Tracing the Silk Route Part One- Turkey and Iran

When I was coming to Kandahar… I took one hard look at the map of this part of the world… and it occurred to me that Afghanistan was centre of all civilizations- the China, the India, the Iran and the Middle East… and no wonder the silk routes criss-crossed this tumultuous country…. The Valley of Oxus… and the Khyber Pass, for instance, were often said to be the gateway to India… for from here… the armies of Ghanznavids, Ghorids, Mughals came to India… they brought with them conquests and cultures, pillage and philosophies, scepter and Sufism….

And when I looked deeper into the map… the Silk Road started capturing my imagination… nobody told me what it was… for it was apparent… it exists even today… the roads and caravans are ephemeral… but destination, like truth, is eternal. And in a pursuit to discover these eternal destinations… I started making itineraries of wanderings…

I don’t know whether I will be able to cover these destinations from here or not… one problem is the connectivity… Kandahar is, to put it bluntly, an Island… and to go anywhere from here… one needs to go to Kabul… which, at best is a bigger island. Other problems are deeper… of that of balancing between my family and my urge to wander… my wife has a pertinent point… that if you get some leaves… you must use them in spending it with your kids… I just can’t counter this argument. My kids, after all, have a superior right over me…

Anyways… I have always maintained that dreaming itself is an act of emancipation…. It does not matter as to whether you are able to actualize your dream or not… for that is the second step, logically speaking, the first being dreaming itself. If you dream! You have won half the battle… and winning half the battle is better than none.

And then my dreams made me chart out two itineraries, which will be a travelers’ delight… one that takes him through the span of Turkey and Iran… and the other that takes him through the dust-tracks of Xingjian, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan.

Route 1- Turkey and Iran.

• Istanbul- Centre of all civilizations… where the orient meets the occident… where the Asia meets the Europe… city that has seen the two largest empires of the world… Byzantine and Ottoman… Istanbul has always been a dream destination, everything pales in comparison. EVERYTHING!

• Selcuk- A wonderful tourist place… close to Izmir… Pamukkale… Ephesus… Selcuk itself is a history’s delight… an absolute must-do.
  

• Cappadocia- If a fairy tale was to be enacted on earth somewhere… this is it… unique moon-like landscape, underground cities, cave churches and houses carved in the rocks… Cappadocia… narrates the history of communal strife and human endurance, all rolled in one.
  

• Koyna- City of Whirling Dervishes, the greatest poet Rumi… Koyna is perhaps the totem pole of Sufism… and no visit to Turkey would ever be complete is this place is breezed past

• Ankara- Not touristy… however… a capital is a capital… center of modern Turkey… therefore… needs a brief stopover.
  

• Trabzon- A picturesque town by the Black Sea… Trabzon houses within its folds the stunning Sumera Monastery… the Black Sea Coast of Turkey have its own unique culture… due to its proximity to the Russia, Armenia.
  

• Van- The gateway to Iran…located by the mysterious Van Lake… that, myths tell, has a mythological monster in its depths… and only a few years ago people have seen that some such thing actually exists in this place.
  

• Tabriz- Biblical “Garden of Eden”… Tabriz has a history of more than 4500 years… it also has a unique culture… partly Iranian, partly Azeri.
  

• Teheran- The center of modern Iran… great museums, parks, restaurants, warm friendly people…
  

• Qom- Jewel of Iran… one of he holiest city… most prominent center of Shiite learning… all in all, a must visit
  

• Esfahan- Considered, often, the most beautiful city of the world… Esfahan is half the world…"Nesf-e-Jahan"…tree-lined boulevards and relaxed pace… It also has a functional Atashgah… a Zoroastrian fire temple…
  

• Shiraj- Birth place of Saadi, the great poet… Shiraj has often been dubbed as the center of all art and architecture in Persian civilization… it also holds one of the most renowned sites of entire Iran… Persepolis.
  

