INDIA by RODICA ANCA
The country in which if destiny would not have
been decided so, we never have gotten. The Ministry of Education didn't find
any person willing to go there to teach Romanian Language at the University of Delhi. There probably the material
benefits would have been minimal. How G. wasn't interested in this aspect, he
offered and was nominated. The only problem were the rates at home, which had
to be paid. "As much as to pay the rates we will gain", he encouraged
me, and left early, we, remaining that me and Nana to go after he would have
arranged with the house. Only for us two, the Ministry has allocated money for
travel, I had to sell the knitting machine, the wedding rings, I gathered some
money from Fine Arts Fund, also my father gave me as much as he could, and so I
made the money for going. We left together with two officials from the Ministry
and I have quiet calmed down, that we were leaving for the first time the
country and I was afraid that I can handle it. But everything went well and we
arrived in Delhi,
where G was expecting at the airport.
When I was young a kind of oracle circulated from
which has emerged that in the previous life I was a dancer in an Indian Temple!
Maybe that's why I felt right at home in all the years I lived there.
I was shocked at first instance by the richly
bloomed trees, dressed in all the colors of the world, heavy by clusters of
flowers, the yellow neem, so yellow that made the days still brighter, , if
such thing can be, under the bright sun of India, magnolias of all colors, from
white to sanguine red, jasmines with intoxicating scent, and many others whose
names I don't recall. Flowers from the University garden, alley of nasturtiums,
whose flowers we counted since they began to bloom, until it could no longer be
counted, being so many, pampering petted at the feet of palm trees which
protected them from over from sun's heat, lilies, dahlias and countless others,
some more wonderful than others.
Birdies in thousands, one singing more than
another, the gils careful to defend their nests in endless war with the incorrigible
and aggressive macaques, war that we've also carried, and I have to say that
victory seemed to be on their side. That does not mean that we have hated the
monkeys, on the contrary, I have learned to admire not only their intelligence
but also the team spirit, the organization, the pleasure to play and fool,
caring for brood. I loved the cows who slept on the street, we were observing
the chipkalies which guarded us of mosquitoes and beetles.
But most of all I loved the people. I loved
children. I loved G's students who came visiting and called me
"Mother", and they spoke about their dreams, about their problems,
just like to a mother.
I left there, in India, good friends, Leela,
Margaret, Nilima, Esha. With Esha I resumed contact recently, and if I write
this book that is because she asked me. Because I love her and India.
India,
the land of spirit, country of temples, country of mystical music, country of
dance, the country of gods descend among men, country of myths, country of
epics.
Indian mythology has fascinated and subjugated me
for the rest of my life. I love Vishnu, Krishna,
Radha, Sita, but mostly I love Shiva, "our Lord of Amattur" and
Parvati.
I am sorry that I couldn't visit the temples, but
I discovered the library of the University. God, so many books that I wanted to
read, to learn, to sum up! All old, many in Sanskrit, Hindi, and other
languages that I do not know them. But even for those translated into English I
would have had need at least two lives to studying. There were many, many,
thousands, dust was of a finger, but as it was thicker, as more attracted me.
Guide for me was Pere Danielou, with help of whom I discovered what is Indian
philosophy, mythology, spirituality and thought. Then, slowly-slowly I advanced
a little on this road, just a few steps, but I will never be able to
thoroughgoing. Anyway, I have opened my eyes and mind to a new world, which was
foreign to me until then, that is familiar to me somehow from somewhere inside
my soul: the world of Indian spirituality. World where I return also now, from
time to time, gladly, to search for my peace.
I was in India three times. The first time I
had to go back after a year and about eight months because, surely we couldn't
pay rates for apartment and had to be put out to auction .But before that the
summer holiday came and Kashyap neighbors, who lived above us, sent us to his
mother in the Himalayas at Dharamshala. There
I saw the mountains up close and I was overwhelmed with their greatness.
We ate at Tibetans, there being also the
residence of the Dalai Lama, being in exile. In addition to the Tibetan Temple skilfully and gracefully painted,
the Tibetans had a canteen where took the meal a lot of Buddhist pilgrims who
went daily to the temple and studied at its library.
