated, after all, very German, and a traffic cop in a small village. The second is the opposite, except that it comes from the same village, and is a "computer freak". It's a very original and unexpected combination - that sex does not even seem to explain - which I believe can only exist between Germans. I love them also for that!

Puri, the eightieth day,

The day was spent visiting the only important monument of the neighborhood: the Sun Temple of Konark. I wanted to see it before the end of the year and I made it. To cross the eighty kilometers round-trip with the bike doubled the excursion of a sport challenge. Physical tiredness made it possible to cut off my bad mood, certainly linked to the proximity of the full moon, and I arrived to a temple very different from those I had the opportunity to see in India. It is a kind of porous rock pyramid whose base is adorned with twelve chariot wheels. An atmosphere part orgiastic, part sacred comes out observing the many erotic sculptures and the feeling of seeing some Inca temple of the equatorial forest instead of an Indian temple made the imagination of the sacrifice of virgins having previously been raped due according to the rites required very easy. 

The memory of the chariot of the Apocalypse with its four spinner wheels decorated with eyes also returned to my memory with this Berlin post-end-of-the-world feeling.
On the way back and as I approached Puri, the sun was already beginning to set. I was going through a forest of coconut trees and I thought about what I wrote the day before, I smiled finding beauty in the view. Then, in the middle I saw a power plant and I laughed my heart by finding the beauty of the landscape!

Puri, the seventy-ninth day,

Great conversation today with Lita.

I found a new victim to tell my life. Germany, France. The French elegance and why it could be an answer to complexes and frustrations from everyone. All are trying to hide something, their social class, their education, and their deformities. The beauty is rarely true and natural. Where exceptionally it appears, it is seen sublimated, becomes supernatural, unattainable. The non-apparent beauty has the advantage of using intelligence to be discovered, it is reserved for those who know how to look. Apparent beauty has the advantage of influencing everyone, the stupid and the non-stupid, but by this time it requires an understanding of who holds it, not giving pearls to swine.

The conversation on the eve of the films of Quentin Tarantino also took me to the conclusion that "Pulp Fiction" was definitely "nineties" crowning American supremacy in field of art. If the Andy Warrol’s cans were a shock as works of art, the "tasty burgers" of the Travolta’s companion are masterpieces for the entire globe and do not bother anyone. Europe is bogged down in its transition period, doesn’t find its identity between past and future while the U.S. are doing of their decadent crisis a cultural ferment that no other movement from the "old continent" does impede. The economic and artistic are they opposed? Is it just nostalgia for the era of prosperity and easy life that raise questions about the necessity of art in everyday life, or because the ease and comfort did not bring the expected satisfaction, we try with more indirect means, in order to satisfy our minds.

We want to see sunsets in the palm trees, and once we saw them we find them vulgar. We then seek the beauty of a morning fog mixed with smoke from factory chimneys, and the sad daily mass - who dreams of coconut trees that have left us indifferent - is transcended by us to the rank of wonder because it gave us the pleasure of using our intelligence to be able to appreciate what the masses do not see.

Puri, the seventy-eighth day

The village was actually a city. Walk to the temple, which make the fame of Puri was an ordeal, which I understand it, the majority is loath to do. That apart, I saw the real city, “the Indian side”; on that side, only Indians and thousands of pilgrims. The temple was of course “No Hindus not allowed”, and the library's terrace offering a panoramic view of the inside, closed! It remained the pleasure of seeing Indians on holiday, buying multiple necklaces made of shells, typical appliqués fabrics from the Orissa (the region of Puri) or buying small baskets of sweets as offerings to gods.

 
The beach is not very steep and the surf over more than ten meters. The sand then becomes like an oily area where sometimes the hemisphere of a wave bubble slips in the breeze as light color tones of the sunset. This particular light - because the mirror provided by the sand is much smoother than that the one of the sea, constantly in motion - would bring almost poetic vision of the natives defecating on each high tide along the fishing village.

Puri, the seventy-seventh day

Most Westerners are arriving here from Calcutta, the line leading to Puri is not going further. Going further south is complicated from there. You start from Calcutta alone, then you sympathize with the other Westerners traveling with you in the compartment of the train at night, then you share the same room and the days go by without being able to decide to leave, or find a free place in a train. I cannot escape the rule - except that I had planned to stay ten days - and find myself more or less belonging to a group of Australians from Melbourne. My roommate is called Lita, twenty-three years old, meditates daily and likes Aretha Franklin she had the opportunity to hear on my records.

Puri, seventy-sixth day,

Puri is a city that is growing, tourism is important. There are thus many constructions of villas by the sea. The problem is that if one begins to build when they have money, they also stop when the money is missing. The houses around my house are mostly huts made of palm branches but there are few brick buildings not plastered yet. They actually offer the same look as the old abandoned houses that have an air of fake ruins of the romantic era where it would be possible to recite passages from Chateaubriand. The boundary between past and future is so thin; standardization of the environment.

Puri, the seventy-fifth day,

the tropical beach of the summer is the frame of the winter atmosphere of Christmas. The walking along the deserted beach is followed by the dancing and the shouting to the beat of electronic music of the "Walkman", to the maximum. Similar sensations to the ones felt in E-Werk but alone and without drugs. One of those songs ended with a long synthetic sound of waves. The actual noise of the waves, which was always present in my auditory landscape "behind" my headphone, seemed to have suddenly invaded and crossed it; the natural and the supernatural were combined. By a similar process, fixing the image of the waves gave me the fugitive impression that they were going to cross the barrier between the nature and my conscious, composed by the lens of my sunglasses.
There is a Christian church in the village of fishermen, people sings and claps hands to the Christmas mass, it is not really a sermon, it seems that all can be said in singing. Loudspeakers transmitted through the whole village the friendly singing to this population filled with festivities.

Puri, the seventy-fourth day

I got to see this morning one of the most beautiful sunrises in my life (it is true that outside of India, I'm not used to getting up so early). It seems that attending the sunrise is a custom of the Indian “middle class” spending its vacation here. Dozens of couples, families were there, camera in hand, awaiting the first light over the ocean to fix forever their dear child in this wonderful setting. The infinite sky glows were concentrating at a single point and the fireball appeared. Suddenly, the beach reflecting the blaze from the sky, animated mirror formed by the breaking and backwashing of the waves, was like on fire. I stood there, my glass of "cay" warming my fingers, completely indifferent to the outside world of that supernatural bonfire.
Lita, the Australian girl traveling with me in the train, shares my new room overlooking the sea in the fishing village. I thought I would get bored when I booked the room for ten days and I have neither the time to read or write, I talk all day with strangers, with people I've already seen three times during the day, the French, the Germans, the people introduce to me ... In this small village, there is a bit of a "Hippie Revival", the life is incredibly cheap, opium sold in official shops close to the temples and there is nothing to do except to sit on the beach. I will use it without abusing of it.

Puri, the seventy-third day,

Travelers in a "ghetto".

The only four Westerners had been gathered in the same compartment train; quite nice actually. It seems that I transform my attitude a bit. Wearing color gives me considerable pleasure and talking with people is a need. On the beach, I also met Jay and Tracey who come from San Francisco, one is a music producer and the other is an antique dealer, oh, well!
I will spend the holiday on the beach in the tropics, one could imagine worse! Puri has a lot of character, I expected a very religious place and it is a fishing village.