• Yazd- Travelers tell me stories and stories about this place… they say that there is no place like Yazd in entire Iran… its most beautiful town… hardly touristy… Yazd is one of the best kept secrets of Iran… though not any more
  

• Mashhad- Land of Saffron, Land of belief… of Imam Reza… Mashhad in the holiest site of Shias in Iran… right after Mecca and Karbala….
  

Now the possibilities of completing this route is not all that remote... one way is that I fly to Dubai... and Kandahar has more than one flight to Dubai every week... and then coordinate onward flight to Istanbul and return flight from Mashhad....

Or the other way is to fly to Istanbul... from Kandahar itself... and I am told that very soon a Kandahar-Baku-Istanbul flight would be starting... and the fly back from Mashhad to Kandahar... so I believe logistics for this route are not all that difficult... what is difficult is however getting a Visa to Iran... and believe me... its quite difficult.

And then come Route Two… which is even more spectacular

From the Archives- My 175th post

This post was written when I was about to give my final Arabic languages exams... Today I am learning a new language and am heavily borrowing from my experiences while learning Arabic...

Thoughts on learning a new language

Why this lull….

For last seven or eight days I have not written anything in my blog… one of the regular visitors asked me the reason…

So here is the reason. I am having a very important exam lined up on 26-28 of this month… this exam will test my skills in the Arabic language… my ability to translate to and forth, my skill of writing meaningful passages and my skill to conjure up meaningful conversation in Arabic. A tough ask, I must say, from a person who studied Arabic for two years while working for his daily bread.

The silver lining, though, is that I need only 60 percent marks to pass… and my skills in some parts of examination are very good… this will enable me to sail through.

Arabic is one of the richest languages… I am astounded by the scientific nature of this language… if you encounter any word, there is a very subtle manner in which you can deduce its rough meaning… and reading it in context, armed with the rough meaning, would enable you to reach the right meaning of the word. It is part of Semitic language family… that includes Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic (practically dead, was the language of Jesus) and Amharic (spoken widely in Ethiopia)…

Semitic language family is one of the many families of language… the idea of a family being… that there is a very close resemblance between all the languages in one family. So check out the resemblance between Arabic and Hebrew… (Salaam in Arabic becomes Shalom in Hebrew… and if you see how it is written… you will be amazed to notice the similarity)… So if you know one language in the family, then picking up another is not all that difficult. In fact, I will try to learn Hebrew after learning Arabic…(I met a Japanese girl in Jerusalem, who knew quite a bit of Arabic and was trying to learn Hebrew… she suggested me to take up Hebrew… and that after learning classical Arabic, I can learn Hebrew on my own).

India is blessed with a linguistic diversity which is unparalleled. We speak more than 25 prominent languages… out of these at least three have international clientele- Hindi or Urdu or Hindustani, Tamil and Bangla. Not many countries are endowed with this amazing diversity.

Say in USA… one would find predominantly English speakers, some Spanish speakers, some French speakers and some speakers of indigenous languages in Alaska. Russia is more endowed… Russian, Mongoloid languages… and some people speaking languages of Turkic group or Uralic group… China, despite its smaller size, is bit more diverse. Most speak Chinese, with some people speaking language of Turkic origin, some speaking Mongoloid languages and some speaking Tibetan family of languages.

Cut to India… practically every state has his or her own language… some states have more than one. But there is something unique in this diversity. India has more than a few Language groups in its fold… Indo-Iranian is one of the most dominant. Similarly Dravidian group is dominant in South India (also spoken in Northern and Eastern parts of Sri Lanka and parts of Balochistan)… we also have a big chunk in the northern and north eastern part that speaks language of Tibetan-Burmese origin. Add to this Urdu, that is predominantly used for colloquial purpose… can qualify as an amalgamation of Turkic, Indo Iranian and Semitic language. And not to forget that we are the largest population in the world speaking an Anglo Saxon- Germanic language called English. So practically, 4-5 language families have representation in India.

