IDENTITIES WITHOUT BORDERS
Borders is what we create so that we can cocoon inside it and then feel comfortable in them with our fellow travelers.
Currently I am reading a book by Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian, whose other two books were equally thought provoking, but this one to me, clearing the MAYA the illusion, but this time about KNOWLEDGE and also our identities especially when it involves God.
Thank God (pun intended), I belong to a group of people who have been given the choice of word of God, which most of us do not believe to be original and a secular text which are commentaries, ongoing and being added to. (Rabbi Steinsaltz the Talmudic scholar passed away recently)
Some people do define themselves by their religion, especially where these things are matters of life and death, as in India. INDIAN is a concocted identity (an excellent one for a manufactured product, ask any Naga from Nagaland) and I hear often in Cochin, the only place in India that I am familiar with, I am a Hindu, Muslim or Christian (Religion) or I am a Tamil, I am a Malayalee, I am a Gujerati (based on language). Speaking a language out of context does not give you an identity. You cannot be a Malayalee just because you speak Malayalam or live in Kerala, You cannot become English just because you were born in Bradford where your Pakistani parents had migrated to and grew up in London, you will become British but not English. Speaking Afrikaans does not make you white, nor does it make you African unless you are an African (race)
(Ridiculousness of divisions of Identity in America: Please identity here, an Asian American, an African American and a Hispanic.. to make things more complicated all the four faces belong to Jews from origins as varied as Cuba, Yemen, Lithuania and South Africa)
My best friend in Miami is an American Jew whose father was a migrant from Lithuania and he married a lady from Johannesburg whose ancestors had gone there from Russia and Poland. When their daughter said, I am an African American, people were annoyed and angry, because in America USA, to be an African-American, you have to be Black, forget about Tunisia, Mauritius..
To me all these show the shallowness of what we call Identities, even though it is important to know WHO you are, as the American Indians would say, but people are far more interested in WHAT they are. In the USA, if you are in a conservative region like South Dakota, people might identify themselves not as American, but Norwegian (they would be totally ignorant of Norway) or Lutheran which is their religion.
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli, of Lebanese and East European ancestry, a child prodigy and a public intellectual. I am enjoying his third popular book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
His books have been translated into 45 odd different languages, and somehow he has tapped into the anxiety of the time where technology and human capacities are on a collision course. I recommend you read this book.
He is Gay (is that an identity) a serious student of Vipassana Meditation(does that give him an identity? 30 days in India each year), does not own a smartphone(does he deserve an identity for that?) and a Jew.
Does that give him the right to love the Hindus, hate the Muslims or embrace the west?
Does he believe in God, I am not sure and I do not care, as God never enters my mind nor my discourse. I do think of Dalai Lama though.
On a February morning in 2008, after a disastrous dinner at Jalan Alor the previous night with a group of people who were obviously groping for identities like uniforms (as long as they were European), I took an early morning flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. That is where I was to met the person who was to become my best friend in Asia, we did not hit it off quite well when she asked me the dreadful question: Is your leader Fidel Castro, a dictator? But for the next few years we were the closest of friends and I would come to KL at least five times a year and she exposed and explained to me the ins and outs of being in Malaysia and sowed the seeds of love I have for that country. Till a soft-spoken Afro-Portuguese devotee of Mridangam and Yoga carried her away to the land of Monash University and a degree, PhD hanging like a carrot in front of her. Senhor Andrade is not an African living in Portugal but a Portuguese who has some African connection.
I am unashamedly Lusophilic, having followed the galleons of the Portuguese navigators,From Porto Novo to Colonia, conversing with Kavambos along the Angolan border with Namibia in Portugese, trying to find out from which family a certain Mr. Mohammed came from, in the island of Zanzibar ( the Persians called it Zanj il Bar, the land of the Blacks) who helped Vasco da Gama navigate towards India in 1498, to Calicut.
Cochin the only city in India that I am familiar with, became Portuguese , alas, Cristao the local Portuguese creole has no speakers but they did leave behind some good stories and we can still taste Vindaloo(Vindaloo is normally regarded as an Indian curry, but in fact is a Goan adaptation of the Portuguese dish ‘carne de vinho e alhos’ … The name vindaloo is simply a garbled mispronunciation of vinho e albos).
It was from Cochin that Alphonse Albuquerque left for Malacca which was founded by a Hindu prince Parameswara from Majapahit in Sumatra. The Prime Minister, the Bendahara, of the King was a Muslim from Gujerat who may have influenced the “royal” court to convert to Islam.
I am a devotee of the history of Malacca (named after a tree by a Hindu prince) and always a pleasure to go to the Portuguese village and greet Bom Día to the last of the Cristao speakers. Talk about confusion and Identity, these descendants (totally mixed races) of conquerors of the land are given Bumiputra status (Native born) when many other nations such as Nyonya and Baba and Malacca Chetty are denied that privilege. Manipulation of a constructed identity.
I have been lucky enough to be friendly with the last three Malaysian Ambassadors to Cuba as well as the Cuban ambassadors to Malaysia.
(My best friend in Asia came with me several times and several times without me to the Cuban Embassy in KL and Carlos the previous ambassador who is currently posted to Hanoi, still asks me about her)
I miss not being able to visit Malaysia this year 2020, I have been visiting Malaysia at least five times a year since 2008 when I met my best friend in Asia, the current PhD student at the Monash University. She is Malaysia, Truly Asia the motto of the country which is predominantly Islamic with a Chinese machine driving the economy while the “squeezed oranges” as Indians are referred to by the late Idris Mohammed of Consumer Association of Penang referred in a book, do the paperwork as Lawyers, doctors and pharmacists and professors and lend their talent in the entertainment industry and augment the intellectual level of the nation, I can think of a lovely Prince of a man, perhaps descendant of Moghuls who can cook an Awadhi dish like no other, now resident in Kuala Lumpur.
(only in KL can you meet the President of the Mahler society who is a GO champion and can discuss the films of Makhmalbouf!)
My friend, and her gentle Aikido practitioner husband are devotees of the popular guru from the South India, Sadhguru.
My best friend, an insatiable reader who used to supply me with various books and authors and a voracious reader of The Economist, introduced me to Yoga. I am so grateful to her in that I arrived at Yoga philosophy and then Asana, as Yoga Sutras of Patanjali duly stress, asanas are a very small part of Yoga. Just the other day I was explaining Kleishas to a friend of mine from Sao Paolo In Brazil, in such a short period of time, a whole world had opened when Kleishas were introduced to me. My friends also introduced me to Sadhguru and Isha Yoga .
A photo arrives and that prompted me to write this blog. I strongly believe that the time has come for us to come out of the shells inside which we hide: Identity. We need a cultural identity as human beings, seekers of truth and feeling compassionate and work together across the borders to solve problems which are now beyond religions, such as Climate Change .
My best friend and her husband had been properly anointed at a Hindu temple in KL and was nice to see a Chinese similar in her calm countenance with marks of priestly generosity.
It made me happy: A Chinese lady, with a political identity as a Malaysian whose grandparents may have migrated from Guangzhou province, thus making her proficient in Cantonese the majority of her compatriots cannot speak, now with a calm countenance of a Hindu devotee. She along with my best friend in Asia seemed to have conquered the borders which in normal times only give rise to squabbles and minor wars.
Thank you dear friends, I love your country, not because of any “culture” but because of people like you.. who as Harari , my co religionist who believes in Vipassana, while I am dreaming of dancing under Cuban skies, would say are the Homo Sapiens of tomorrow, people who can easily cross the borders .. fluid identities which means respect for our fellow human beings regardless of their affiliations.
Thank you.
