in search of paradise

In our shrinking globe it appears more difficult to find those elusive Shangri-la’s. Do a few endure, besides deep in our imagination, the longing and desire for the unfettered and fulfilling life, that special place where no one wants to leave. The seeming desire that quenches an entranced vision of a distant locale, one convincingly real, convincingly  intimate and equally exotic. The kind of experience that is simultaneously a lament and an ecstatic ode to nature and life….

Herman Melville ( Tahiti): I must except the beauteous nymph Fayaway, who was my peculiar favourite. Her free pliant figure was the very perfection of female grace and beauty. Her complexion was a rich and mantling olive, and when watching the glow upon her cheeks I could almost swear that beneath the transparent medium there lurked the blushes of a faint vermilion. The face of this girl was a rounded oval, and each feature as perfectly formed as the heart or imagination of man could desire. Her full lips, when parted with a smile, disclosed teeth of a dazzling whiteness; and when her rosy mouth opened with a burst of merriment, they looked like the milk-white seeds of the “arta,” a fruit of the valley, which, when cleft in twain, shows them reposing in rows on either side, embedded in the red and juicy pulp. Her hair of the deepest brown, parted irregularly in the middle, flowed in natural ringlets over her shoulders, and whenever she chanced to stoop, fell over and hid from view her lovely bosom. Gazing into the depths of her strange blue eyes, when she was in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid yet unfathomable; but when illuminated by some lively emotion, they beamed upon the beholder like stars. The hands of Fayaway were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman’s life. Her feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those which peep from beneath the skirts of a Lima lady’s dress. The skin of this young creature, from continual ablutions and the use of mollifying ointments, was inconceivably smooth and soft.Read More:http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/t/4176-typee-by-herman-melville?start=51

There are not too many paradises today, or our expectations have raised the bar. Its hard to believe that the emperor Babur, the first of the great Moguls to invade India, whose ancestral domain included the fabulous city of Samarkand, pined always for Kabul of all places. In those days perhaps Kabul really was the “orchard of Asia” or the “garden of Asia”. Certainly, he found it a strong contrast with India, which according to his memoirs had ” no skill or knowledge in design or architecture… no good food or bread in their bazaars, no baths or colleges…” Kabul today is battle worn, scruffy, with the same tangle of muddy alleys and open drains that carry refuse down to the river; and the streets apparently are still a crush of miscellaneous traffic that in sum makes up an ugly provincial town.

Later emperors seem to have been more entranced with the magic of Kashmir with its extraordinary scenery and diverse climate  populated with what by all accounts are poor but canny citizens, equally hidebound and talented. And the valley’s peacefulness seems contingents on India and Pakistan engaging in amicable relations…Zanzibar used to be considered a paradise with its old days of spice trading, but is pretty much a tourist center today, and

urist paradise is very different from a real paradise. They say there are still pockets of paradise on the island of Sri Lanka, the natural habitat of the  devil dancers, festivals, and slow moving masked dramas are part of the daily life….

ADDENDUM:

V. Sackville-West:

NOMADS

FROM the shores of the Atlantic to the gardens of

Japan,
From the darkness of the Neva to the courts of

Ispahan,
There is nothing that can hold us, hold our wandering

caravan.

Leisurely is our encamping ; nowhere pause in hasty

flight.
Long enough to learn the secret, and the value, and

the might,
Whether of the northern mountains or the southern

lands of light.

And the riches of the regions will be ours from land to

land,
Falling as a willing booty under our marauding

hand,
Rugs from Persia, gods from China, emeralds from

Samarcand !

And the old forgotten empires, which have faded turn

by turn,
From the shades emerging slowly to their ancient sway

return,
And to their imperial manhood rise the ashes from

the urn.

We have known Byzantium’s glory when the eagled

flag was flown,
When the ruins were not ruins ; eagled visions have

I known
Of a spectral Roman emperor seated on a spectral

throne.

We have tasted space and freedom, frontiers falling as

we went,
Now with narrow bonds and limits never could we be

content,
For we have abolished boundaries, straitened borders

have we rent,
And a house no more confines us than the roving

nomad’s tent.