Towards the end of the vacancy it has occurred a
creepy earthquake creepy, as if the mountains would be rolled down to the
Valley, which has driven us away the very next day back to Delhi.
At Dharamshala I saw and I've enjoyed the
fireflies that watertight compartments were filling the air around you with
their lights, as in cartoons. Jumping spiders almost as a palm, which hunted on
fireflies, fire which were drawing on the hills in distances surrealist images
made by as if an artist in a world above us.
Also there a cat had stolen and eaten Goguţă, the
green Alexandrian parrot as if it were from jade, which I had grew since when
it did not have feathers and I fed it from my own mouth, and it loved me and he
came after me wherever I was. First I thought that perhaps it took its flight,
that it didn't stay in the cage, I've searched for it two days, until a
neighbor told me that he had seen a cat eating a parrot.
We left the mountains full of sadness and fear of
the earthquake in the soul.
At Delhi
we lived a meeting also with a tornado pretty strong to pull out of the roots
trees with trunks of over a meter in diameter, and to put in the remaining pit
a scooter with three wheels, or to throw a car over the wall which surrounded
the University. It didn't last a long time, it has gone on the other side of
the street, To us didn't happen anything, unlike the buildings and trees across
the street. After the tornado has abated, the sky was filled with colors from
golden to orange, pink, red, purple, and green. It was another wonderful
hypo-stasis of sky which I saw, after that red, from after the bombardment of
childhood. But for this beauty I paid tribute of an allergy that I was swollen
both inside and out for about two months.
But we had to leave out urgently, if not wanted
to remain without the house.
I left G alone there and I went with Nana to see
how could we solve the problem, not to stick on the street. For airfare G
loaned and paid after remained alone. I've found a designer post at a design
center and I resumed payment of rates.
The second time we stayed longer, from 1980 to
1984. This time I paid for tickets depositing at the Fine Arts Fund for sale a
few dresses and other pieces of clothing and accessories, the money I borrowed
from a friend and she recovered it from the sale of them. I left home some
young students who have paid for a time the rates, then paid also my father,
after they fled leaving behind the mess of dirt, unpaid debts to the
electricity, debts at maintenance. Good luck with the dad who walked together
with Ionuţ Iuga on the Writers to get a loan and paid from the debts.
We were happy there, in India. Now Nana
went to school, learned Hindi and English pretty well, and has made friends, G
organized for them in our home lessons of music with a professor of harmonium,
workshop of drawing, team of theater, with the music lessons of harmonium, a
Professor of drawing, workshop theater. All children were happy and passionate
about this kind of play, and I hope that sometimes they may remind of G, of
Nana and of time of childhood. These three years have been very beautiful for
our lives. Here I've known my friends, intellectual of class, university
professors, very cult and very friendly, which have accepted and treated me as
someone of their own. Esha has helped me find something working for Oxford
University Press, for which I did the illustrations in textbooks for school in
Bhutan, out of what I won, G has managed to print a couple of books, which made
him happy.
Nana had attached so strong of children,
teachers, neighbors, the nature of India, that when we returned to the
country, complained reproaching with me: "where did you brought me, this
is not my country! Let's go back! "
During these years the life in the country was
hard and sad. The Communist power had its height, had begun to erode, creaky.
Voices ariose at congresses of the party against the dictator and, which is
surprising, were given on the television broadcaster, which no longer had ever
happened. People spoke in whispers about the food queues, on the number of eggs
that had been right, about the bread that you could buy only with identity
bulletin, about the oranges which were found only once a year, on the eve of
Christmas, if you were lucky to not end before your turn came, you made happy
the children back home. Even if the food was not too expensive, it was instead
too little! The endless queues at that you expected for hours without even
being sure that you will have the chance to be not finish before you get to the
seller, queues to which we set still before opening stores, hoping that you
will buy something to eat, what would have been, any. No longer doing trifles
that I not want this, I want the other. You took what was given to you, paid
and said a soul thank! There was nowhere coffee Ness,
I found rarely at those who were doing smuggling, at some insulting prices, but
I paid, I could not say that we take from somewhere else cheaper, because there
was not that other part.
