Meeting Europa through stories
Europe has always been a fantasy land for me. My first introduction was through school charts describing cities of the world and princess Diana. For a long long time, I viewed Europe as one entity. Anything that happened in London, Paris, Rome, Spain, Denmark, for me, it happened in Europe. Almost as if it was one neighborhood — just not neighboring to me. The literature in English available for kids was filled with descriptions of a land of fairy tales describing lavish balls, where the castles were ornate and opulent, where there were vast meadows with lilies and daffodils, where the forests were a different color in every season — white, green, yellow, red, where seagulls flew along the coast, and where people went out and conquered kingdoms and slayed dragons, and wore shoes made of glass. Growing up in India, all this was imaginary for me. The tales here were set in familiar villages along temples and river banks, in sprawling forts stripped of the wealth that once contained within, in the dense green deciduous and ever-green forests which didn't change colors, where kings always defended their kingdoms from invaders and rakshasas (human-like beings but evil and with horns).
When I was exposed to the European literature, I had to imagine and understand the foreign ideals of wealth, power, beauty, and generosity that were born out of a very different geography than the one I had lived in. For example, I found it difficult to imagine the horror of a harsh white winter night but I could imagine the trepidation of being out in the menacing monsoon with its lightning and thunder. In yet another example, the vegetation in India is a mix of tropical evergreen and tropical deciduous. In olden times, the commonly available fuel was firewood twigs from these trees and dried cow dung cakes which gave high heat for short duration of time. You didn’t get thick hard dry wood, that burnt slowly for long duration (hours) and was good for baking cakes or smoking meat. So we have had chapatis and curry eaten in every household, folklore, legend, myth, and story for the longest time but never had a cake. Can you blame me for my immense fascination with this sweet that is found in each household from the fairy tales and just one day of the year at my home? Such subtle differences widened an already deep schism in my perception driving the entirety of Europe more and more into a fantasy land.
Just when this lady Europa was beginning to take a mythical form in my mind, she told me stories after the industrial revolution such as Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. They showed the ugly underbelly of this fantasyland. It was harsh and not out of the reach of my imagination — we do have our share of homeless children on the traffic signals, don’t we? I could imagine an Oliver Twist amongst them. I liked the fact that, after the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, Europe opened up and tried to redefine her projected image in the world. Of course then I studied the Indian freedom struggle in school and realized that in subsequent years, she did become haughty and try to impose her new found insights and knowledge to the entire world irrespective of geography. So now, I was taught to see the colonizers as an enemy. Suddenly, I found myself on the opposite side of this pretty lady Europa who had once told me cute stories of castles and cakes full of pathos and romance.
Its been a complicated love-hate relationship — between me and Europa now, because over the years, through legends like the Tatas, I have come to realize that she did trigger industrialization and scientific progress in India. In recent years, I have tried to free myself of any bias or pre-conceived notion about Europe, and get reacquainted with this old and wise story teller. She certainly has lived with her head held high surrounded by riches and good weather for a long long time now. The climate crisis will affect the equator before she feels the pinch I guess. She has been headstrong, powerful, and stubborn enough to be able to preserve her traditions. Experience has taught her that pursuit of knowledge is greatly beneficial for her ambitions. Although, I never got a chance to embrace her either as a teacher or an employer, she did welcome me recently as a guest for 15 days and showed me around.
As I finally came face to face with the lady herself, who had stretched my imagination far and wide throughout my life, Europe opened up her heart — Germany. It has seen so much conflict — ignited by ideology and religion and fueled by economy and power. She has pieced together her heart every time it was destroyed and has devoutly preserved its essence from antiquity. Town centers, cobbled streets, city halls, and market places look the same as they looked centuries ago and its a painstaking effort. I repeatedly wondered why was there such a vehement effort to recreate everything that was once there. I revisited my image of Europe when I was young and found the answer there! She was still a story teller! She reminisces her story through the innumerable gorgeous churches, city halls, and palaces. She keeps all of her past romances, pathos, and conquests in her heart.
I do agree that she has lots of stories to tell and that she has given birth to art so exquisite and primal that it becomes a medium of expression where language falls short to convey our feelings. Hence, it needs to be preserved for humanity to experience, interpret, and express through it. Mind you, that just like children don’t define a mother, these palaces, churches, paintings, and sculptures do fall short to showcase her inherent beauty and immense power. Instead, they are dear artefacts of a life well lived, just like a beautiful tea cup that once belonged to a set that you used to play with your best friend, or one gorgeous earring left out of a lost pair gifted to you by someone special. Her secrete weapon seems to be her climate and geography with which she could establish supremacy. Europe is naturally gorgeous with a climate that aids preservation — I saw her adorned in fragrant roses, warm sunlight, blue lakes, yellow soft fields, and magnificent Alps. I smelled while she was baking bread and cake and smoking meat, and did I mention baking bread? It seemed like a run-of-the-mill-task for her as making chapatis are for my mother.
After reminiscing about her good old days, she did come out of her reverie and showed me around her latest trends and newfound interests. I realized she has come a long way from the stories of monarchy and colonialization from history books. Paintings are not restricted to the royalty now — there is street art. Everyone is an artist and everyone can enjoy the art. She had set out to impose everything of hers on the colonists but she has now let the immigrant food take over her home kitchen. She may be a tad bit grumpy about expats taking over her peoples jobs, but you cant have immigrant food without immigrants. She enriched me with smooth chocolate, coffee, and ice cream. I was welcomed as a tourist — I poked around for a short duration of time, marveled at her beauty, astuteness, and art, took some souvenirs and stories, left her to carry on her tradition, and returned to the Orient.