Now people have different views on the diversity… some feel that it is a roadblock in nation-building… some salute the diversity… I view it as a very selfish human being… what benefits can accrue from this linguistic diversity.

One benefit, without a doubt, is the richness this linguistic diversity provides to the pop culture… Good literature is being churned out, not so much in the most dominant language of India… as in less dominant languages like Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya and Bangla. The best selling newspapers are not only in Hindi- but also in Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam. The best television news channels in India are not in English or Hindi… but in Malayalam (see the quality of footages of Kairali and Asianet, and you will agree with me). Best movies are made not in Hindi but in Malayalam, Tamil and often in Bangla. This enrichment could have been forever lost if we were speaking only one language.

Another benefit is that it can help us in creating a Linguistically-literate society. We can start churning out people who have a very strong propensity to absorb new languages… How???

Scientific researches have shown that once a person knows 2-3 languages… it becomes incrementally easier for him to learn a new language. So a person who knows four languages will easily learn the 5th, whereas the one who knows only one will require a lot of effort to learn the 2nd. The practical examples are all around me… In the first semester of Arabic, I had a Canadian girl in the class- she knew Russian, English, and French…(three language of three different families), her performance in the class was way ahead of anybody else.

What happens? The more languages you learn, the more sensitive you become towards the linguistic diversity. So you start appreciating the fact that in Arabic… the majority of sentences start with verbs and not nouns or pronouns (like in Hindi or English)… or the fact that Arabic is a phonetic language… and how you make a particular sound makes a lot of difference in Arabic. Contrast it with Hindi, which is based on the kind of sound which is made… and not on how that sound is made. (Am I making sense, well give me benefit of doubt, I am no linguistic expert). The moot point being that more language you know, more sensitive you are towards inter-language variation and therefore more open you are to learn a new language.

Now that we know this- what do we do with this information? Well, apply it.

I believe that we will be doing a great service to our future generation if we make them start early in the pursuit of learning more and more languages. Some years ago, a three language formula was given by some politicians… it was a wonderful idea… let us start imparting three languages in our schooling system. The only idea being- let all these three languages be of three different family languages. One can be the mother tongue; other can be English and third can be a language of different linguistic family….

So a person in Uttar Pradesh will study Hindi or Urdu as his first language, English as second… and any of the Dravidian or Tibetan-Burmese language as his third language. Similarly a person in Tamilnadu can study Tamil as his first language, English as second and any Indo-Iranian or Tibetan-Burmese language as his third language.

This will do a lot of things… one it will go a long way in nation building… today one of the biggest problems we face is the linguistic and regional chauvinism… a North Indian doesn’t know how to differentiate between Tamilian and Kannadiga… and a South Indian doesn’t know how to differentiate between a Punjabi and a Bihari. Once we start knowing each others language… we will understand the beauty of their art, culture etc. (Most South Indian I have met think a Punjabi is very aggressive and rustic… similarly a lot of North Indians think that South Indians are too self centered and introverts… imagine if we read the best of Punjabi literature or we see the partying scene in Chennai… wouldn’t it shatter these unwarranted stereotypes)

Two we will be creating a vast group of linguistically empowered people…. People who can learn any language in the world… (Believe me; if our economy goes on growing at 9-10 percent every year for next 10-15 years, we will need such people). And if we start today, we will be ready within next 10-15 years.

Thirdly, if we would have started earlier… Arabic as a language wouldn’t have posed so much of a challenge for me…I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a language in which sentences start with a verb. Or the fact that the Ka sound in Hindi can be phonetically produced as Ka and Qa, and that in Arabic both are different. No one corrected me when I pronounced Waqt (time, in Arabic and Urdu) as Vakt. (The best example, however, is that Qalb in Arabic is Heart, whereas Kalb is a Dog)

Finally, Noam Chomsky says that "languages vary little in their deep structures; though there may be wide variability in surface manifestations"… knowing more than one language enables us to know this deep structure and be prepared to deal with the variability in surface manifestations….

