MJ Akbar
SANCTIONS? The trade in paperclips must have been sanctioned. Nor did the Russian elite have too many problems buying their fill of luxury goods from the West. Check out the exports of cars to countries on the borders of Russia.
In other news: traffic through the Suez Canal halved as Houthi missiles found their unexpected mark occasionally but markets absorbed higher costs of longer sea routes without a murmur. In large democracies, governments survived in India and South Africa where the despair of losers was matched by the perplexity of victors. The ruling crowd crumbled in America, Britain, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. In sport, worshippers of Indian cricket were again betrayed by their gods.
Goa has just welcomed a happy new decade with the St Francis Xavier Exposition between December and January. A miracle rests in this idyllic corner on the edge of the sea. Every 10 years the Catholic church of Panaji puts the incorruptible body of St Francis Xavier, the 16th-century co-founder of the Jesuit movement and missionary to Goa, China and Japan, on display for believers and the reverential.
We joined the early morning queue and bowed our heads as we passed the casket containing the recognisable body which retains skin and shape after four-and-a-half centuries. Sceptics do not join the queue for they have no explanation. Science might eventually come up with an answer, but God is easier to recognise. Only atheists believe in death. The rest of us wander between doubt, silence and faith.
A brilliant market
A map of modern India had sprung up adjacent to the exposition, in a brilliant market. The shops were cities of contemporary life. Sawal’s Goa Shopping Centre. Udupi Ratna Sagar Pure Veg Restaurant beside Ratna Sagar Family Restaurant & Bar. Goan Wine House. BaskinRobbins. Tattoo Studio. Mime artiste in gold costume. Step Inn Restaurant. Frenchdairy Ice Creams. Mumbai Special Gobi Manchuria, advertised by a Shah Rukh Khan lookalike. Coca-Cola. Belgaum Fast Food. Mumbai Cosmetic. Untitled shack with Christian icons. Sankalp Chana.
A banner of St John Baptist Restaurant strung between cloth and clothes shops. Flowers from Old Goa: Sale Rs 60 & Rs 70 Fixed Price. Apollo’s Magic World: Learn Magic Buy Magic. Contact 9822135183. Condiments Rajasthan Pickles. Bearded seller of toys and trinkets in unmarked shop, with recitation of the holy book in a soft waft. Lime Soda & Sweet Corn: Delhi Papad, Cauliflowers Dry Gobi, Potato Twister, Sweet Corn in a cup 3 flavours Fresh & Healthy. Lingerie. Mother Mary Halwa Store. Velankannya Hot Banana. Kerala Calicut Halwa in 12 varieties including SP Masala Halwa. An endless vista.
Thoughts on Asia
Two thoughts for 2025: Asia is a Greek word meaning resurrection. Will Asia live up to its meaning in 2025? If order is chaos rearranged, is chaos normalcy and order exceptional? Our years begin as addition and end as subtraction. Yet another close friend of decades passed away in the winter of 2024. The only recourse left was verse. Legend, which must never be dismissed as untruth, has it that the only copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was preserved in the library of the Old Man of the Mountains, the intellectual-ideologue-reductionist Hasan Sabbah (1037-1124). Thank you, then, for saving these haunting lines:
Think, in this battered caravanserai Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day, How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp Abode his hour or two, and went his way.
Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears Today of past regrets and future fears: Tomorrow—why, tomorrow I may be Myself with yesterday’s seven thousand years. Ah make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend; Dust into dust, and under dust to lie, Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and sans end.