Then, in the approach of l989 Christmas, everything
broke out at once! I worked by then at the Court of Glass Blowers, on the
street Selari in the old center, very close to the University, Piatsa Palatului
/ Market of Palace. During the morning of December 18 or 19, I was gone at
Institute of technology, where we had some works to be burned in a furnace from
there. When I returned to the Court, I didn't fin but a colleague. All people
had been sent to the party's Central Committee to a meeting. After a few hours
they returned three colleagues panting frightened, saying that there is
shooting in those who participated at the meeting. We all freaked out and I
decided to return home, which I did. Only one of us, Ani, stopped at University Square,
where they had gathered the people at another meeting, spontaneously. And
remained there until late, when just had rung her husband to ask me if I know
what happened to her, that she had not yet reached home. I told him what I knew
and he said that will go after her It seems to me that she got home before he
could leave.
The next day all the Center was full of people,
came to protest, and on evening Ceauşescu fled with a helicopter from the
terrace of Central Committee. In fact I have seen what happened, on television,
in the evening journal. From then on everything was general madness, of which
only a few understood and knew what was going to happen.
Ceauşescu was caught, he, his wife, and taken to
an army unit from Târgovişte, it was made a simulacrum of a process in which it
was let to speak, was accused of oppressing the people, sentenced to death and
executed by firing squad, along with his wife. Immediately the power was taken
over by the Communists in the second row, we were glad that we escaped of the
dictator, but they were baking something to us which will had to disappoint us
for years and years in a row, and neither now we didn't find our road and
peacefulness. After twenty-three years, we are still stammering on twisting
pathways of democracy and of misunderstood freedom.
In the spring the young people, realizing the
great hoax of December, started a perpetual meeting started in the University Place.
perpetual. For two months, days and nights, they didn't leave from there, they
slept in tents. Bucharestians brought them food, over the day thousands of
people joined them, students, pupils, and even and pensioners, like me. Nana,
her colleagues, and some professors went every day there after lyceum hours.
The meeting was peaceful. All elite people, teachers, writers, intellectuals,
all who had hoped for a prosperous country, a life in freedom, a happy people.
One of the balconies of the Faculty of Geology,
starting to market, was open and from there anyone with something to say, say
it to all. Romantic-revolutionary songs composed by singer-authors loved by
everyone gathered there - Cristian Paţurcă, Vali Sterian, Andrieş and many
others - elevated our souls and heated our hearts. There have been days full of
euphoric hope.
Cristian Paţurcă has composed 'The Hymn of
Golans", on verse by Vali Sterian, of which refrain I remember:
Better be loafer than a traitor!
Better Hooligan than dictator!
Better be Golan than activist!
Better dead than Communist!
Unfortunately both died shortly after two or
three years in full youth!
The University became a "free zone by
new-communism”, and the meeting was called "Golaniada".
But power was watching. It spoke of hooligans,
promiscuous. The rest of the country believed what they said on TV, and they
condemned the demonstrators. It started a devilish conter-propaganda and the
new head of the state called the miners from Jiu Valley, "to make order in
the capital", to clean the University Square of hooligans and to plant
pansies in the square in front of the national theater.
For Bucharestians it was offending and
frightening. In the morning, on their way to Court of Glass Blowers, on the
street, the miners (or whatever were they) were chasing a Gypsy child that they
caught him beaten and thrown into a van. A colleague who had come to the
service a little later, had assisted to the same treatment applied to another
child and shouted to them not to beat any more the poor kid. Immediately some
three bullies took after him. The colleague ran into the Court, passed as
lightning through the downstairs workshop, jumped over the window toward
another little street and was gone. The aggressors entered after him, they
didn't get that he had jumped over window, they searched everywhere, but have
not found him. They left threatening that will teach a lesson to the"wretched
Liberals\"what we were, who I was, because we had stuck on all the windows
of the inner court posters with Campeanu, the head of the Liberal Party.
They walked on streets armed with baseball, and
immediately they viewed some young man wearing jeans, bearded or fancied
something suspicious, it took them to beating. At least in the University Square
it was massacre. Hordes armed with bats beaten anyone who was or just passed by
there. They had identified, caught and beaten on Marian Munteanu, head of the
students, who was taken to hospital by other people in the Place. I saw him in
the evening at TV news. Countless people beaten, broken, with bloodying wounds
have arrived at the hospital Colţea, where reporters transmitted almost
continuously.
