What might have taken Ibn Batoota perhaps a couple of years of sea faring and caravan trails takes just a quarter day , centuries later. With three and a half hours of time jerk the tricolour turns white with a red-blue yin yang almonds.
Half a day to kill ahead and the head still heady with last night’s Bibimpap,Kimchi and Soju feast with office colleagues - an interesting mixture of Brits, Koreans and yours’ forever, your charming raconteur.
The sun is out and bathing the streets of Soul. Yes, let me spell it like the way it is pronounced.
Soul. Soul . Soul… The name itself is so soulful. Full of charm. Gives you the pleasure of verbalizing quite akin to the pleasure of saying out loud the name of the other just after admission of love. Yes Soul in autumn is love at first sight possibility.
Four hours of uninhibited city walk and acquaintance is what is in store and I am excited about it. With some chill in the air, bright warm sunshine, clear blue skies and no another entity to disturb the random musings about everything. It is delightful to find linkages ,associations, relativity, transitivity and oneness in visuals that you see in a new country so different from earlier experiences elsewhere. And when one beam of thought is not ricocheting into another train of thoughts, it is merely sights and visuals which get impressed on wordsworth’s mind’s eye. In Soul what I saw in those 4 hours of complete wanderlust city walk would always be a source of life’s mo jo. Joie d vivre, as they call it.
I begin my first hour by wondering as to how do I walk around. Ask for the nearest tourist attraction and tick it off in my ‘to see’ list? Naah… The real spirit of the city is found only when you saunter around mindlessly seeping in the city atmosphere and the bustle on the sidewalks.
There can be several patterns to this. Fondness for the winter sun made me follow it. Yes I will walk around in directions through the most sunlit lane visible. In the sheer romantic sense I would call it my ‘Catch the Soul sunlight walk’. And so did I.
The onset of Autumn with a initial shiver of winters on its cheek had made Soul turn into a riot of colours from yellow to maroon. However the most prominent colour was golden. Family of one of my fondest trees maple still had the garb of green. However, the older dried leaves had begun to fall. It always makes me think of the movie shots in Hollywood movies or more local flavor of that can be seen in our own Bollywood flicks too, courtesy the team of our love sniffer Shahrukh Khan and allegedly gay Karan Johar. These thoughts and my black jacket in such situations do make me feel like I am walking in a movie. Narcissus would be my name in Greece. Not sure if he was Greek or Roman.Let it be Greeco-Roman for now. Spell Chekoslovakia.J
Another common tree of which I don’t know the name of, lined the sidewalks and had fan shaped leaves!! I was totally wowed.Were they poplars? I am not sure. Will have to check on the google.It looked like small golden Korean fans of varying size. Gathered a few. I hope it keeps well and doesn’t wither away, once away from Soul. Like the orchid plant I technically speaking ‘smuggled’ from Bangkok. The initial two flowers bloomed and there were no more flowers in it. Makes me wonder if there is something like melancholy in plants too. Must be. Sounds like a magical percept. So I would imagine it to be true.
Related to this I suddenly remember one of the ‘Dear Anna’ letter that gets published in ‘The Korean Times newspaper’.
“Hi Anna,
I am 13 years old. I know it might sound stupid but I am very upset. This morning, while cleaning the fish tank I drained down the sink, one of my pet fish. What should I do?”
Made me laugh out loud as I sat on the wooden bench in the weekend Soul sun. It was Gangnam Gu street I think. Koreans have this very funny humourous side to them. Their way of life or may be as people they have a special animation movie way to look at things. Even the Korean script having evolved from a sort of a pictograph looks like small Korean ‘Pucca’ dolls, huts and ladders are strewn all over.
After a few minutes I was joined by a young woman perhaps waiting for her boyfriend. It was kind of nice for two reasons. One – She was good looking with beautiful straight silken hair, big almond eyes with a tinge of red and corn on the cob set of gleaming teeth. More than that, that perfume which I am sure I am familiar with. It has a light fruity whiff of ‘bail’. Wood apple. Is it wood apple? Perhaps they don’t have ‘Bail’ in the unIndian part of the world. Not sure if it is called wood apple in Angreji.
Don’t know much about their culture or history but from whatever limited I saw I guess they were and are a nation of very hard working people and peace loving folks. From the idyllic rural picture of old traditions and culture it has become a modern and successful democracy in which I am sure US association and capitalist bent has surely been instrumental. There is an area called Itaewon popular for pubs and its foreigner frequented tag. Very close to that somewhere is the US army base is there and you can see US soldiers once in a while in their battle fatigues.
The way a small country fends for itself now and the way it did so in history would make for an interesting history channel program. That especially in the light of two comprehensive cultural and military giants. Would they have managed to avoid the conquests of the Kublai Khan the great grandson of the great Ghenghis Khan.
Caution : Musings about history can make for a staid reading for the uninterested.
So back to my city walk story. My pattern changed suddenly from ‘Catch the Soul sunlight walk’ to ‘follow the black stockings unnoticed’ by sheer accident when I came across an eastern beauty
