Waves

We’re chest deep in the Pacific Ocean, our bodies encased like giant black caterpillars in thick wet suits, clinging to powder blue and pink surf boards. Above the sun is shining but here on earth the water, in early April, is frigid. Every now and again the water warmed by my body is joined by a trickle of ocean that seeps down my back or through my gloves and I remember how cold winter really is.

(Surfing near Tofino, Vancouver Island)

Jenn and I are novice surfers but already can taste the hint of perfection that comes when we are able to stand atop a wave and experience how the ocean feels as it moves across the skin of the earth.

We catch a few more waves and ride them and get put through the ringer a few times, and while we’re bobbing along in the ocean Jenn says “the last time we were in the ocean it was the Arabian Sea.”

(Father and sons, Varkala, India)

Then the water was warm. We were in Varkala, India. We dove through the breaks and floated north in the current; the afternoon sun was so hot it was hard to be out in it.

Varkala is a temple town. For more than 2000 years Hindu’s have made a pilgrimage to Janardhana Temple; each morning and evening they descend the temple’s steps and make their way through the crowded streets to the ocean where they receive the puja blessing, and where many then wade into the ocean as part of their religious ritual.

I don’t know the significance. I’ve read that in the sacred waters of the Arabian Sea Hindu’s can plead for salvation for the souls of their departed loved ones.

What is clear is that these water’s are holy. Step into these waves, and you are stepping into healing waters of salvation.

But then, so are all the waters of this sacred earth.

The waves break against our bodies and in doing so, carry away a little bit of us; cleanse us of what hurts us, what makes us afraid, what comes between us and that which we love. And these healing waters carry something to us as well; the buoyant peace born from the knowledge that all human kind are ripples on the sea of creation.

(Rio at sunset, French Beach, Vancouver Island)

Rio and Silas understand this intuitively, and may someday even create their own language of expression for this miracle. Both boys have become so much the ocean; are often most complete when racing the shoreline waves on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

Imagine, says Deepak Chopra, that all life is an ocean; you and I are waves. Temporary, forming and moving, and diminishing. He says this in the context of Quantum Physics, but from the perspective of Hindu mysticism: we are localized expressions of the life’s yearning to exist; the universe’s restless effort to organize the mass of energy and information born at the moment of creation, of the Big Bang, into momentary concentrations of existence. Temporary, but beautiful.

We are waves. We descend into waves to seek salvation. We ride waves to find perfection. Sometimes we sink beneath them. Sometimes we emerge cleansed and whole. Sometimes we emerge holy.

(Pilgrim, Varkala, India)

The Perfect Nation of Tea

Tea fuels India.

As a life long tea drinker, one thing seemed certain when Jenn and I decided to travel to the sub continent: I would be able to get a decent cup of tea just about anywhere, anytime. I wasn’t disappointed.

After stepping off the plane from Mumbai to Goa at 6am, after 36 hours in transit – three of which where spent sleeping on the floor of the Mumbai airport – I was handed a cup of chai tea by Lisa, mere seconds after getting a hug and kiss from Jenn. I was pretty happy to see all three members of my welcoming committee.

It was the beginning of a delicious love affair: with India, with Jenn all over again, and with a Devine brew called Chai tea.

Some believe that tea is as old as India itself, though the first documentation of the cultivation of tea comes in the Rāmāyaṇa, a Sanskrit epic tale that explores such themes as dharma, duty, and how to become the ideal person, servant, wife, husband or king. Part of the Hindu canon, the Rāmāyaṇa dates to 700 BC. In my world, becoming perfect at anything would involve the consumption of a great many cups of tea.

The first western cultivation of tea in India can be traced to 1837, when the British East Indian Company established the first English tea garden in Chabua, in Upper Assam.

Along with Dejarling and Assam varieties of tea, India is most famous for its Chai Tea brews, which you can purchase in upscale restaurants or from Chai-whalhas on bicycles, in trains, on street corners, or just about everywhere else in the country. On my first night in India, in Hampi -- the imperial capital of The Great Vijayanagar Empire -- a boy not much older than Rio and with a smile as wide as the sunset, offered us no end of opportunities to enjoy a cup of Chai while we watched the day close over ancient ruins and temples. The next night, when Jenn, Lisa and I climbed to the top of a Matunga Hill to watch the sun set from Veerabharda Temple, a man was set up with stove and pots and little stainless steel cups to peddle Chai to pilgrims for ten rupees a glass.