G. came to take me home from work and the streets
were full of papers, official documents, thrown on the Windows of the Ministry
of the Interior, which had been conquered. Anyway, I believe that this conquest
of the capital center has meant more than the "cleansing" of the
Place.
After a few days, as the miners were not thinking
to leave, the head of state, who had called them, thanked them on our behalf,
of all, that they have saved us by "hooligans" and have restored
order in the capital.
The miners have come, also another time when they
stormed the Council of Ministers and thrown down the then Prime Minister came
down since then. They also attacked attacked also the soldiers who came to
temper them, because they had started to Bucharest,
this time being not called.
Each time there were dead, injured, children left
orphans, destruction and looting. After the first mineriad, the young dead were
buried at Străuleşti, many, it is not even known how many. As for those killed
in the revolution of December, it was necessary to have a new cemetery, with
hundreds of white crosses, besides I pass whenever I go into the Center.
Over twenty years have passed since then since
then, but we still we wonder if revolution or coup d ' état, as it is by the
most people, has brought any good to the country or if we were and we still are
manipulated, intoxicated and brain washed.
But the dreams, hope and love for the country and
the freedom have remained in hearts also today, unfulfilled, and I hope that
will not to take with us also on the other world. It would be too sad.
What's curious is that the revolution had killed
about thousand people, and today their successors are in number of tens of
thousands (due to material benefits, tax exemptions, and other facilities
provided by the following Governments as a reward for supporting the
"revolution" that is those who have gained the power in order to
support them further). The former head of State, now more than 80 years old, is
their chief and organizer and calls all in a meeting at the University Place
against the current President of the country, hoping to suspend him from the
Presidency, since they just have overturned the Government which was not on
their liking, and put themselves, followers of communists, at power. Now, get hold,
Romanian people, how many blessings will flow over your head. Or maybe you
forgot all for a bread, a liter of oil and three small sausages!
The third time I went to India in
September 2003 and I stood only six months.
In the spring of 2004 had begun to prepare the
war in Iraq.
I was gripped by fear and didn't want any more to stay far from home, so that
in April I went out from India.
At the airport, even before we took on, it was announced on TV the onset of the
war. But I got home without further inconvenience than confiscation of
cigarettes and matches before we climbed on the plane to Delhi.
In this last stay in India, I got reunited with Esha,
with her daughters, Radha Tara; with Leela and her youngest daughter, Shama;
with Margaret Chaterjee, Nilima and Neetu, their daughter and niece.
I was happy to travel again for the last time, in
the country which subjugated my soul on forever, which entranced me with her
beauties, with its welcoming people and nature.
On first January 1991 I retired, I was 53 years
old. The new power passed a decree that those who were 50 years of age and had
25 years of activity, were entitled to get a pension. Why should I expect any
more? I was in power, hoped that, at last, to work also for my soul, to
participate in exhibitions, to break out of any obligations. But only that it
was not to be after my desire. I worked a few services and some frills, seen as
minor by some and others who have had the luck to open small businesses and
workshops, hoping to gain at least money for materials, combustion,
exhibitions. Just that I was not paid as much as I had hoped, I worked in
precarious conditions, and, from somewhere, I don't know how, I contracted
tuberculosis and all my dreams of artist went on the water slipping away!
My illness was not fatal, I escaped especially
due to Nana who, seeing that it did not pass my"coolness"since about
three months, she dragged me to the doctor and well did. After three months of
hospitalization and treatment they gave me the way home and after another six,
I was completely recovered. Only that I'd lost half of power I have had. But I
can say that I escaped easily. It was going through 1993.
Somehow, with luck, with the help of heaven, I
fooled both disease and pension fund, that behold, after twenty years, they are
still obligated to pay me. Union boss asked me jokingly, when I was taking
farewell from my colleagues: “Mrs. Anca, are you not afraid that these guys put
something in your pension?" See that they didn't put it! Or they
did but did not succeeded! I was stronger!
Less luck had Cristina, friend and colleague of
faculty and service. She died of cancer two years later. It was hard and
heart-breaking to see her how suffer and how extinguishes. I suffered after her
as after a sister.
Translation by George Anca
