From Heaven Lake

Wow, what an interesting book.  I picked this up from the 50p rack at the back of Sainsbury's and I'm glad I did because I have checked online and it is now out of print.  Vikram wrote this travel book in 1983 when he was finishing studying in Nanjing, China.  He'd just decided to try and get back to Delhi via a land route starting in Xinjiang/Sinkiang in the Far West of Northern China and going through the flooded deserts of Far Western China, (it was the short lived monsoon season.)  into Tibet and then a difficult crossing via foot into Nepal. Not many tourists are allowed to go out of China this way and it was quite hair raising. And then finally he caught a flight back from Kathmandu to Delhi. 

I love the way Vikram writes and here he really makes you feel you are travelling with him in a distant land in a time which has now vanished for ever.  Tourists had to use special tourist exchange vouchers.  I was intrigued by this strange parallel money system and had always wanted to know how it worked. And weirdly when I was in the British museum last week I randomly found one and took a photo! I'm such a geek.

Vikram could speak Mandarin and was able to get a seat in a massive truck crossing Western China to Tibet and the wonderfully uncomfortable journey with the chain smoking driver and the young lad who just loved reading comics, was really vivid. The driver was an interesting character who unlike many of the Han Chinese didn't hold any particular negative feelings towards the Tibetians.  He was a practical guy who seemed totally at home in his rattling truck.  His ancient truck made at least 15 different noises but as soon as a16th noise  joined the din he would instantly stop and mess about with the old engine.  Windows didn't close properly and there was no heating in these huge trucks.  Food was mostly crackers and raisins and people initially seemed quite off hand with Vikram as they couldn't place his nationality. In Urumqi he was taken as a local because in this area of China they are such a mixed community.  China was still a very closed country in the 80s just coming out of its dark period of the Mao Cult, the cultural revolution and the imprisonment of the Gang of Four. People were wary of foreigners as they never knew if they were being watched or not. But often Vikram was treated so well. A shop assistant restitched Vikram's 'Muslim' cap to make it stronger.  He wore this cap so that he fitted in more in far Western China. People went out of their way when he lost his bag off the back of a truck and officials could go from being complete beaurocratic nightmares to inviting him home for dinner with the family. Lots of extremes.

Finally Vikram made it into Tibet. His description of the scenery is amazing, Lhasa  was in the process of being completely eradicated and changed into a far flung generic  Chinese outpost. Many Han Chinese were unhappy being posted in Lhasa, they were all homesick and just wanted to go home. Infact no one seemed happy with the political situation at all.  Neither the locals or the Chinese. That's what I liked about Vikram's style he never judged anyone. Everyone was just a product of their environment and friendliness and kindness could be found everywhere...apart from one American tourist who was rude to him because she never realised he spoke English. 

 The right to pray in the Potala had just returned but many other Tibetan monasteries had been totally destroyed between the 60s and 70s.  Vikram could only talk to locals who spoke Mandarin and many Tibetains didn't, but the people who did were mostly honest and open. His experience within the monasteries is so well written. A riot of colour, smell and sound. Also he describes the  foul smells so vividly. There is one road with a big green puddle in it, in which a dead dog is rotting and everyday he passes the dog is in a further state of decomposition. Urghhh!! 

One chapter really affected me.  It's a short description of a Tibetian religious death riitual called a sky burial.  At sunrise the dead body is expertly chopped up and then personally fed to the waiting vultures.   All of this happens whilst the family respectfully watches.  This chapter was both fascinating and stomach churning. The ground is too hard for burial and there is a lack of wood for a more common Buddhist cremation so this is the best way of getting rid of dead bodies and it made total sense to me. This practice, like many other things in Tibet, had been forcefully stopped during the cultural revolution but during this time in the early 80s things were beginning to slowly change and local religious practices were suddenly resurfacing again. I wonder how rites like this are viewed now , 33 years later?

VIkram's final leg of the journey over into Nepal is also fascinating.  He has to hire a Sherpa guide who takes him up a mountain down a really steep valley, along river banks and then finally a border guard pops out from behind a tree and tells him to open his bag because he is now in Nepal. He tries to steal some of his stuff but his Sherpa guide helps him out.  All of this trekking happened because the friendship bridge, which connected the two towns on the two sides of the border, had collapsed. He had to get special permission to cross this border but luckily through patience and diligence he managed it. 

He noticed that there was a woman washing clothes on rocks in the river and it was obvious that she was totally unaware that some of her clothes were in Nepal and others in China. It's little observations like this that I loved so much! 

Yes, this book was really great, partly because I felt like I was travelling with him. I also loved his observations about people and also the bigger observations he made about his country, India, and China. The two massive countries really have nothing that binds them or unites them even though they are so close. Geography and politics  have isolated them from each other. They have no common history or culture, apart from Buddhism. The Chinese and Indians don't influence each other yet their civilisations and food have completely dominated the cultures of SE Asia and much of the world. 

PS I enjoyed this book so much I read it twice. Straight back to the beginning once I had finished! Haven't done that for years!! 

My Brilliant Friend

Wow.  I have read this rather long book in less than a week.  The story just sucked me in and I just had to keep reading. it's written by an Italian author and I have since found out is a real big seller and no one knows anything about the author.  (There are rumours that he is writing under a female pseudonym.)

Anyway, I really  enjoyed this book. It's all about  the friendship of two girls called Lenu and Lila and charts their relationship from when they are pre school all the way to sixteen. These girls are born into a poor and hard life in post war Naples and things are tough. ( It was interesting for me to read this as a parallel life to my Mum's, as these girls were born in the same year. )

Life is grim. There  are ghosts and problems in families,which the girls can only sense because they are too young to understand the issues which haunt the families.  These problems are based on political alliances and money made and lost during the Second World War. But these problems hang like spectres over the families.  

This is a hard life as seen through the eyes of two very intelligent young girls, but girls who come from very different families. Not that parents play a big role in this book.  They are weirdly absent from much of it. 

 One friend leaves school after the  primary years whereas the other continues right through school.  But what got me was the honesty with which Elena Ferrente writes.  The friendship of these two girls is vividly bought to life and their inner secrets laid bare.  These girls both love, admire and are jealous of each other,yet are both completely dependent on each other.

 The men in this book are mostly macho brutes who just lust after money and power and that also means getting the girls they desire.  Looking and playing the part is all that matters to these deprived young lads. These guys have been abused at school, home and work and violence is all they know, so violence is what they show.  Infact lots of the way girls are treated in this book is shocking. women are nothing more than a status symbol and are bargained off for marriage via family meetings.  ( can't believe this is a European city less than  70 years ago!!) 

  This book is ultimately about how these two young girls learn to see how the local men view them ,the corruption and hard lives  which lay ahead of them and how both react so differently to these realisations. 

Yes, this book is pretty bleak and not exactly a laugh a minute and I'm not going to rush out to get the next one in the series , But I am glad I read it because there was just such a strong honesty of how girls behave with their really close friends.  I loved it but also found the number of characters annoying. No other characters,apart from the girls, are really developed that well but there is a long cast of people and I was constantly flipping back to the front pages to find out who was who. But hey I still whizzed through it!   This book was like a drug for me! 

 PS. I hated the cover.  Horrid freaky bridesmaid dresses and not really suitable for advertising the content of the book either.