(Jenn took this photo of Chai tea being served from the back of a bike in Fort Cochi)

Chai tea on the train, though, is one of India’s greatest ideas. At irregular intervals men lugging 20 gallon stainless steel urns make their way through the cars; their coming is heralded by the sing-song chant of “chai, chai, chai tea,” and by the pungent aroma of the brews herbs. You get your ten rupees out when you hear that song.

No longer is Chai served on the trains in the legendary ceramic cups that you launch from the window when you are done as a means of stimulating economic activity: now it comes in flimsy plastic cups. But it is, quite simply, the mark of a great civilization that the tea comes to you rather than you having to go to the tea.

Chai tea is a brew of black tea, milk and sugar, along with cinnamon, black pepper corns, ginger, cloves, and cardamom pods. Like laws and sausages, maybe it’s best not to watch too closely at how Chai tea is brewed:

“At a stall men are brewing tea, they put the tea, the milk and the sugar all in together, boil it and strain it through what looks like an old sock. It has an odd taste that grows on you,” says by Quentin Crewe in Letters from India.

(Chai tea being brewed in Cochi: note the old sock....)

The secret, according to some, is in the freshness of the spices. We traveled through some of the countries finest spice growing regions, and witnessed first hand the careful cultivation and sorting of each of these fine plants.

I suppose another secret would be fresh socks.

To enjoy a cup of tea is equal parts flavour and location. To this day I can remember cups of tea I have enjoyed in some magical spots: the ‘breakfast rock’ at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park, for one. Though purchased almost twenty years ago now, I still use the blue and white loon mug I bought that summer in a shop in Smith Falls, Ontario and drank tea from each morning while watching the sun rise and the world come to life from my granite perch overlooking Loon Lake.

Others: Cups of tea brewed on day hikes from a base camp in the Whaleback, in southern Alberta, with my friend Mark Holmes; morning tea in the Stillwater Canyon, in south-eastern Utah.

Now, add to this list possibly my best cup of tea: at a lonely tea stop along the treacherously winding road from Kumily to Munnar, where the cardamom grew tall right along the side of the road. It hadn’t been my best day in India, and I was worn out from the twisting road and the Indian predilection for overtaking diesel-belching Lorries while going uphill on blind corners in an under powered vehicle. The driver stopped to let us have a look around at the cardamom forest and we ordered a cup of Chai from a woman brewing the mix in a dark, concrete bunker on the road side.

It was advertised as ‘cardamom tea’, and it was, beyond a doubt, the best cup of Chai that I had while in India, and possibly the best cup of tea I’ve ever had in my life. She served it in a stout glass and it was thick and creamy and heavenly on the pallet.

(Possibly the best cup of tea I've ever had....)

From this wayward tea stall we carried on to Munnar, home of the Tata Tea Corporation – subsidiary of the Tata group, which is among India’s largest corporations - one of the largest tea conglomerates in the world (in 2000 they bought UK based Tetley Tea, in a nice twist of historic irony). There we stayed in a small but charming resort perched on the side of a steep mountain overlooking tea plantations as far as the eye could see.

Many of us are drawn to pastoral landscapes, and the hills of Munnar are bucolic to the extreme. The hills are voluptuously feminine in their undulating contours; the quilt of tea plants give the landscape a tidy, orderly appearance while the insanely snaking roads provide a sharp contrast to its systematical grids.

(Above, along the winding road between Kumily and Munnar;
below, the view from where we stayed outside of Munnar)

Tea is grown in dense plantations that flow over the hill country like a slightly disjointed lattice. Its beauty is beguiling. Make no mistake: this is agro business at its very best, and very worst. Tea is largely grown in monocultures, and the volume of hardwood forests that must have been clear cut to produce it are staggeringly vast. To its credit, however, tea has very deep tap roots that reportedly do a marvellous job holding the soil intact. Tea is hand picked every ten days or so, and as such, provides solid employment for mostly women of villages like Munnar. Ten million people rely on tea for their livelihood in India. Work on a tea plantation is among the highest paying job in agriculture in the country. That being said, it is a subservient and still barely subsistent existence, as the shanties of Munnar attest. Like all agri-products, it would be best to source organic and fair trade tea to encourage healthy communities and a healthy landscape.

