Forza

I recently heard that Paolo Barucchieri passed away, so I would like to take this moment to pay my respects and gratitude.

Paolo began what would become Italart, the consortium of American universities, including The University of Texas at Austin, and which would be a temporary home and in situ living campus for thousands of students for nearly 40 years.

Paolo had a passion for Art, for the History of Art, for the production of Art, for the appreciation of Art, for the Beauty of Art. Paolo was already part of a dying breed of amateurs, those who Love merely for the sake of loving, and not gaining, and with his passing, that breed loses a true adherent to Beauty and Art.

Italart eventually found its resting place in the old girls' school of Santa Chiara in a small hillside Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino, which is where I had the great fortune to be a recipient of the vision that Paolo had of establishing a study-abroad campus whose sole function it was to inspire, to challenge, to fascinate, and to bring a sense of Art to the lives of the students and faculty who took part in Italart.

Although Paolo was already becoming the wizened wizard behind the scenes at Italart when we were there, he and his family were the backbone and Soul of the organization. I remember fondly the times spent with him and Sharon, Garnette, Gianfranco, Marco, Debbie, Antonella, and the many people who made up the extended family of Italart.

Paolo was not shy about his ideological view towards Art and its ability to transcend and to lift one's Soul above and beyond the physical world of mundane life. An artist himself, he truly believed in the magical power of Art and the mystery of its creation and the power of its Beauty. He strove to instill that wonder in his students and fellow colleagues, even at the expense of alienating them, should they have more pragmatic or materialist views. He held his ground, if not stubbornly at times, then with Passion.

With Poalo's death, the small community of Castiglion Fiorentino loses both a patriarch of the Humanities as well as a cherished son of its culture.

My condolences to the Barucchieri family and to the extended family of thousands of students and faculty who were touched by the indelible mark of Paolo's vision and dream of Italart.

Grazie Paolo, e forza...

The Tides of March

Rome is called the Eternal City.

It is quite a boast, and one whose claim can never be truly confirmed, nor refuted, for over Time, we shall all pass this way along a journey, but the journey, and Rome may continue forever.

While teaching for the in situ study-abroad program some years ago, Rome, naturally, was a port of call for the trip. Over the years, I have been to Rome several times, and each time have come to love it more, despite a less than savory first experience with it some 25 years ago. But, just as with all things in life, to determine something by a singularity is premature and incomplete. As Judy Collins said of the suicide death of her son, one should not be remembered for how he died, but for his life. My good friend brought to my attention a quote about the Greeks, saying,

Greeks didn’t have obituaries.

They asked one question-

Did he have passion?

This is a good summary, however urban legend it may sound, and does reflect a sentiment within ancient Greek philosophy that it was the Quality of life that was ultimately important. The Greeks, as we know from Thucydides, loved a good funeral oration, however, something that the Romans were not foolish enough to give up once they had conquered the Greek world.

Romans, however, certainly did have obituaries of sorts, and monuments, and lots of ritualized ways to remember the Dead.

A funny thing happened on the way through the Forum though, and funny in a peculiar way as I did not expect it. About a third of the way into the Forum, if you are entering from the Arch of Septimius Severus at the base of the Capitoline Hill, then you will find a memorial to Julius Caesar, which, to my surprise, is still decorated regularly. I was reminded of Caesar yesterday from the famous lines uttered by the Shakespearean Soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March.” And, it did remind me of walking through the forum and standing at the purported spot where Caesar was stabbed and killed by his fellow statesmen of Rome.

I will be very honest, it moved me.

I was further reminded of this today, during Belgium’s official National Day of Mourning for the bus accident victims from Sierre, Switzerland on the way home from a ski trip. The lines above are from “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” and the nation I currently live in mourns a tragedy of another sort.

I remember really feeling the history of the forum and especially the events of the assassination of Caesar, who had been perceived as forgetting the Primary Dictum that Momento Mori,  “You are Mortal.” Caesar’s crime against humanity was that he began to think that he was no longer part of humanity, that perhaps, he was Immortal, and Divine. And, he was killed for that ambition. Though, in the words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, becoming one of the most famous utterances in the history of the English language as he bid his fellow countrymen to listen to his oration of the Death of the Man, Caesar:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; 
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 
The evil that men do lives after them; 
The good is oft interred with their bones; 
So let it be with Caesar.

