Demystifying Porto

Porto (Oporto in Portuguese) is the second largest city of Portugal. Highly recommended by the Portuguese to pay a visit, I finally had the opportunity to explore the town. Quite a stark contrast from the capital city Lisbon, which is more of an international city , Porto is home to the old school Portuguese heritage. On a first glance, it gave me an impression of an abandoned city with old buildings, mostly damaged and uninhabited. And that was a very disturbing fact to digest. It seemed like people had deserted the city and gone towards Lisbon or other areas of the Iberian Peninsula or Continental Europe. 

Old fashioned in all respects, Porto gives the impression of a city which simply refuses to bow down to change. And the same is evident even on the people of Oporto, who are proud of what their forefathers have achieved. They thrive on the Portuguese legacy, its wineries, the heritage buildings and the related aspects, thus not bowing down to the change of the outside world. This aspect would certainly be of interest to an art history graduate, but not for someone like me. Nevertheless a mysterious old school beauty which had turned into a ghost town for reasons quite obvious to us. I was disappointed, so to say. Here are a few snaps taken:  

The tram - only three lines are functioning right now

Rua Alvares Cabral - we stayed here, amongst the abandoned buildings

An abandoned church building right in the heart of the town

Ponta Luiz - the bridge, on the UNESCO World Heritage site of Oporto

Rio Duoro , the river and the city of Porto on the background. 

   I will be adding the whole list of photographs periodically onto the "Photography" section of this blog. 

First Thoughts - 2012

Ola people! Hope everyone had a fantastic new years eve and a grand welcome into 2012. Happy New Year from the bottom of my heart, wish it turns out to be as special as it possibly could be. And I hope a few have already started ruing over their new year resolutions, if not broken them once or twice already. Just a real quick update on life and an extremely interesting incident which has been occupying a good enough space inside my head. Life is quite dull again since work has already kicked off. Exams on the 9th and 13th with a possible resource exam to be taken for Transport Economics and a project due on the 18th, which is evidence enough for the word "dull " being tagged along with life. It isn't really that I hate doing this, but there is really nothing else and thus life is quite predictable until the 19th. A bit of travel is also on the plans after the 19th since I have like 4 days before the next semester begins, though not sure how much of that is going to materialize. Now to the incident.

So I had a visitor on New Years eve. Nobody else was in the apartment and I opened the door when the bell rang. A Portuguese lady was standing outside - neatly dressed, posh, in her 40's if not older. The conversation started in Portuguese, but soon turned to English when she figured out that her English was way better than my Portuguese. And she told me that she was the daughter-in-law of my neighbour, a lady in her 70's. To talk more about my neighbour, she is Ana Maria, 75+ , rich with two houses in Lisbon alone, knows 6 languages including English (which is way too impressive for a European), quite a rare visitor to our place, largely peaceful and nice. She was working in the Portuguese department of transportation during her hay days, so we found a lot of things in common for a conversation to sprout up. Besides her career, she is vastly read, knows a lot about world culture and history and is very interesting to talk to, something which is very rare nowadays as far as I am concerned. 

So yeah, the daughter-in-law. She is  accompanied by another lady who is Ana Maria's sister, asks for Ana Maria who hasn't been in touch with them for almost 3 weeks now and they are worried. So they came by to check on her. Soon we realize she is not present at home as nobody answers the door. Realizing that she has a key to this apartment, she opens the apartment to check for her. Its all very dark inside, so she asks me if I can come in too. I say yes and we go in. This apartment is a 6 room, old school place, large with a long alley and rooms on either side. Surprisingly, there is no power inside the apartment. We try the different switches and realize the power supply has been disconnected. And that's when things start getting weird. I get a torchlight from my apartment and we go in. Its pitch dark and as soon as we reach the living room, its a scene of distress. Papers, books, flyers, clothes, unwashed plates, cutlery are all strewn around. I nearly pierce a fork onto my leg since it was lying on the ground in the dark, largely unnoticeable. And it was hard to imagine that someone lived here, amidst all the confusion that was called this apartment. The six other rooms resembled a similar picture and after seeing all this, I didn't really have the courage to check the kitchen or the rest rooms. The daughter-in-law was being way too normal throughout this time and I was inching to ask her about her reaction.

So when we came out of the ghost house, I invited them to my apartment and asked her about her reaction on seeing the apartment all messy and weird. To which she replied, "Maria used to be such a task master lady until her 60's until Miguel (her husband ) was around. After his demise, she lost all interest in life. She did not understand why she had to tidy up the place, and for whom, since no one ever visited her anymore. More so, since she didn't want them to." To see the condition of such a well learned lady, in her 70's reaching a stage where she didn't appreciate living life anymore was a hard thing to digest. She was very wealthy, but still lived the life of a gypsy. Why did she have to live life anymore if this was so meaningless for her? And that was the hard reality of life, that even a lot of money could not bring any happiness into her life. That's because the essence of life is not entirely dependent on material things, though it does play only a small role in making it better. People run so much behind material comfort that they forget to live life in between. I have a professor at Tecnico whose story is equally interesting, though that is a story for another day. Though for the sake of debate, if I ever had to encounter that stage in life that Ana Maria was going through, I would just renounce myself from this world and move away. I am sure we all have different takes on it though.