(Shacks in the town of Munnar)

That being said, I never stopped a Chai Whalla on the train to ask if his tea was organic. Thick, rich steaming cups of heaven for the equivalent of a few pennies: who but the most morally righteous could contest such a custom?

And for the record, I never met an Indian man who wore socks.

The Spontaneity of Fish (A Photo Essay)

Wandering is one of the best things about traveling. In India, Jenn and I had a loose agenda that we followed so as to make the best use of our short time there. Its a hell of a big place, and with only three weeks, we could have easily spent our time chasing our tails getting from one place to another. Before I arrived, Jenn and Lisa sat down and made up an itinerary and we followed it pretty closely, but within it there was a lot of time for spontaneity.

India as you might imagine, is a good place for impulsive behavior. 'Spur-of-the-moment' is just part of the normal course of events in India; if you're not predisposed to being spontaneous, then India is simply not a good fit for you. In fact, I think the entire country is pretty much contrived by spontaneous energy. If you just wander around long enough, spontaneity will happen to you, like it or not.

Have your camera ready. Unless of course, your camera being stolen is the spontaneous event. (Fortunately this is not a story about thievery)

One morning, in Varkala, Jenn and I were aiming for breakfast, when we came upon what must be an almost daily occurrence in this town: a fishing boat landing on the vast, sandy beach below the cliffs of the North Beach. When we arrived on the scene, a dozen men, woman and a few kids were already on shore, hauling in a coil of rope. Looking towards the sea, it became clear that the boat that had beached had set a purse-seine and we were about to watch it get hauled ashore.


In Canada, when you set a purse-seine and haul it in, half a dozen men on a self-contained fishing boat do it, using a small secondary boat to set the net, and then a winch to haul it aboard the main vessel. But this is India. Here, manual labour still powers these everyday events, so as we looked far out into the ocean, we could see more men bobbing in the water, guiding the nets towards shore.


On shore, the work party grew; its numbers swollen by kids that couldn't be older than ten, and a few older folks - including one amazing older lady - who must be in their seventies. Of course, a few of the tourists on the beach decided to join in - just long enough for their wives to take their pictures.

Now, Jenn and I had been on our way to tackle an unruly breakfast when we came upon this enterprise, and it was starting to look like it was going to last a while, so I ran up the steps to the top of the cliffs for sustenance (must provide for family, male genetics demand) while Jenn continued to snap away. Jenn is as great photographer, and together we're really enjoying the Nikon D80 we bought last year. Shooting with a digital camera lets you focus on exploring all the angles and possibilities of an event, and not about how much its going to cost you to find out if any of your pictures turned out.


The image below is my favorite from that morning's shots. I love the double line of the rope and its' shadow converging on the ocean. The horizon line really trips me out. Above: Jenn has a real knack for capturing the essence of a moment in a single frame.

It took more than an hour from when we arrived on the scene to when the net was finally pulled ashore. There were hundred's of tourists gathered around, and I think we were all hoping that there would be a Blue Whale or a Great White Shark or maybe some sort of Leviathan-like Octopus in the net. Instead, this...

A million little fishes. Some of the men set to work sorting them into baskets - the by catch being gathered up by any bleeding-hearts in the tourist set to be returned to the ocean - and then, loaded right back onto the same boat that had set the net several hours before. My best guess is that the tiny fish would be set on lures on a long-line to catch the myriad species served up for diner in Varkala's fresh fish restaurants that line the cliff tops. This image of the basket below seemed to be a throw-away until i got to fiddling with it in Picasa, my photo editor of choice, and managed to save it by increasing the contrast and adding some tone to the sun-washed inage. Looking at it now, I really love the way Jenn captured the action of the moment.


And without a moment wasted on ceremony (or even to make sure everybody was on board) the boat was launched back into the breaks and out to sea.


Wandering makes it possible to capture spontaneous moments, with the camera, and with the heart. My favorite moments in India were the ones that we stumbled upon (the Blue Market in Ernaculum, the backstreets of Fort Cochin, a night-time stroll through working class Karala, moments of conversation and connection on Flower Sreet in a market in Mumbai). My acquaintance Pat Morrow's philosophy of photography is simple: "f-8 and be there." He means, use the sharpest part of your lens, and get out A LOT. To which I would add, as it pertains to spontaneity and wandering and a million little fish: use the sharpest part of your eye and your heart and soul and and don't let having an itinerary keep you from experiencing the magic of the world.