#28.20 - The Reality of Death

The Fourth circle of Hell

So this is what friends are for. Friends are for picking you up when you are feeling crap. I WhatsApped my friends and they were there to just be with me for a while. And that has made all the difference. Right.

Being on the Tube in London was a strange thing. Whenever I get onto the Tube I recall the first time I ever rode on it. It was with my father who had traveled with me to England to settle me in. Rather sweetly he was as clueless as I was about the trip so it was an real adventure we had together. We took it with the person we were staying with - Sylvester - an uncle-in-law and we boarded at Morden.

Now, you have to realise that it had only been less than two years since the MRT was constructed. It was utterly brand new. You could eat your dinner off the seats. There was hardly anyone on the MRT. Very often I'd be the only person in the carriage. I remember looking at my own extended face in my Rafflesian uniform in the opposite window and I'd think how fat I looked. Also, one of the first epiphanies of my life took place in the MRT. I was reading Graham Greene's The Power an the Glory as part of my S level paper and there was a sentence in it - we are all going to die one day. I was sitting down in the MRT I remember, and at that moment I saw a huge chasm open beneath my feet and I understood the visceral reality of death. Oh My God! I thought as I looked into the abyss, we are all going to die one day. It only lasted for a split second but for me it was eternity. I recall the depths of the darkness. The closest sense I had of this since was Dante's Inferno - especially Rodin's Gates of Hell. The despair and the inevitability of this reality hit home and it changed my life forever. It made me repeatedly ask myself every since, what is the most important thing in my life?

What do I not want to regret if I make a decision?

Anyhow, we boarded on Morden and I was really shocked at how dirty and shabby the train was. Also, inexplicably, there was velour for seats - on public transport, really? - and also the floors were made of wood, which seems a strange choice for something which ran on electricity and could be trapped underground. But the most overwhelming thing was the smell. It is the same smell the Tube has today. The smell of burning rubber and metal, with undertones of piss an puke. And when the wind blows through the tunnels your entire body and hair is massaged by this smell. It is unmistakable. It is a smell which is entirely absent on the MRT which always smells of new plastic. Or the heavy body odour after the rain.

I got on the Tube at Tottenham Hale. The begging was bad, even for London. A man was pestering people who were buying tickets at the ticket machine, asking for spare change. Except that you cannot buy tickets using real money now - it is all cashless. He went over to ask and I had no money on me, save my card. But I also felt embarrassed. I always feel embarrassed when I encounter people whose life circumstances are so hard - car washers, people who clear plates and bowls in hawker centres, beggars, refuse collectors. I know that but for the grace of god there go I, and yet, I find it so hard to engage equally. I am always a bit frightened. A bit shy. A bit sorry. Mostly sorry that I can't do anything about their situation and also guilty. I should be doing more.

The Tube screeched and lurched. It was sort of full. The people on it were tired. It was just past 7 pm on a Friday. It was an in between time. Between people arriving home and people leaving. I looked at the advertisements, the people. Things had changed subtly. Like it seemed there were more foreigners now. I also felt no pang of curiousity when I saw ads on things in the theatre. There seemed to be a lot of musicals from Disney films. And there was one based on the songs of Sting. Really? There were also these odd ads on vitamin supplements by celebs which I had never seen nor heard of. I did not feel excited nor that I was missing out... over all the feel of London was, even from four years ago, shabbier, and practically unrecognisable. Instead of heading towards somewhere like a 21st century Utopia, it had this down and out feel of something from Blade Runner. There were the trappings of tech but mostly everything felt run down and just about coping.

There was ONE place I loved though. We ended up there accidentally. It was the Little Istanbul part of London. It was like being in another country. Not ever an English take on being in another city. It was out and out pure something you would see in another place. The way Chinatown is not Chinatown, not really, it still felt very English, this place was as if we were on the edge of some trading outpost. It was chaotic, disorganised, a bit seedy. People were also sleeping rough. It was also night and it hadn't rained so the streets were dry and full of people. I can't believe this was a week ago.

The food was amazing. That simple god easily cooked food which I now recognise has been refined into apparent simplicity through centuries, millennia of a food culture. The overcomplication of high status restaurants which I have come to detest, the pretension, was nowhere to be seen. I now know that good food, real good food from a long standing culture, is quickly prepared, holds a host of great flavours and is happily eaten. The food is not the focus of the meal, but the essential actor - part of the company, the conviviality. It calls no attention to itself, but is a joy to consume. They made their own yoghurt which was apparently made from am extremely full fat milk. It was between ice cream and double cream. It was in soft salty globs which made you go weak at the knees. It was served with everything - the lamb which had been marinated in it, the taramasalata, the baba ganoush... and the salad... the nicest salad I have had in ages. Easily available veges chopped finely and then piled into a colourful heap with olive oil and a splash of vinegar and sweetness.

There was no ceremony in its serving. We had homemade flatbread. It was also done with such candour and naturalness, the exact opposite from the self righteous nonsense which surrounds Western eating now. Vegan this, air miles that. You are here for a night out, this is simple food which takes nothing to prepare. You are not eating a massive amount, enjoy it, it is your birthright as a human being. There is no need to agonise over every single bite.

The dour puritanism which has entered the eating culture here is so tiresome and Francoise also said so. She was, oh please, don't get me started with veganism. I don't know why people make such a big deal of it...

I literally walked under this bridge

It is time to take back control. Override the fog of the brain and reengage.