It is interesting that often it is the Evil that lives on, despite the balance of the Good, whereas both are ill-calculated, and ill-fated, for there is also a Sum.

Fickle are the Winds of Change and fickle are the Sea Changes of Time, and the memory of what men and women do can often determine, for better or for worse, the Tides of ones fortunes and failures. But, again, this can be myopic at best.

Spring has sprung here in Belgium, and with it, the promise of Life, even in the face of Death. From the Death of Caesar sprung what would become a very powerful reign of Octavius, ultimately Augustus, considered by many to be the one of the only true living paradigms of the elusive and ideological Platonic Philosopher King (though not nearly to the extent of Marcus Aurelius), thus securing the role of the Emperor for many centuries to come, perhaps mores so had Caesar not been murdered. Though that, is mere speculation, which leaves us nonce the richer.

Rome is the Eternal City in some respects, because the Past, Present, and Future all coming crashing together in the forum to some degree. It was hard not to feel the presence of Time flowing and ebbing through the ruins. But, ultimately, all does come to that, the ruins eroded by Time .

Today, and for quite some time now I suspect, people will be visiting the site of the crash, or visiting some physical marker in the towns from where the victims hailed, for we, as humans, seem to need a Place associated with an event, to be in situ of tragedy, when the answers seem so elusive and fleeting.

Beware the Ides of March, indeed, and hearken the portents and omens of living well, though, the Tides of Time will never cease, on into eternity. 

The Fire Sermon

Winter kept us warm...

The coldest winter that I have spent somewhere was in Castiglione Fiorentino, by far. We were living in a second-story stone apartment that overlooked the Val di Chio, which meant that there was nothing between us and the cold winds whipping up and down the valley. Thanks to Francis Mays runaway hit and the consequent movie Under The Tuscan Sun, set in the neighboring town of Cortona, people have the gravely mistaken image that living in Tuscany means just that, under the sun. However, when winter comes calling in the Tuscan hillside, you better take note. It is cold, bitter cold.

The heating for the apartment was radiant, fueled by gas-filled bombale. These were heavy, heavy metal canisters about three and a half feet high, and weighed a small ton when empty, and slightly more than a small ton when full. There was a man in town who over the course of time became fondly known to me as the bombala man.

During the summer I had to pass his shop every day on my way to the pool at the bottom of the hill. Every day I said, “ciao” and every day he shrugged his shoulders and made a slight unintelligible grunt, and not a friendly one at that. This charade went on for quite some time. He was gruff, immensely pot-bellied, unkempt, usually wearing a “wife-beater” soiled t-shirt, his pants were always unzipped, and he had perhaps two or three remaining usable teeth, “usable” being generous by comparison.

As the summer eventually turned to fall, the weather soon began to turn towards the harbingers of winter as well, the autumn being surprisingly truncated. The Tuscan summer was over without a trace by late September. The evenings became cooler, all of the long overripe figs had all fallen as well as the leaves, and the fig-eating yellow jackets were zooming no more. Winter was indeed coming. The large orange muppet-like cat next door was getting fatter and fatter on the pasta that was put out for him, and the days began to shorten.

Then there was the bad weather as Papa Hemingway once wrote. And, in many ways also, it was a winter of our discontents.

I had only needed to get bombole a handful of times the entire duration of the fall, and I had always asked the people at the school to call someone to bring them. But, it was never the bombala man who delivered them. I didn’t really put two and two together until one day, my usual bombale supplier was not available, and it was getting cold, really cold, so I stood tall, and braved the cold and went to the bombala man. His shop was a menagerie of rusted out bicycles needing repair, piles of oily rags, lots of bombale and every kind of metallic knick-knack that you would imagine filling a small-town Italian repair shop, read junk.

I asked him then if he had bombale, and suddenly the universe that was his toothless mouth opened up in a broad smile and his bloodshot eyes widened with something akin to delight. In an effusive gush of Tuscan dialect, warped and garbled by the lack of teeth, he said something that I never understood, and never really understood him afterwards, but I realized that on that day, I had a new friend. It turned out that there was a rivalry with the other bombola supplier who had usurped the bombola man’s turf, specifically my landlord and all his properties. So, me breaking the ranks and coming over to his side of the line drawn in the sand was monumental. From that day on he became my supplier, perhaps partly out of my fear for slighting him, and partly sentimental for the bond we had forged on that cold, wintry day, as every time that I would pass his shop from then on, I would get an open-armed “CIAO, Professore!” from the bombola man.

