A camel in the old part of Jerusalem is dressed up for tourists with woven textile bands of a Kullu shawl design. Nearby, the proud possessions of the Armenian Church of St James are the block-printed cotton altar curtains from Madras, dating to the 18th century, with one depicting the plants of Tamilnadu with local names in the Armenian script… In the Swiss flag, the white cross on a red background is associated with the martyr St Maurice, a 4th century black African from North Egypt, while the coronation mantle, worn by 48 Roman emperors and kings, was adorned with Arabic script… praising the King, Roger II. Punjabi folk tales have heroes from Khiva and Bokhara, even as Uzbek and Tajik tales have characters from Kashmir.

And then there are the languages which are waiting to be tapped for words that will reveal their long journeys, concealed histories, stunning revelations and quirky transformations. In North Kerala there is an Arabic Malayalam with 40 per cent Arabic words transmitted over centuries of cultural exchange, whereas in India’s northeast, Assam, 600 years of Ahom Thai rule has enriched Assamese with Thai and Chinese terms.

The name of the Afghan city, Kandahar, is a derivative of Alexander. The Thai name, Chotima, is linked to the Hindi word for light (jyotirmoy), and not to ‘little mother’, and Angkor (of Angkor Wat fame) is a derivative of nagar (town in Hindi). Linguistic creativity continues to abound today. The word karma has acquired new connotations in the American idiom, including ‘karma parking’ (for those lucky enough to find parking space) and ‘karma boomerang’.

Closer home, quirky Francofied names are in vogue, such as the banner on a smart tourist bus on a Delhi street: ‘Le Travels to India’, and ‘Le Grand Dhaaba’, an eatery, on the highway. Meanwhile in Russian, a new English word, ‘chat’, has entered from the internet and acquired a Russian declension: I chatuyu, You chatuesh, He/she chatuet, etc. We continue to live in a fascinating world of cross-cultural interweaves. These myriads of interconnections stretching back in time engulf our daily lives, yet often we are either unaware of them or overlook them due to our conditioning and ingrained notions. This was the case with me… Yet I was fortunate. Over time, my extensive travels, teaching and research work brought me to experience the most diverse cultures. I followed the trails of the many cultural criss-crossings through space and time, discovering their hidden interlinks and synergies. Many entrenched assumptions were turned upside down and this prompted a reappraisal of what had been imbibed and what ignored. The richness of diverse worlds and the cross-cultural reciprocity provided me with an alternative framework of reference. It enabled me to revise and decentre my perceptions, but importantly, to rejoice in these discoveries.

 

Each community, no matter where it is located on the globe, is unique and the differences are reflected in the multiple layers of culture, but no layer is more authentic than any other. Facets of culture, like travelling metaphors, are transformed and can acquire another meaning as they adapt to different cultures and locations. Perceptions of another culture are often through one’s own cultural yardsticks and conditioning. Conversely, a dialogue between two cultures prompts us to examine our own cultural practices, many of which we take for granted.

In other words, when people from another culture put questions to our culture, we begin reflecting on ours… various democratic and non-democratic governments and organizations have attempted to conceal cross-cultural influences by inventing superiority, purity, and authenticity of cultures and civilizations to the detriment of others. Yet cross-culture pollination, an ongoing process, always reveals itself through the ignored cracks of history. Open interaction and the constant cross-flow of peoples, ideas, objects, language, music, food and much else has always existed between all cultures. This has been catalytic, and notions of exclusiveness, authenticity and roots are questionable, to say the least.

 

India, like a sponge, has forever absorbed and continues to absorb a bewildering array of influences from outside, including those from the recent avalanche of the West. Yet India is no exception because every culture has been and continues to be porous. The pen name of the Japanese detective fiction writer is Edogawa Rampo, the Japanese rendering of Edgar Allen Poe, who inspired him. Consider Indonesia, today primarily a country with a predominant Muslim population but with common Sanskritized names: Sukarno (Su karma – good deeds), Veera and Susila. One of the most imposing statues of a seated Ganesha is located near Yogya Jakarta. In nearby Cambodia the 12th century majestic Vishnu temple of Angkor Wat is embellished with exquisitely carved bas relief panels, each 50 to 60 metres long, depicting scenes from Indian mythology.

In a different location, Van Gogh, with other Impressionist painters as well as the Art Nouveau movement in Europe are all unimaginable without the influence of Japanese woodcut prints of the artists Hiroshige and Hokusai. Nor can we imagine Picasso’s Cubist work without the influence of African masks, or Matisse without his Persian, Moroccan and Asian colours, textile and carpet designs. The modern theatre of Bertolt Brecht was deeply influenced by the post-revolutionary Russian theatre movement of Vsevolod Meyerhold, who in turn was indebted for his ground-breaking innovations to Chinese theatre. Alexander Tairov, another Russian trendsetter of modern theatre, was indebted to the Natyashastra.

