film in a frame: the eclectic world of sergey parajanov’s collages

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I Am 60 Years Old, 1984.

I Am 60 Years Old, 1984.

When one’s life pans out like a movie, can one’s art be far behind?

Described as a magician in the world of cinema, Sergey Parajanov’s movies stand out for their tableaux sheathed in visual poetry. There are no clearly defined narratives or dialogues in the four globally acclaimed films he made in his lifetime. Instead, in its place are near-static scenes lush with colour and symbolism which explore the stories within us rather than outside of us.

Born to Armenian parents in Tbilisi in 1924, Parajanov’s first love was a Tatar Muslim woman Nigyar Kerimova. Soon after their marriage in 1951 she was murdered by her brother for marrying a Christian and converting to Christian Orthodoxy. When 32, Parajanov fell in love with 17-year-old Ukrainian Svetlana Sherbatiuk. The marriage ended in divorce.

Unlucky in love, but lucky in life? It was not to be so with Parajanov. Fame merely brought him more misery. His refusal to conform to Soviet Union ideals and the Socialist Realism style led him to being imprisoned twice. The second time around, when released, it was on condition that he be forbidden from living in Moscow, Leningrad [St. Petersburg], Kiev or Yerevan, nor be allowed to make films. The ban lasted for 15 years.

Bereft of the freedom to create films, it was in the dark squalor and aching hunger of the gulag camps that he turned to making collages. He described his collages as ‘compressed films.’ The most poignant are his seemingly simple boxed dolls which hold lifetimes in their narratives, made from pieces of sack he would pick up whilst doing manual labour. Continue reading →

global travel shot: the pagan temple that became a christian country’s favourite

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When I walked into Garni Temple’s Cella one October morning there was a 2,000-year-old UNESCO-listed duduk performance taking place inside the stone confines to the unbridled joy of a rapt audience. Once the show was over, I somehow managed to get the temple all to myself for a few long moments.

Garni Temple is the only one of its kind in all of Armenia and [now defunct] Soviet Union. The fact that it still stands—a rare pagan Greco-Roman remnant in the world’s first Christian country despite wars, religious upmanship, atheism, and even an earthquake—is a miracle.

Two thousand years old, scholars differ on its exact purpose and age. Is it a temple to the Zoroastrian sun god Mihr built in 77 AD by the Romanized Armenian King Tiridates I or a Roman tomb of the 2nd Century? Either way, its soaring 24 basalt Ionic columns reaching out to a ceiling draped in reliefs of grapes and vine leaves, perched above nine 12-inch-high steps is an evocative magnificent otherworldly sight.

Seated on the stone floor by the empty altar, it was just me and the echoes of those who had passed through the sanctuary two millennia ago. And that remote yesterday from the distant annals of time, briefly became my today.

Welcome to my Armenia series, dear Reader. ❤

the top 11 cultural highlights of tsarist, imperialist, communist moscow

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No list of world cities is considered complete without the mention of Moscow. Immaterial of whether it was in the Middle Ages or now in the 21st Century. Irrespective of whether it is in times of peace. Or conflict.

Spread over seven hills, just like Rome, Moscow was determined from the outset to outdo Kyiv. Kyiv had been the historical capital of Kievan-Rus as Russia was called till the 13th Century Mongol raid. A higher cathedral, longer city-walls, taller city-gates—Moscow had to be better, and grander than its precursor. Period.

What started off as a wooden Kremlin [fortress] built by Prince Yuri Dolgorukiy in 1156, went on to become the citadel of the Tsars, headquarters of the USSR, and now the office and residence of the world’s largest country’s Head of State.

Moscow has remnants from everyone who ruled Russia from its crenelated walls. The Tsars gave it its grand cathedrals, Red [in Russian is another word for ‘beautiful’] Square, and a fortified stone Kremlin. They then burnt their own city to the ground in 1812 to drive Napoleon’s army out, and rebuilt it in an Empire [Baroque and Neoclassical] style. The Soviets after them gave the city its enormous streets, palatial metro system, and Stalin’s ‘Seven Sisters.’ Modern Moscow threw in the Moscow International Business Centre’s futuristic steel and glass skyscrapers into the mix.

It is a massive city in which an eclectic past and present jostle side-by-side, never far from a Christian Orthodox church or the performing and fine arts.

Here are Moscow’s top 11 cultural highlights from its very many eras. Wishing you travels which widen and deepen our intellect, hearts, and souls. Always. 🙂

Continue reading →

photo essay: st. petersburg, where the pragmatic met the poetic

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If there is one man who single-handedly changed Russia’s course for keeps, it would be Peter I, better known as Peter the Great. His rule spanning 43 years opened Russia to Europe. By the time he died aged 52, he had made Russia Europe.