However, getting the bombole was another feat altogether. Weighing as much as they did, and considering we lived up a steep flight of stairs and he was in no shape to climb them, even without the bombole on his shoulder, I soon became the porter as well. Problem was, the bombale did not last more than a couple days at this point in the winter because of the inefficiency of the heating system. More often than not, we were wrapped up in multiple layers with hats and gloves on, cracking the ice off of our two frozen cats’ whiskers every now and then, trying to not use up the gas too quickly. It was cold, bitter cold.

But, one of the highlights of this winter was something extremely unique and was one of the occasions in which the cold lost its steeled, bitter grip. It was the presepe vivente, or living nativity. The entire winding, steep hill-top Tuscan town of Castiglione Fiorentino is transformed into a living Biblical tableaux, with stages set up all around the town, complete with livestock in stables and Roman centurions galloping up and down the streets in full armor, tossing “Roman” coins to the children while all the residents of the town wander through the streets, going from station to station, enjoying winter refreshments along the way.

It was a spectacle without spectacle, which is what perhaps made it so fascinating. There were no streaming electric lights nor gaudy decorations, but rather a living, breathing metamorphosis of an entire community into a very magical event. It was not an event with a “destination,” but part of the enchantment was that is was just to wander through casually and to wonder at it all. People from all of the surrounding towns would come in and join with the living procession, relishing the spirit of community without a commercial element, without what has become Christmas for much of the world.

It was a warming feeling, which was good, for the bombale were proving to be a very unreliable source. It was memorable, perhaps more in its subtlety than extravagance. The winter did eventually subside, and spring did surprise us once again, and the memories of the bitter cold, as with all things, in Time, dissipated. 

Infinity in a Bottle

The other day while showing my visiting friend around Antwerp, one of my favorite cities in the world , I had to pause when I saw a certain boutique. I recognized the design on the products before it sunk in as to which store it actually was, namely because of the cognitive disjunct going on in my head. Something just wasn’t right.

It was a small outlet for the Officina Profuma Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella di Firenze.

“Hmmm...that’s odd,” I thought and said aloud, “this ain’t right.” “Why not?” she asked.

“Because we’re in Antwerp, not Florence.”

I like paradoxes, and I secretly like to think that I am one, giant living paradox, and perhaps my favorite one is Zeno’s Paradox of the Arrow of Time. If an arrow is always half-way the distance of its target, it can never arrive, as it is eternally in transit, yet at the same time, always being half the distance of some distance, it is eternally at rest, never moving, setting up the paradox of either all is in motion, or nothing changes, or...MU. ‘Tis such with me. I like taking a different route to familiar destination s, thwarting habitual patterns, yet at the same time, I love certain things to be exactly the same, or perhaps neither and both at once, MU...this was such a conundrum for me to see this store.

I love shaving with a brush and cream. Since I can’t always enjoy the fine, though dying, art of the straight-razor shave, like the ones I had in India and elsewhere, the next best thing is a premium brush and cream application. And, the best shaving cream that I have found to date is from the original, and previously only,  Officina di Santa Maria Novella Farmaceutica in Florence.

I first heard of Santa Maria from one of the other professors, who theoretically was on staff with us in Castiglione Fiorentino, though in truth was just there to sight-see himself and leave the rest of the work to the other faculty. Yet, he was the one who indirectly introduced me to Santa Maria, so I can’t fully begrudge his blatantly selfish desires. The one thing that he wanted to make sure to do in Florence was to buy soaps, perfumes, etc. at Santa Maria, so he went on and on about Santa Maria. What’s the big deal? I unknowingly wondered. Until I went, that is.

Since 1612 the famous potions of the Santa Maria Novella have been dispensed exclusively, or so I thought, from their Florence abode. Currently housed in a beautiful old locale, just southwest of the church on the Via della Scala, one walks in and is immediately taken by the smells, the aromas, the essence of the place. It is an olfactory ex-stasis. I would not be surprised if Süskind did not find but even a little inspiration for his best-selling novel about the artisan mastery of making perfume from this store.