This has a deeper and philosophical meaning, we all humans are same.

Thoughts on learning a new Language- Revisited

A few days ago I was remembering my first day in Egypt… when I was walking alone on the road, trying to search for Indian Embassy… and how, despite being a couple of steps away from me… Indian Embassy seemed to be a far-off place and its search seemed almost endless.

That day, broke a myth… that English was omnipresent and omnipotent… hardly anybody on the roads of Zamalek… where crème-de-la-crème of Egyptian society lived… knew English. And that English, after all, was just one of the languages of the world. Slowly and surely, I came to know about the expanse of Spanish… of how more countries in the world speak Spanish and not English… I came to know about Arabic… which has been the raison d’etre of transfer of all oriental knowledge to the occident and perhaps a catalyst to the Renaissance.

Anyway… few days in Cairo and I remarked… that it feels like somebody has stolen two senses from me… my sense to speak… and my sense to hear… for all I could speak seemed gibberish to others… and all they spoke was gibberish to me…

Despite these few days of senseless (no pun intended), it’s no wonder… that after an year and a half… I not only backpacked through Egypt…chatted with the locals in colloquial Arabic… but also traveled all alone… in Syria, in Jordan, in Palestine... with an ease that is possible to locals only.

Anyway, I am learning a new language these days… Persian. Persian, again, is an important language… Iran, Afghanistan, parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iraq… and some parts of Pakistan… either speak or understand Persian… Afghanistan, for instance, speaks Dari (a variant of Persian) and not Pushto (as we would like to believe)… Pushto, though, has its own importance… it is the lingua franca of Pushtoon people… of whom just one-third live in Afghanistan… and two third in Pakistan.

My teacher, an elderly gentleman, is a teacher in a prestigious local school… he is a Sufi by beliefs, and a great poet. He was introduced to me by a friend of mine… who is a student in that school. More about my teacher, later.

Persian uses the same script, as that of Arabic; however, it introduces three new consonants into the script… “Cha” as in Chad… “Dja” as in Ahmedjinejad… and “Pa” as in Pakistan. (It also introduces another consonant Gaa, but that I think is also available in Egyptian Arabic... and therefore is not truly unique) It also changes the pronunciation of many Arabic sounds… so a “Tha” sound as in Othman becomes “Sa” sound… as in Osman.

Knowing one language makes knowing another language easier… well that’s true… now learning Persian is incrementally easier for me… I am able to relate Persian grammatical rules and formations with that in Arabic… so a “Nihad” is “Mubtada” and “Guzara” is “Khabar”…

Anyway, I love this language… which till now has appeared to be a bridge between Arabic and Sanskrit… a lot of words and formations from Arabic… and a number of words sounding similar to Sanskrit. History tells us that when the Aryan migration started from the Central Asia… a stream of the migrants went to Iran… and another stream to India. Thus, we can argue that Sanskrit and Persian had a similar heritage.

A question arose in my mind… which language of the two… Sanskrit and Arabic… is Persian more closer to… more I look in to the vocabulary of Persian… more I feel that Persian is closer to Arabic… and yet something tells me that Persian bears an uncanny resemblance to Sanskrit.

I asked this to my teacher…

Well, my teacher is a great linguist… he knows Persian, Pushto, Balochi, Urdu… and add to this wee bit of Arabic, Seraiki, Punjabi, Sindhi, English and Hindi. Though, he admits, that knowing all of them is no difficult task because most of them are of one family and are easy to follow.

So… he gave me a new insight into linguistics…he said when comparing two languages… go to the most basic words of those languages, words used for father, mother, brother, sister, wife, son, daughter… these words are very unique to a particular language… and don’t transform with super-imposition of new cultures…

His way to analyze languages struck a chord in me… say for instance, if we look into Spanish and Arabic... we would be actually overwhelmed by the stark similarities between the two languages…. However, the family of Spanish and Arabic are as different as chalk and cheese. So how similarity does arose… perhaps because of the strong historical interactions between the Arabia and Andalusia… similarly, perhaps, similarities between Arabic and Persian arose due to strong cultural linkages between the two… during the Islamic age… however… when you look for words for Father and Mother... Padar and Mader in Persian and Abb and Amm in Arabic, and in contrast Pitra and Matra in Sanskrit.