Nevertheless a strange new year realization indeed.    

The Sabbatical

The First Part

Needless to say, I loved my sabbatical from everything and everyone. Few days in a year to live for yourself is no mean thing. And considering the relief from the vagaries of the grueling fall semester, it was something I could really afford now, even if I questioned myself a hundred times on this regard. No contact with the outer world was a well sought after desire, especially after I mentioned about it here and I am glad that came about in its very own measure. And that meant staying out of social media, loved ones, friends and even the confines of my apartment. All the windows and vents for natural lighting sealed, the soul and the body were ready to go in for a cleansing and I did not wish for any kind of intrusion into it. On the quest to clean up the systems, bring out a fresh zeal for life and more importantly, a re-energized self. 

The Second Part

It was half past 11 in the morning. I had woken up late , much to the chill for the sheer joy of it. I switched on the computer and all the networks got connected and I saw her online. She is 15 - a growing girl in her teens, trapped at an age where children generally find it hard confiding matters of their heart to their parents. Or as mothers say, "The age where I lost my baby and she went on to being a completely different girl." Few minutes into our conversation, I could sense that she was a tad disturbed. Like she was hiding something and wanted to shout it out to the whole world. Her little fingers were seen grasping for the right words, something extremely unusual with her. I knew I had to do it for her sake, for I was aware of it since eternity. After all, she was my little baby and for once, was really looking up to me for help without really saying it out loud. Sensing the urgency on her face, I decided to kill her misery right away. Closed my eyes for a bit, and then went ahead and told her what I had gathered of the situation and my reflections on the same. The kind of reassurance that someone needs when they are faced with decisions in life - holding them to your side, with a promise of being there forever and ever and ever. The ice-breaker that it had turned out to be, worked wonders and lit up her eyes. And that little expression of relief and reassurance on her face at the end - priceless.      

The Other Side

I had got misled into doing something, which was clearly not a thing of my ilk. For once, the guilt was so profound that forgiving self and moving on was just not an option anymore. The repercussions haunt me, even as I write this piece. But I am aware that life has to go ahead and not stagnate in the memories of the past. I needed the courage to stand up to life and face it as it comes to me.   

:: Spotlight ::

I am somehow able to remember the dreams that I experience. I am afraid I might be alone in this world when I come to say that, but I do. Not that I remember them long enough to be etched into history, but long enough to write about what I saw early into the morning today (7 am). And strangely enough, the connect well into what lies ahead in life. Not that all my dreams comply to Freud's* theory of wish fulfillment or is it influenced by events in the "day residue" but they serve as some sort of a connect to the future.So, I had a rather interesting dream today. 

Time has gone ahead and I have gone grey. I am still alone, quite predictable seeing the current trend. The place that I am in, is not very well defined. But I know seeing the people around me that I am in India. The sun hasn't risen very prominently, but is nestled amongst the clouds. Its drizzling a wee bit too. The air has a fragrance of burnt/half burnt human flesh. The town has succumbed to a growing epidemic/phenomenon and very few people (mostly women and a very few men) have lived through it. And those who are alive are enclosed in a casing, transparent, which I think is made of glass. 

The scene outside is grim. Women are seen wailing their hearts out at the sight of their dead partners, children amongst others. They are covered by a coating of ice, so that they can sit near their departed loved ones. Maybe it is a means of prevention of the spread of the epidemic. Some of them are doing the last rites of their loved ones, something which has never happened before in India. The graves have filled out and overflowing. And the roads are soon filling up as make shift graveyards.  

It ended right there and I woke up to a start. Strange as it felt waking up to it, maybe the world is set to reach this stage 200-300 years from now. Have you, the reader experienced such notions about life ahead through the dreams you see? If yes, I would like to hear more on that.

* Sigmund Freud - Austrian Neurologist, father of modern psychoanalysis. Author of the book, "The Interpretation of Dreams".  The book is highly recommended for those who haven't come across it.

The price is 35 Euros

Its almost 11 in the night as I leave Tecnico, for home. After a hard day - fighting deadlines, seeing UNITED lose and bow out of the Champions League, braving the cold (which is rather unusual for me, since I am from Chennai) I walk back, mind flooded with thoughts of the work pending. And of the life that I am living here.  

As I descend the flight of steps, I see her standing near the parking lot on the opposite side. I slow down my pace to observe her. She is tall, well dressed and extremely beautiful for a Portuguese woman. A few cars slow down seeing her on the side of the road - some of them slow down, have a conversation with her and go away while a few others look at her and just speed up. Probably they did not like the "package". Less than 5 minutes and there were already half a dozen cars stopping by her and they go through this routine. 

And just when I give up on it and start walking, comes another car. I could see two men inside, mid 30's. They have a little conversation with her. And yes, the deal is signed. She gets into the car which speeds away, out of my horizon. And I walk back home, the lady in the back of mind, and of the people who seek warmth in her in the chill of Lisbon.