Singapore Dream and Other Adventures by Hermann Hesse & Sherab Chodzin Kohn

Author:Hermann Hesse & Sherab Chodzin Kohn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2018-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

KANDY PROMENADE

The famous city Kandy lies in an oppressively narrow valley on a miserable, artificial lake. Apart from its ancient temple and its, of course, marvelous trees, it has no merits, but it does boast all the problems and deficiencies of a small foreign city that has been systematically spoiled by excessively wealthy English people. By way of compensation, however, leading from Kandy in all directions into the marvelous surrounding landscape are the most beautiful walking paths in the world. Unfortunately I saw only half of these despite a long stay there, since the rainy season was late, and Kandy lay constantly under gray, rainy, overcast skies and thick fog, like a valley in the Black Forest in late autumn.

In a light downpour one afternoon, I took a stroll along bucolic Malabar Street where I was able to enjoy the pleasurable sight of the half-naked Singhalese youth. I did indeed feel a kind of atavistic ease and home-like feeling—which to my disappointment I had never experienced in relation to typical tropical landscapes—at the sight of the carefree primitive nature folk. Such folk flourish and thrive here in India in a much more beautiful and convincing fashion than they do, for example, in Italy, where we usually look to find the “innocence of the South.” In particular, what is totally absent here in the East is the unbridled pomposity and joy in violent noisemaking with which in the Mediterranean coastal towns every newspaperboy and match seller proclaims himself as the noisy center of the universe. The Indians, Malays, and Chinese fill the countless streets of their populous cities with an intense, colorful, vigorous life, which, however, proceeds with an almost ant-like noiselessness, and in that way puts to shame all of our southern European towns. Especially the Singhalese, as otherwise unremarkable as they may be, all go through their simple, mild, monotonous lives with a lovable gentleness and quiet, deer-like dignity that is not to be found in the West.

In front of every hut, as though floating between the wall of the house and the edge of the street, was a very small, naive garden. In all of them bloomed a few roses as well as a small tree with “temple flowers,” and before every threshold a couple of handsome, dark brown, longhaired or else oddly shaven-headed children gamboled about, the smallest completely naked, but with amulets on their chests and their wrists, and ankles adorned with silver bangles. What struck me as contrasting with the Malay children was that they are without shyness toward foreigners and even coquettishly seek to draw our attention. They learn the beggar’s call of money as their first English word, frequently even before they learn Singhalese. The girls are often wonderfully beautiful, and all the children without exception have beautiful eyes.

A steep side road disappearing into the thick, tangled greenery attracted me, and I climbed up through a ravine amazingly lush with vegetation, which had the odor of ferment of a greenhouse. Thereabout on countless

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