Languages are an amazing paradigm to look into human civilizations… one way of looking into the domination of English in the global popular culture is the dominance of two English speaking powers, one after another, Britain and the US. The perhaps, there was a time when Arabic would have dominated the global culture…

As for me… I pledge to gather at least working knowledge of the languages where I live… Arabic, Persian… god knows which language awaits me next.

I didn’t learn grammar very well… either of English or of Hindi. Sadly in India, Grammar is often thought as an unnecessary add-on… but now having learnt Arabic Grammar… I can correlate with Persian Grammar at a stupendous pace… Grammar is the most basic tool of learning any language…

It is perhaps like numbers, which are necessary to learn Mathematics… numbers may be called by different languages, but once learnt in any language… they make Mathematics comprehensible.

Quo Vadis

Quo Vadis… is an existential question… Where am I going…?

It allows me to take a stock of where am I… where am I heading … and where do I want to be headed to… this question had been bothering me for quite some time… ever since I read this phrase for the first time, courtesy my friend Raja. And today when I saw ROCK ON for third time… something struck my chords (literally that is), lubricated my thought process… and made me think… where I am, where am I heading and where do I want to be headed to.

Where am I… well I am all alone in one the most dangerous part of the globe called Kandahar… undergoing new experiences everyday… the last being meeting a person, whose both hands were amputated after a bomb explosion… and who writes with his legs… and has devised his own style of writing Dari and Pashto… both being hard to write languages, otherwise. This place has taught me so much… like Cairo… helped me in developing new perspectives… new insights… and most importantly building new momentums. Someone told me a story… of how his friend went to India… and didn’t have money to buy medicine… and how a medicine shop-owner said… that don’t worry take the medicine and pay later… that you are a Pathan… and who can be more trustworthy than them. The narrator then blinked… he said India is the only place in the world where we are respected… I was numbed and touched… I thanked that medicine shop owner… and I am proud of my people’s ability to be humans… when world around… people are being branded as terrorists… based on their religion and ethnicity.

Where am I headed…? I really don’t know… what I know… is that every brush with new cultures… I change as a human being… for example… a small change… Cairo has changed me… from being aloof to secular… and not just an armchair or intellectual secular… which hardly matters… but emotionally secular. I still don’t know, as to where am I headed… or what I would become…after this stint… but that I would relish whatever I become… after this stint. I am overwhelmed by the hospitality, genuine warmth that people have showed towards me…

And that brings me to the most important question… where do I want to head for.

Do I want to achieve big things… no… I don’t want to be rich… I don’t want to be high and mighty… I don’t even want to be some well respected intellectual… when I look into the depths of my heart… I find small wishes… small dreams… and let me just write them here and now… lest I am blinded by the world I am living… which lays so much stress over material success… of whether I walk or breeze pass in a luxury car… whether I have a happy home in a middle class locality or a house in some up market locality….

First… believe it or not, I want to learn Salsa with my wife… Why Salsa… I really don’t know… I just want to learn it… did I ever try… well I remember meeting a Columbian Girl, once… Natasha… who tried to demonstrate few steps of this magical dance… much of why I want to learn Salsa… emanates from there… Natasha was full of life and oodles of attitude… she didn’t fall for my flirtations… he he he!