Peter the Great came to power early. He was just 10 when he became co-Tsar of all Russia, sharing the throne with his half-brother Ivan V in 1682. Once Ivan V died in 1696, there was no stopping Peter.

A giant, both physically, and metamorphically, he set about putting his vision of a European outward-looking Russian empire, built on marine trade and naval battles, into action. His capital St. Petersburg, which he built from scratch in 1703 on the marshlands of the Neva Delta in the Baltic Sea, was to be his launchpad for these dreams.

Multi-talented, he was just as adept at building ships as he was at stitching a pair of shoes. He was also equally comfortable executing in cold blood those guilty of wilful treason, including his own son Alexei Petrovich, as of intense loyalty to his friend Alexander Menshikov, a commoner, and deep love for his second wife Catherine I, a laundress from Poland-Lithuania.

After his death, for almost a century Russia was ruled by a string of women from St. Petersburg. First his widow Catherine I, then his niece Anna Ioannovna, followed by his daughter Elizabeth I, and finally Elizabeth I’s nephew’s wife Catherine II aka Catherine the Great. This period came to be known as the Petticoat Period, with each Empress embellishing the city with splendid palaces, monuments, and bridges in the Baroque and Neoclassical styles by French and Italian architects, which one sees today.

The arts thrived here. And so did literature. In its 300-year-old history, St. Petersburg has been home to some of Russia’s greatest writers. Alexander Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian literature, Fyodor Dostoyevsky who churned out one masterpiece after the other, Nikolai Gogol who doggedly destroyed romantic illusions, Anna Akhmatova, a rare poetess in a male-dominated field, and Vladimir Nabokov, author of ‘Lolita.’

These 300 years also saw St. Petersburg have its fair share of name changes reflecting changing geo-politics. From 1914 to 1924 it went by the name Petrograd, and from 1924 to 1991 it was known as Leningrad in honour of Lenin, during which for 2 years, 4 months and 19 days [from 1941 to 1944] it was subjugated to one of the deadliest sieges in history, but never captured. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the city reverted to its original name St. Petersburg [meaning St. Peter’s City] given by Peter the Great. St. Peter’s City, because the keys the saint held to the heavens, herein represented the keys to the West.

Here is a photo essay of St. Petersburg which started off on a pragmatic note and ended up being sheer poetry, punctuated with quotes from its writers whose favourite muse was their city. ❤ Continue reading →

travel diaries: moscow to vladivostok, sleepless on the trans-siberian railway

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Siberia. View from my train window.

Siberia. View from my train window.

PROLOGUE

The Trans-Siberian Railway. From Moscow to Vladivostok. 9,289 kilometres across the vast expanse of Russia, and eight time zones. The longest railway line in the world. Now, how can one resist a journey of such epic proportions!

I had first heard about the railway service laid out between 1891 and 1916 by two Tsars—Alexander III and his son Nicholas II—when I just started working. Something inside me then and there decided I had to undertake this voyage. No, not because I am a train buff. Hardly. But because then, and today, a few decades later when the dream is being realized, it is the epitome of travel.

Dear Diary, here’s my 14 days of travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway with stops at the historical cities en-route. A journey that turns out to be one of my most authentic travel experiences to date. ❤ Continue reading →

karelia: when russia met finland

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Surrounded by 1,650 islands, the 22 Aspen shingle domes tumbling down the Church of the Transfiguration on Lake Onega’s Kizhi Island seems straight out of a fairytale. Just when you expect a goblin to peep out from behind a carved gable, the church bells on the nearby bell tower break into a peal of lilting musical notes. Inside the church itself built of pine logs in 1714, a four-tiered wooden iconostasis with 102 icons recounts tales of prophets and feasts in colourful gilded, recently restored glory.

Together with the equally unique nine-domed Church of the Intercession built in 1764 and 19th Century Bell Tower, it forms the Kizhi Pogost, a UNESCO-listed ensemble of medieval Russia’s grandest wooden churches. They are evocative of the country’s archetypal onion-domed cathedrals, but are made completely out of wood, sans any nails except to hold the domes’ shingles in place, in keeping with local building traditions. There are other buildings on the island including the tiny 14th Century Resurrection of Lazarus Church, and numerous houses, barns, and windmills.

Kizhi Island is the centrepiece of the Republic of Karelia, a region which has found itself amidst a tug-of-war between neighbouring Finland and Russia through much of its history. This has resulted in a heady mix of Russian Orthodoxy laced with rituals and superstitions rooted in Finnish folklore which stubbornly live on.

