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Passage through pastoral Portugal
The mind sweeps a vast distance of space as the bus meanders through the Portuguese countryside, writes Annie Datta.
It takes about two and half-hours to reach the university town of Coimbra from the city of Caldas da Rainha, the point of my exit every Monday morning. The mind sweeps a vast distance of mental space as the bus meanders through the Portuguese countryside. I react in a similar way as the Irish poet, W B Yeats, might have felt while writing his early poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree-the lyrical outpouring of homesickness. The pull of the homeland is strong and the stimulus of visual images through the bus window reminds one of the vast stretches of land back home in far away India. The life of an immigrant is a painful one, torn apart as he is, between an economically secure life of the West and the emotional drag of the home that he has left behind.
The bus moves on, gliding past quintas of Alfeizerão with its grazing farm animals that make the scene idyllic. Here is the first physical halt to this mental journey. It transports me to the plains of Northern India. Romanticised, the ghost farmers act out their daily routine of tilling and ploughing. I willingly suspend the consciousness of foreigners sitting beside me, and imagine myself in one of the remote villages of Punjab. And this is how I compensate for a gnawing sense of emptiness. There is nothing to contradict this feeling except that the houses here are more modern and well maintained uniformly roofed in orange. They puff out the same familiar smoke of the hearth reinforcing the feeling of family and home.
The similarity of landscape is often very striking especially in areas that still retain their primitive primeval-ness. The hills of Alcobaça not far from Alfeizerão reflect momentarily a picture scooped out of Himachal Pradesh. The bus rarely jolts you out of your dreamy state. It matches the smoothness of your dream rhythm giving you the required recline and indolence to get lost into contemplation of homeland. Home is a word that is easy to define and difficult to build. A concept we take for granted in our own land and that eludes all those who choose to take a more modern road to life in the West. A life that is fast and competitive reflected in high rise buildings and unending traffic; where to deliberate is a privilege. Subjectivity takes a pause and the bus reaches the small station of the beach town of Nazaré.
India is not short of its own picturesque places except that some of these have become ridden with insurgency. Once upon a time Kashmir, the crown of the Indian subcontinent, was a hot tourist spot and a favourite destination of almost all film directors. The backdrop of the high mountain peaks and the serene Dal Lake symbolised the Srinagar valley. Films shot in Kashmir would attract audience because of the breathtaking scenic locations that were in sharp relief to the flat plains of Punjab and Haryana associated with dreary drudge and struggle of everyday life. Kashmir was the dream locale where one escaped during three hours of forgetfulness.
Kashmir is a land of green gold full of poplars, chinars, pines and deodar trees. We have in Portugal forests of poplars and pines with the occasional maple corresponding to the fiery chinar. It's a land of fresh water springs and lakes. Lush green glades are crisscrossed by small rivulets and overlooked by snowy peaks. Fruit and flowers are in abundance. Love is bound to blossom in this Keats-ean land of perpetual autumn. Poesy is likely to tip toe into your wooden interior such being the pressure of nature around you.
Today the Indian cinema has lost its sense of unity of place. Switzerland has swapped places with Kashmir. One could attribute this change of preference in the Indian films to the deterioration of Kashmir into a valley of terror. The Alps have replaced the Himalayas such being the need for familiar reference points to an immigrant's psyche. Who knows how much of the foreign topography is being doctored to cater to an Indian's nostalgia for the familiar. Bollywood films often isolate particular landmarks to give one an illusion of the mustard-laden fields of Punjab. But in the end the standard Bombay film brings back the protagonist to his own country. A catharsis of sorts!
Coimbra is yet far. The country landscape often gives way to evolved cities and industrial towns though the romance continues. The villages dominate the journey once again. Here and there appears a signboard indicating 'foxes', in a patch of forest ahead. There is an urge to get down and follow these winding verdant lanes. There will be time someday. May be on my return I will stop by, I console myself. Far away from the highway there stands an ancient church. It appears so because of its inaccessibility and its remoteness. The castle of Leiria looks down upon me as the bus proceeds to the bus station. Its remains eerie and haunted even in bright daylight.
There is a café in every wayside town and city serving hot bread and coffee. A simple sponge cake becomes all the more desirable by its long hyphenated name (paõ-de-ló) that is seen written on many café boards. Somewhere the bus halts by the road for the villages are yet too small to have their own bus stations. The various roundabouts sculpted with cascading water or a concrete block of public art chases away mountain sickness that one might feel in the two hours of whirling and curling of the bus. Public courtesy is what I learnt here more than anywhere else. Greeting and thanking is a necessary part of interaction. Small courtesies integrate you with the society and give you the much-needed sense of well being.
The river Mondego is now in sight and so is the much-awaited Coimbra, my university town. Your gaze changes from the outside to the interior to wrap up things and thoughts. Though the bus journey continues northwards to Braga, the time for recollection ends here.