Second… I want to visit a few places in the world- Barcelona (my dream city), Salaar Uyuni (salt flats in Bolivia… which due to its height and rarified air… give the illusion as if you are walking in the sky), Ethiopia (I want to hire a canoe on Lake Tana and visit the rock churches all around the place) and last but not the least… Armenia (I heard its name, firstly, when it was fighting with Azerbaijan for Nogorno Karabak… then when I saw … Kim Kardashian… perhaps, the sexiest women alive… Armenia is famous for its beautiful countryside and old churches)

Third… a very small dream, of becoming a good swimmer… I mean I know swimming… but have problems in coordinating my breathing while swimming… I just want to overcome that… because of this… I fear water… was not able to snorkel in deep water in Sinai… had to swim along the edges of Cleopatra Bath in Siwa Oasis in Egypt… Swimming opens a plethora of opportunities considering that two-third of the world is water…

Fourth… I have tried it many times… and due to constant failures, am led to believe that I am not cut out for it… I want to learn Guitar… why… I just don’t know… I mean I can play simple tunes… like “Tujhe Dekha to ye Jana Sanam” etc… but then these tunes are rote learned… some day, I will try it again… or at least buy one very expensive guitar… which would, perhaps, force me to try it until I succeed. (And here is the reason as to why ROCK ON made me write this blog)

Last (or perhaps not the last, but certainly the most important wish)… I wish to travel with my sons… all alone… just with them… to inculcate in them the magic of traveling, of how traveling is the celebration of being human. when I close my eyes… I dream of that temple in Gangadevsthan that provided me a refuge for an entire night… I was a Hindi speaker… and most of them there were speaking Marathi… and yet I was welcomed… a far cry from the hatred that I keep on hearing about. I dream of Amboli… how I stayed in a hut belonging to a tribesmen… giving him 100 rupees… for a bed and dinner… my idea of Bed and Breakfast… in a place that is no-where…. I dream of Jaigad… the spooky fort… that provided me refuge… or Jaitapur and its Custom outpost… of meeting a couple of kids in Saint Simeon in Aleppo, kids who offered me figs and tea… who welcomed me in their homes… they didn’t know me… they didn’t even know where I was from… all they knew was that I was a human being… old enough to be their father… their uncle… of meeting people in Al-Qasr… of sleeping in White Desert… of seeing Desert Fox…

Yeah… this is what I want to do… I don’t want to be rich, powerful, influential… these things only make you believe that you are happy… but chasing these small dreams make you really happy

So… Quo Vadis

माँ.....

My Friend writes this poem... remembering her mother...

माँ.....
इसी गगन के किसी फलक से झांकती तो हो,
पर नज़र क्यूँ नहीं आती कभी?
पूरा संसार है आज मेरा कहने को,
पर हर सांस कुछ अधूरी सी है कहीं.
याद करती हूँ तुम्हें तो छलछलाती है आँखें,
मद्धम मद्धम गत होती हैं यह नसें.
चेहरे तो कई आये इस दिल को संभालने,
पर न पाया उनमें तुम्हें कभी.
गौर किया तो हर रिश्ता निकला सौदे का,
लेना-देना से न उबार पाए हम अब भी.
चाहे उम्मीदों का हो सौदा, हो सौदा प्यार का,
भूल रही हूँ खुद को, इन सब में कहीं.
ढूंढती हूँ तुम्हें हर तरफ, हर शक्ल में,
थक गयी दुनियादारी समझदारी निभाने में.
इच्छा है एक बार फिर तुझी से जन जाऊं,
माँ! तेरी गोद में सदा के लिए सो जाऊं.

- तुम्हारी टिम्पू

The Great Travelers: Part Three- Peter Freuchen

I discovered Peter Freuchen accidentally… while on my second attempt to Roopkund Lake in Himalayas.

Roopkund still remains out of reach to me… first time… I developed mountain sickness… and second time… the inclement climate did not let me reach it… first time I aborted by attempt 5 kilometers ahead of Bedni Bugyal… and second time near Kalua Vinayak.

On my second trip there, in 2003, I met a Bengali gentlemen… in his early 50s, he was trying to get to Roopkund all by himself and two porters… two porters, one to lift his wares… and other to lift his books. That man was, incidentally, carrying some 40 books on his trip… and coaxed me to finally approach him and ask why he is carrying so many books.