Though Peter the Great [r. 1682 – 1725] and Catherine II [r. 1762 – 1796] turned Karelia’s iron-rich fields into a ‘factory’ at Petrozavodsk to produce ammunition for their wars against the Swedes and Turkey respectively, and the Soviets made it the site for their infamous White Sea Canal gulag camp, Karelia still retains its goblin Finnish charm. Look closely, it is hiding under the eaves of those quaint wooden homes and mythical churches scattered across the verdant isles and meadows.


Church of the Intercession and Church of the Transfiguration. Continue reading →

travel shorts: jewelled eggs and quirky surprises fit for a tsarina

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When common Russian folks were painting Easter eggs, getting them blessed at the local church, and then sharing them with friends and family, the Tsars did things a little differently. They had Easter eggs of pure gold inlaid with diamonds and precious gems made by the House of Fabergé, the most famed jeweller in the Russian empire. These they gifted to their royal better halves. Befitting a Tsarina, each was a standalone work of art and contained a ‘surprise’ element to amuse and pique the lady’s curiosity. Continue reading →

travel guide: the five untold unesco-listed treasures of western russia

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Not far from Moscow lies a ring of UNESCO-listed historical towns where the Russian nation, religion, arts, and architecture first took shape a thousand years ago under the rule of the Rurik dynasty. Frozen in time, these towns are a far cry from the enormity of Moscow. But their legacy has survived a millennium, through the cold-blooded Mongol onslaught and despite Soviet industrial atheism, forming the blueprint of what is intrinsically ‘Russia.’

Here are the finest of those towns. Achingly beautiful, and steeped in history and traditions, no visit to Russia is truly complete without them. And it is not just me who thinks so. The locals will vouch for it too. ❤️ Continue reading →

72 hours in qatar in pictures

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The fifth smallest country in the middle-east also has the highest GDP per capita in the world at USD 114,648.03. It is a data point made possible because of a 38-fold growth in the economy over the past three decades. 88.4 percent of this country’s population are foreign workers, and 92 percent of the population lives in its capital city. It is the headquarters of Al Jazeera English, an acclaimed independent editorial media channel, and the world’s best airline. Outdoor air-conditioning is common, desalination is the primary source of potable water since there are no rivers in its arid plains, and there is no personal income tax.

Welcome to Qatar.

Until 1939, however, things were very different in this peninsula jutting off Saudi Arabia’s coast into the Persian Gulf. A British Protectorate from 1916 to 1971, the pearling industry which sustained the emirate had died a rapid death in the 1920s with the introduction of the cultured pearl by Japan; the economy was sinking. Qatar was fast becoming one of the poorest countries in the world. Then a miracle happened. Not one, but two. The second even more incredible in scope, and its timing.

Oil was discovered in the Dukhan Field in 1939. Ten years later, the first crude oil exports left Qatar’s harbours. The Qataris were happy enough with this. But there was more wealth in store for them. In 1971, immediately after gaining Independence from the British, one of the world’s largest gas-fields was discovered off its shores—the North Field. Qatar exported its first shipment of liquefied natural gas [LNG] in 1996.

Ruled by the House of Al Thani since 1776, Qatar today contains 14 percent of the world’s known natural gas reserves, third only to Russia and Iran’s, and is the second largest LNG exporter globally with China, India, and Japan the country’s top trade partners.

There has been no looking back for Qatar after 1996. It just continues to surge ahead.

Immense wealth and traditional Bedouin values guide this nation where in two hours one can traverse its 160 kilometres length from north to south, and go from east to west in half that time.

Here’s how to spend 72 hours in Qatar. In pictures. For at times, pictures just say it better. 🙂 Continue reading →

a travel guide to the vietnam war

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This post is not a political article. It is a travel feature. But to fully understand certain places in our world, it becomes essential to know their political contexts. Why they are the way they are. The answers are invariably in their political history. Such is the case for South Africa, Israel … and Vietnam.

A major event in world history, what the world refers to as the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese call the American War, and history books call the Second Indochina War. But this war actually has four perspectives: That of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, America, and the world at large. Also, this war was not just between Vietnam and America, but between North and South Vietnam as well.

Confusing? Read on.

The photo that stopped the war: Pulitzer prize-winning photograph 'The Terror of War,' also known as 'Napalm Girl,' Associated Press, 8 June 1972. [War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City]

The photo that stopped the war: Pulitzer prize-winning photograph ‘The Terror of War,’ also known as ‘Napalm Girl,’ Associated Press, 8 June 1972. [War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City]

Continue reading →