The contributions made by writers and intellectuals of non-European and mixed descent to European literature and culture are not confined to the recent past but go back many centuries. Apuleius (AD 120-170), who wrote the novel The Golden Ass, was from present-day Algeria; Terence (190-158 BC), acknowledged as one of the most eloquent Roman dramatist of comedies in Latin, came from Carthage (Tunisia); Publilius Syrus (1st century BC), well-known for his pithy sayings in Latin including ‘It is better to learn late than never’, was a Syrian; while Aesop was, as his name suggests, an Ethiopian.

 

The European Renaissance was profoundly inspired by the Moorish contributions emanating from their presence for 800 years in Spain, just as the Internet today has been influenced by America. We have been led to believe that African history begins with the European ‘discoveries’, yet it was the Africans who discovered Europe and ruled parts of Europe for centuries, even though efforts were made later to erase the memory of these links and to project the European civilization as a direct offshoot of the Greek and Roman ones. The Greeks, far from being a pure, self-created civilization had been deeply influenced by many neighbouring cultures including the Egyptian and the Persian, all of whom had a profound impact on Roman culture too. Libyan, Tunisian and Syrian Roman emperors were not exceptions. Even in later times, illustrious families of Europe were ruled by people of mixed blood.

Nations have long tried to whitewash and sanitize their cultural histories and links by reinventing a new history. Europeans are not exceptional in wanting to obliterate inconvenient memories. In 1989 I met a young Chinese teacher in Moscow. …she had never heard of either Confucius or Lao Tse. The Russians too erased the memory of their strong ties with the Turkic people in their textbooks, yet the Russian language reveals a different reality. A great number of their statesmen and intellectuals had Turkic blood, amongst them were Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, … Where are these pure races, pure cultures and languages, local dress and food? Today the velocity of cultural mobility has increased. …Inevitably this fast pace of foreign exchanges should have led many self-proclaimed superior cultures to re-evaluate their own history and accept pluralism and multiculturalism.

 

In 2002, on his 200th birth anniversary, the body of Alexandre Dumas Pere, one of the most prolific and widely read French writers, the author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, was exhumed and shifted to the Pantheon in the company of the graves of 60 luminaries. Accepting underlying racial prejudice for the fact that Dumas’ grandmother was an Afro-Caribbean, President Chiraq acknowledged that finally a wrong had been righted. In 2009, his successor, President Nicolas Sarkozy, uneasy with the notion of multiculturalism, set up a parliamentary committee to decide on the merits of wearing a burqa in public.

Yet, it was not so long ago that the French and English colonialists had forced an all-concealing Christian moral dress code on their colonies, and topless women, for instance, were directed to wear blouses. At London’s Heathrow airport, a cleaning lady of Punjabi descent lost her job for sporting a nose ring. In 2008, Malaysia’s top Islamic body banned the practice of yoga for Muslims as being un-Islamic, whereas in the United Kingdom two churches banned yoga classes for toddlers on their premises, branding it as un-Christian.

Some non-resident Indians living in America have gone to court to ban the depiction of Ganesha holding a beer mug – oblivious that the most popular items on sale at Diwali in North Indian bazaars are the replicas of Ganesha, Laxmi and other deities with Chinese features that have been imported from China. There are growing attempts at cultural policing. Yet, connectivity is what matters, not fears of some imaginary phantoms that are reactivated and fostered periodically. Perhaps it is constructive to listen to those who do not have the privilege of being heard, and whose wisdom is overlooked. Only then can we appreciate the multiple realities coexisting, interacting and constantly enriching our world.

Aap Mohammad janj charia, Brahma Bedi gadai,

Ralke huran mangal gavian, pariyan mehndi lai.

Panjan Piran ne kalime parh lie, Khaja bhare ogahi.

Hir Ranjha da mela ho gaya, phirian rabb rajai.

‘Mohammad formed the marriage procession and Brahma set up the posts (of the marriage canopy).

The Maids of heaven sang songs of rejoicing and fairies brought the henna.

The Panj Pir performed the ceremony and Khwaja (Khizar) was witness.

Hir and Ranjha met together and God was favourable to them.’

 

This quotation is from the folk version of the famous love story of Heer and Ranjha and their wedding. It was published in the 1884 edition of The Legends of Panjab collected by R.C. Temple from local bards. The entire tale abounds in this syncretism. When Heer is abducted by King Adali, Ranjha plays his flute in despair.

‘The sound of the flute reached to Makka and a company of 70 saints came up.