I came to Afghanistan with almost 100 books, and one of colleagues at office, today, asked me the same question. I told him that I cannot live without my books… that Bengali gentleman gave me the same answer… and told me the anecdote from Peter Freuchen’s life…

Freuchen was a special traveler… very rich… he was from a breed of travelers who took up traveling as a mere hobby to prove themselves to the world… his life in general and travels in particular were full of anecdotes, of highs and lows… he learnt so many lessons while traveling and applied them in his real life… when with an amputated leg and failing health, he participated in Danish resistance movement against the Nazis, during the second world war… traveling taught him to never say die… even when he was imprisoned by Nazis… possibly to be executed.

The incident regarding these books goes like this… when once Peter was on a trip in Greenland… the weather was bad, real bad… and the entire contingent was somehow surviving… at one of the camps… Peter realized that he has left his carton of books behind at the earlier camp… he was inconsolable… and decided to mount an expedition to retrieve his carton of books… the team leader was aghast, but gave in to the logic of this determined man… The team leader gave him minimal resources… just two Eskimo escorts… and told him to meet the team at the next camp… thinking that such a proposition would deter him… but he was wrong… Peter, not only mounted the expedition, but also retrieved his carton of books, and reached the next camp… well in time…

Much of what Peter Freuchen became… was due to his father… who was a wonderful story teller… and told him stories of land far and wide… he bought Peter, when he was just in his teens, a boat, which took him on small outings in solitude… and probably fueled his ambition for larger voyages… to Arctic, Alaska, snowy north of Canada and Greenland…

Over these travels… he developed a liking for studying lives of Eskimos… or Inuits… as he called them. So much so that he was enchanted with the beauty of Inuit girls and married an Inuit girl, Navarana. After the marriage he lived with the Inuits for a decade altogether… developed an immense understanding about their society… and his accounts about them are no less than anthropological treasures. His wife, however, died in a influenza epidemic after 10 years of blissful life… after which Peter moved on to newer vistas… “Trying to forget Navarana”.

So touched was he from the simple ways of these people that he wished to be cremated like them after death and his ashes were strewn in the white lands, he loved so much.

His life is full of interesting anecdotes… once before marrying Navarana… he met a beautiful Inuit girl… and offered her a lift on his sledge… the girl refused and showed her hairs… which were untied… only after some days did Peter realize that offering an Inuit girl a lift meant proposing her for one-night stand… and untied hairs were an indication that the girl was menstruating. He didn’t know at that point of time that he would go on to marry an Inuit girl.

During the last legs of his travel career, Peter lost his way in Greenland… and had to make a snow-cave to survive till a rescue party came to rescue him… he was rescued after days… but in the process, he had a severe frost bite in one of his legs… that was later on amputated.

Peter realized that his travel career was over… but he did not lose heart… he knew that he had a vast repository of knowledge on the lands where very few dared to venture… he continued to accompany expeditions into these lands… now as an advisor… as a experienced man… and is said to have guided many successes.

He wrote a number of books on the region… a number of articles… novels… his novel about Ivalu an Inuit bride who comes to live in Copenhagen… is a heart wrenching semi auto-biographical account. It depicts the clash of two cultures, two ways of life… and a critique of ethnocentrism among Europeans.

Perhaps… he could foresee… that this ethnocentrism is soon going to take a monstrous shape… in the name of Nazism… He fought tooth to nail against Nazis… was imprisoned and was about to be executed… but somehow escaped to Sweden and then to USA… where he finally settled.

Peter Freuchen is not very well known… and I just chanced to know him… I thank that Bengali gentleman for introducing me to this great man… who imbibed the spirit inherent to traveling… of never saying die… and trying to contribute beyond their passion.

His life story means a lot to me… his life itself was a journey… a journey that inspires me… and tells me to never say die.