Although there are many, many wonderful things in the boutique, for me, my coveted purchase is always a bottle of Emulsione Analcolica contro fuoco del rasoio (aftershave) and a cake of Crema di barba. The textures and aromas of both are indeed divinely inspired and a single cake of the cream will last me several years of regular shaves. So, I can space my trips to Florence accordingly, until now, that is. For now, if it runs out, I can go down the street in Antwerp to get my Santa Maria Novella aftershave and/or shaving cream.

Well, though one might think I should be over-joyed, I was over-noyed instead. How could they? I felt the bitter pangs of infidelity, like a lover spurned, grip my heart. The only place I should be able to get my shaving products is in Florence, not Antwerp. I don’t go to Florence to buy Belgian chocolates, do I?

Now, this all sounds like a whining petit-bourgeois, which ultimately it is, but that really isn’t the point. There is truly something special about knowing that something is unique in this world, isn’t there? To be the only one of something is quite remarkable in a world of imitations, and mass production. I cherished knowing, or perhaps living the illusion, that there was just one Santa Maria Novella in my life. Yet, the illusion has been shattered, and even if I go back to Florence, I know that this one here will be sneering in mockery and contempt, chiding me for being oh-too-good to walk inside...or something like that.

But, I do like unique places. I like knowing that there are certain places that I will never see anywhere else. But, you never know. I remember visiting a pretty cool, little grungy coffee shop in Seattle about 25 years ago, thinking, “Whoah, that’s a cool, little, grungy coffee shop. Wonder if they call it Starbucks because of Moby-Dick?”

As a business, places need to expand, to franchise, to thrive. As a consumer, I like the personal touch, the history, the storied tradition. They are in eternal conflict with each other, tradition and survival. One seems to never be moving, frozen in Time, the other always moving, never static. I wonder what mysterious, scented cantor dust wafts in between the interstices of the infinite moments which separate the two...indeed, which perfumed aroma would best suit Infinity?

I wonder, and would it be franchised?

Pre-Occupied

Wasn’t really sure where to post this one, as with each of my postings, there are multiple undercurrents, connections with one another, jewels reflecting each other, so, since it has to do with Italy to a certain extent, and I haven’t posted on this site for a bit too long for my comfort, eccoci qua.

Sitting last evening at one of my favorite Antwerp cafes, a place I have come to over the past twenty years that holds fond memories as well as new experiences, de Muze, I had purchased a latest edition of La Repubblica since I have been a bit out of touch with the news and in order to force me to read some Italian on a more in-depth level than I have in a while, and in part to be the mysterious stranger, wearing an American letter jacket (mine, actually) with an Italian newspaper at a Belgian cafe. So, the story goes.

One of the articles that caught my eye was Roberto Saviano’s “Cambiare il mondo a Zuccotti Park” about the Occupy Wall Street movement. In all honesty, I had not really kept up with this movement at all, merely giving cursory glances at the headlines and keeping minimally apprised of the situation as such. For a couple of reasons, neither of them really good ones, I will readily admit.

One, merely because I am not living in America, and I am selective about what I actually read about it. My confession there, however, is that I have a real weakness for following football (sigh, yes, American, not Soccer...) on-line. For not being a sports fanatic at any level, I do know ridiculously a lot at any given time about both NCAA and NFL football. As I said, not a good excuse that one.

Secondly, well, I am generally pretty unimpressed in general with demonstrations and protests, which is a holdover from my college days at The University of Texas at Austin, when they actually had demonstrations and protests (though now the real Hippies are bristling, and perhaps rightly so), but in all honesty, they were usually a joke and did absolutely nothing. In fact, no matter what the cause was, you would see the same “professional protesters” with the same old spiel. It was not about the cause, it was a cause itself to just get out and yell potted slogans and look really self-important. Jaded, I know. Again, not a good excuse.

So, the Occupy Wall Street had appeared to be just the same old same old. No agenda, good reason to read bad poetry and dress up by donning a “V is for Vendetta” mask...yawn...

But, as this was my poser moment to be reading the Italian newspaper, I decided to give it a go. I did learn that the movement was actually begun by Canadians (I’ve always said, don’t trust them, they’re too “nice”), which later was taken up in true American style and went for the Big Apple. More than that, it sounded exactly as I had imagined, dressing up like Guy Fawkes and spouting off slam poetry manifestos. God, I am jaded.