The sound of the flute reached to Multan and the Five Saints came in majesty.

The sound of the flute brought the Mother, the Goddess (Durga), on her lion to Ranjha.

At the sound of the flute came (Sakhi) Sarwar the Warrior, caracoling on (his mare) Kakki.

At the sound of the flute came Hanuman, the leader with his army.

The army cut down the garden of Adali and left not a tree remaining.’

Adali frees Heer and when Ranjha sounded his conch, Indra caused rain. Now they were properly married and ‘Ranjha took Heer and took the road to Makka.’

There is so much to explore in the overlapping and intermingling of cultures and their immense diversity across countries and continents. The essays that follow are some of my own explorations of these multi-stories.

 

Cultural Baggage: On a Sunday morning I walked into St John’s Cathedral in Valetta, the capital of Malta. The church was packed for the morning service. I found a seat in the last row and let my gaze wander over the opulent baroque interior. Moments later the priest arrived in regal vestments. He climbed the few steps to the pulpit, adjusted his robes, then peered through his spectacles at the congregation and loudly uttered the first word, ‘Allah!’

That one word filled the interior, floated up to the ornate vaulted dome and bounced back to resonate loudly in my ears. Did I let out a gasp? A quick furtive look around assured me of the opposite. Everyone was engrossed in prayer. As for me, unable any longer to concentrate on anything, I tiptoed out. How many misconceptions we carry in our cultural baggage. I had always associated ‘Allah’ with Arabic, and hence with Islam. Never could I have imagined this word being uttered in a Roman Catholic church, built for the Crusaders. And yet, what, after all, is ‘Allah’? It is ‘God’, pure and simple in Arabic.

 

I was still pondering over that word as I approached a monument. It read, Il Monument ta’ l-Ghassedju l-Kbir, or The Great Siege Monument – a mixture of Italian and Arabic. I then recalled a similar cultural fusion in the cathedral where an eight-pointed star is depicted – each point representing one of the Romance languages that made up the Knights Order of St John; yet the church service is in a Semitic language. The Fatimid Arabs ruled Malta from 870 AD for about 200 years. They established their capital Medina (Mdina), introduced dhow boats and left behind their language. Like other Mediterranean cultures, Malta is a genetic melting pot of the various nationalities who overran it as conquerors or traders: Phoenicians (from present-day Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Israel), Greeks, Tunisians, Romans, Aghlabid Arabs from North Africa, Normans, Italians, Spaniards, French and British. Today the Maltese could be mistaken for Sicilians or Arabs. Their food is Sicilian, their laws British, their script Latin, and religion Roman Catholic.

I recall another episode which, in a similar manner, dislodged my set ideas. Some years later we were in Palestine in mid-December and decided that Christmas eve at Christ’s birthplace was a must. Haven’t we all grown up with the familiar images of the Nativity: the Christmas tree covered in snow, the cuddly, fair, pink-cheeked baby Jesus in his crypt with a distinctly European looking mother Mary?

On arrival in Bethlehem we were in for a cultural shock. Instead of snow, we were confronted with nothing but sand which had even found its way into the town’s main square. The only vegetation in sight were the gnarled olive trees. Moreover, the crypt where Jesus is said to have been born is enclosed in a Greek Orthodox church. This church lends its space to the Catholics on the night of 24 December for their midnight mass. Orthodox Christians and the Copts celebrate Christ’s birthday two weeks later, on 7 January, and the Armenian church even later, on 19 January. And so it goes on and on.

All that remained of my conditioning was the cherubic plaster of Paris baby Jesus being sold in the Bethlehem bazaar by Palestinian shopkeepers (incidentally, not only is this town Christian and Palestinian, 90 per cent of the Christians of the Holy Land are the Palestinian). There was wonderful choir singing that night in the main Bethlehem square. Groups from across the globe had flown in to perform Christmas carols. Initially bodies swayed gently to the familiar melodies while some onlookers tapped their feet to the rhythms. The audience really came alive when the last but one choir began singing. It was from India.

 

Was I dreaming or was there really a Sardar in the choir? I nudged my son. He smiled and nodded. By now the entire public was clapping to the rhythm of the music. Some people stood up and began to dance. They set the mood. Within minutes everyone was clapping, dancing and singing – such was the contagious rhythm and sound of the Indian choir’s carols. I met the group a few days later. We were on the same flight to Bombay.

‘Did you manage to see the crypt that night?’ I asked one of them. ‘No, the crowd was too big but we saw it the previous day. In any case, on Christmas night the Christians should have the first priority to enter the crypt…’ ‘Aren’t you all Christians?’ The young man smiled. ‘We have everyone in our group – Christians and non-Christians. You must have noticed our Sardar ji. Then there are Maharashtrians, Parsees, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Goans, just about everyone. We love singing so we joined this choir in Bombay.’