Yet, and that is the rub, yet, it made me proud to be an American (which is why this could have gone under my other blog ) when Saviano writes that within the crowd he saw: “Alcuni sono liberali, alcuni anarchici, altri si dichiarano socialisti, libertati, ambientalisti, democratici, e ci sono persino ragazzi che si definiscono repubblicani. Troviamo ragazze e raggazi atei e molti credenti. Ci sono musulmani, ebrei, indù, buddisti e cristiani. Molti ventenni, ma tanti manifestanti sono più maturi.” In short, people of all ages, genders, political stances, and religions. Which, in shorter terms is America.

That is still true, no matter how uniform America may seem at a superficial glance, it is still a country made up of all kinds of people. Coming from India, where there are only Indians, albeit from multiple religions, they are still Indians back to Belgium, where although there are people from around the world, they don’t come together like I have seen in America, which is Saviano’s point. He is lamenting the fact later in the article that although Italians show no lack of enthusiasm (understatement of the year), they will manifest upon lines of division and distinction rather than synthesis. Instead of looking at the intricacy of the weave, they will instead look at the individual differences of the threads. Such is the case here in Belgium, where the mentality can crudely be called “tribal” as in much, if not all of Europe. Hence the so-called “euro-crisis.”

America works as a bizarre experiment of bringing together the world. Not to say at all that there are not issues of division, xenophobia, and tribal mentality, not at all. For that, one needs to look only as far as the college football rivalries that are being played out each Saturday afternoon. However, what I have seen in America that I don’t see in Europe, and especially in Italy, to which Saviano heavily points the finger at his compatriots, is that Europe is founded upon differences, not unity. Whereas America, as a concept, seeks to unite, Europe seeks to disengage, to dis-entangle. 

Ciao, Professore!

Living in Bologna, Italy and teaching at L’Università di Bologna is still one of my fondest memories. I had finally arrived on the scene, or so it felt like that. I will never forget being introduced by my Joycean mentor there, Rosa Maria Bosinelli, one of the greatest mentors of young Joyceans to have played the role. Always gracious to the nth degree, when I first visited the Forlì campus, which is where I would teach for a year and a half (commuting from Castiglione Fiorentino part of the time), she introduced me as “Professore Fulton.” Ciao!

It was a heady time. I had been teaching for several years prior at The University of Texas at Austin, my alma mater, but now I was teaching the alma mater studiorum. Not bad for a kid who had dropped out of college a bit more than a decade before. But, while at UT, I was not allowed to be called “professor,” because I was primarily hired as an Academic Advisor, and my superiors did not cotton to the fact that the students were beginning to see me as their potential equals. I was told more than once to be aware of my “place,” so the furthest I got was a compromise of “Dr. Rob” by the those fun-loving rugrats of the Liberal Arts Honors Programs. But, that is neither here nor there, I was now “Professore.”

That was not the main reason why I have such fondness for the time there, but it was part of it. It was a sign that I had graduated from being post-doc to being doc. Moreover, it was based upon who I was, not from anyone I knew that was helping me along, and that can be an important feeling in life. Rosa Maria had believed in me as me, and that was priceless.

Once I learned how to interact with the Italian students and had sufficiently convince them that I actually do not have a Texas accent, the rest was the sheer joy of teaching.

But, what for me was most important about living in Bologna was that it was the first time that I was living in a country where I had to learn to survive in a language that was not my own without the constant aid of a native speaker as had been the case in Belgium. In Italy, we were both stranieri and had to learn the ropes as such. In Forlì I found my groove and had my haunts and coffee shops and lunch spots. I really felt that I was making it there as a foreigner. I was well aware that one will always be a straniero in Italy if not from there originally, but at least I was getting the support and acknowledgment from the locals that I was making an effort. I was drinking my morning espresso and eating my paste with them.

It was a major transition for me as a teacher and within academics. Because of Rosa Maria’s help, I was able to publish my book on James Joyce and to attend several conferences as a visiting scholar of interest. Unfortunately, as it was merely a visiting appointment and we had obligations to go to in Castiglione Fiorentino, it came to an end and things have a natural tendency to do. I was no longer “Professore” and by the time we got to CF, I was back to being Dr. Rob as we were teaching for a UT Study Abroad program. I was just “Rob” again, humbled back several years, and for the most part, I had to tell people that I really did teach at Bologna. It was a blow to the ego, which I did not always handle well, but in hindsight, I now see the significance. We can change from the inside, but if our environment is unwilling to see that change, than there is often nothing we can do, but wait out the course of Time.

While checking some stats on my blogs, I noticed that someone had typed in “professore fulton forlì” for a search on this blog, so perhaps to some people still out there, I am indeed still “Professore Fulton.”

Ciao!

Strange Affinities

Don’t know where this is going, but just throwing it out there to start thinking about it. The more that I am in India, the more it seems to be similar to Italy in many ways, which is rather mind-boggling.

Some of the things that I have noticed are the dynamics of the household, in which outwardly it is a male culture, but inwardly the females run the place, especially the mother-in-law, though often that is not a good thing for the poor wife, that is quite clear.

First-born sons are treated like gold, whereas the rest of the children must fight for whatever they get, and again especially the girls.

Indian and Italian children both run in packs here. It is seldom to see just one child, but rather an entire herd of them is the norm. They are always playing in the streets, often until very, very late at night.

Both cultures are very sexual in the media, yet, on the whole, both are quite conservative with social interactions. Of course, public displays of affection in Italy verge on the grotesque at times, but for the most part, Italians are quite conservative with social norms and what you can say and not say, or do. For fear of being see as the dreaded “che brutta figura.” There is a similar shame culture here as well.

The entire culture revolves around food and music. There is always music in the air at some level, and Indians love singing as much as they pride themselves on their food. If you are ever invited to eat with Indians, I hope that you haven’t eaten for four days because, like the Italians, they will have an endless buffet of dishes and as the guest, it is incumbent upon you to eat til you explode for fear of insulting the host or hostess. As such, I have surprisingly not lost the 10 or so pounds I had expected to while traveling here.

The Indians love India, as the Italians love Italy. Most Italians don’t travel outside of Italy and that could be said about the Indians as well. It is all here, why travel anywhere else? Culturally pride runs deep in both countries.

The languages are very similar in expression. I have learned just enough Tamil by now to be picking up on the fact that you never say the same thing twice. That is also the case with Italians. They both pride themselves on the fact that they can always say the same thing differently in many ways. Now, that has made learning Tamil and Italian more challenging, but I admire the richness of linguistic variety.

Religion is dominant in the culture, both secular and sacred. Just as churches dominate any Italian town and religious festivals will involve the entire community, so to do the Indians do religion on a grand scale. Every day is virtually devoted to one god or goddess, similar to the Italians preoccupation with the Saints’ days.

The concept of Time and Space are also quite similar. Except for in the North of Italy, where Time is actually rather “important” to many, Italian Time is something on its own. Things happen when they do, whether it is a train, a meal, or a large event. Likewise, to bother an Indian about Time is a fruitless endeavor. There is a laissez-faire approach that is maddening to most non-Italians and non-Indians, but when you embrace it, life takes on another dimension.

The same goes for Space. If you go to a movie in Italy and the theater is empty, you sit down in the middle, guaranteed, if one other person comes into the hall, he or she will sit right next to you. Personal space does not exist in either country and it is something that you have to get over quite quickly. Or, the shops here and in Italy are quite similar. You will have very small, specialized shops that are literally packed to the ceiling with things and what would take up a city block in America will be condensed into a broom-closet sized store in which the storekeeper has an uncanny way of knowing exactly where everything is among the items packed as densely as a neutron star. I remember going to the hardware store in Castiglion Fiorentino and was amazed that the man could navigate through the insanely labyrinthine stacks of merchandise to find the exact item, and seemingly could do so blindfolded.

The street culture is likewise quite similar. Italians often consider their apartments as merely where they go home to bed because the streets are their living rooms and dining rooms. Indian homes may very well just be an entryway and bedrooms with a small cooking area because they are always out on the streets. I am reminded time and time again of Naples being here because of the incredibly vibrant street culture at all times of the day and night.

Restaurants often don’t have menus here, but rather you just ask what they have that day. In addition, as with Italy, you cannot simply order, but it has to be a full conversation with the waiter, who will also try to persuade you, often successfully, to choose something you did not intend on ordering. When we went to eat with Handel in Tirunelveli, his British friend Tess and I looked at each other and asked what in the world are they talking about for so long, we’re just ordering, but it was a lengthy discussion. This always happened in the local restaurants in Italy as well.

Mere coincidences perhaps, but it has been interesting to see the similarities unfold. I will be curious to see how I look at Italian culture when I do return one day after my Indian experience. Vedremo...