 

The Tulips: A profusion of red tulips dotted the velvet grass of the undulating Kazakh landscape, spilling over into the parks and avenues of Almaty. Wonderstruck, I asked a Kazakh lady about the whereabouts of a tulip nursery. She thought I was crazy – ‘What nursery! These grow wild.’

I had never seen such an abundance of tulips and it took me a while to readjust my mind to the tulip’s spatial and temporal associations. The arid regions of the Pamir, Altai and Hindukush mountains were the real home of tulips. The Emperor Jehangir, for instance, mentions that the residents of Kashmir grew them on their flat mud roofs and they looked spectacular. Tulips are indeed so elegant and beautiful that one can understand the Ottomans pining for their favourite flowers and dispatching messengers to the steppes of Turkestan to bring back bulbs for their newly settled territories in present-day Turkey.

Innumerable poems and songs have been dedicated to the tulip. It was believed happiness resided within the yellow tulip bud. Nobody could get it to open until one day a small child ran up to the flower laughing. It was the innocent laughter that made the tulip bud unfold its petals. Fizuli, the 16th century Azeri poet, in his famous poem, Laila and Majnun, describes the tulip’s ‘crimson cup’ and ‘ruby’s glow’ as the harbinger of spring. Majnun shares his secret with the tulips:

Imploring all the tulips of the leas

To tell his love in Leyla’s pearly ear…

He pressed the tulip’s petals to his eyes

And kissed its feet with lover’s heavy sighs.

 

Once they had been brought from Central Asia to Turkey, tulip cultivation spread to all corners of the Ottoman Empire, to be grown by one and all, rich and poor. By 1726, the Ottomans had listed some 900 varieties of tulips and the Sultan’s botanists had classified them with names such as Ruby Drop, Matchless Pearl and Diamond Envy. There was even a tulip growers’ handbook called The Balance of Blossoms written by Sheikh Mehmet Lalezari, whose surname meant Golden Tulip. The image of this flower seemed to appear everywhere – in Ottoman miniature paintings, on royal robes, in carpet patterns, on tents and also on glazed ceramic tiles. There were even tulip shaped fountains and vases.

In the early 18th century the Sultan decreed a Lale Devli or the Tulip Period of festivity. It was a time for leisure, rejoicing and great creative activities throughout the Ottoman Empire. The court poet, Nedim wrote: ‘Let us have fun, let us all dance and play, for it is tulip time!’ Small wonder then that the tulip is Turkey’s national flower. But then it also happens to be the national flower of Holland, the country synonymous with the tulip today.

The Europeans discovered the flower in the mid-16th century. In 1554, Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq landed in Istanbul as the Austrian Ambassador to the court of Süleyman the Magnificent.

Busbecq wrote: ‘We saw everywhere an abundance of flowers… The Turks are so fond of flowers that even the marching troops have their orders not to trample on them.’

But it was the tulip that really caught the fancy of the Austrian Ambassador. He returned to Vienna with some bulbs, which made their way first to Austria’s Imperial Gardens. Some others he handed over to Carolus Clusius, a botanist. However, Busbecq got the name wrong. Instead of Lalé, he mistook it for the Turkish word for turban (tülbent). Thus the name – tulipano, tulipan and tulip! Now it so happened that in Holl some bulbs were stolen from Clusius’s research garden, and overnight the tulip became a rage, but of a peculiar kind. Instead of poems dedicated to its elegance and beauty, people started betting on it, staking claims to it. The tulip was turned into a status symbol by the gentry and renamed the Pot of Gold. In 1634, tulipmania or tulip madness broke out in Holland. D.G. Hessayon, a bulb expert, relates: ‘Possessions of all sorts were sold to buy bulbs – a rare type could cost the price of a farm, house or coach and horses. Of course there were not enough bulbs to go round and so tulipmania became a paper speculation.’

 

Fortunes were made and lost till 1637 when the tulip bubble burst. Alexander Dumas’s novel, The Black Tulip, is set in Holland at the time of the tulipmania where 100,000 guilders was the reward for cultivating the black tulip, ‘a new flower, destined to bloom for one day, and to serve during that day to divert the ladies, the learned, and the curious.’ The story of political intrigue and romance runs parallel with the author’s critique of the tulip’s commercialization. Today Holland produces over nine billion tulip bulbs annually and a travel web-site invites tourists to enjoy the Dutch tulips in Kazakhstan.

 

* Extracted with permission from Multistories: Cross-Cultural Encounters by Kalpana Sahni. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, New Delhi, 2010.