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| Of she-ghosts and flat-pack gallions | |
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| Kabir's Italian radio show Ch@t - weekly wrap - As Verdeluna writes a note for the message tree, spirits do the housework, and there is love in a pastry class. But flat-pack furniture doesn't agree with Italian housewives, and the pirate places a feather on the beach... #46 - Sandokan nearly missed tonight's chat with Verdeluna, after going diving offshore Mompracem with Yanez, and nearly getting sucked out into the ocean by the current. Verdeluna is worried sick about the danger to which he is exposing himself - much to Sandokan's delight. He too would worry about Verdeluna! Verdeluna's brother Walter, the priest, has started a new thing in his parish: one evening he went to the tree in front of his church, and tied a message to one of its branches, expressing his deepest feelings. That same night, several other messages appeared, and the idea caught on. Now Walter's asked Verdeluna for a contribution to the message tree, but she is convinced the only thing she'd be capable of writing is: "Down With the Twit!!!" Walter's message was that a soul cannot live well in one area of life when it misbehaves in another. Life is single, whole, and indivisible. That idea's from Gandhi, Sandokan says approvingly. Verdeluna is desperate! What is she going to write that is profound enough to impress her brother Walter? Look around you, Verdeluna, the world is full of messages, and nothing happens without a reason. Our job is to understand that reason. Verdeluna found a tortoise in the garden of her apartment building. Is that a sign too? Certainly! Older than time itself, the tortoise is a creature of mystery. Its top is round like the heavens, and its bottom is flat like the earth. Man is imperfect, and nature is his complement. How Verdeluna misses her son Valerio, the modern-day pirate sailing the seven seas, wherever his fancy takes him! Recently he was at Port Royal, Jamaica, a notorious pirates' haunt through the ages. None of the passengers on his cruise ship could sleep that night... All'assalto!!! Why can't Sandokan come up with a profound thought for Walter's message tree? Well alright then: the ocean's nature isn't always calm; the same is true of the ocean of life... #47 - Sandokan has been taking the children of Mompracem on a canoeing trip, to teach them to be independent and self-reliant. So who was the leader of the group, the captain of the little flotilla? Sandokan says it's much too early for the children to be competitive, and that they should learn to have some fun first. But we live in a competitive world, says Verdeluna. Just look at how people behave in traffic! No matter where they're going, they want to be the first to get there. And to think that my finish line for the morning rush hour is Sir Hugo's shop... Verdeluna tells the story of Debbie, a Californian woman of Italian origin, who married the love of her life at age 55, having nearly given up on the whole idea. Her partner's name is Pattie, a schoolteacher she met in a pastry class. Must have been a sweet meeting, comments Sandokan. It's so boring to always be politically correct! But despite playing the clown, Sandokan is full of respect for two people who follow the voice of their heart without caring about social convention or discrimination. Mompracem weddings, though, are strictly between men and women. And they are truly wonderful to behold. The bride's hands and feet are painted with henna, the groom arrives on horseback, and the couple's wedding night is spent among a thousand perfumes of the orient. Night of the orient, night of love - how I adore being surrounded by the night... Let's be each other's love pastry, you'll be my profiterolles, and I'll be your baba au rhum... #48 - Verdeluna is struggling with a leaking tap, but of course there isn't a plumber in sight. Sandokan says Yanez is an expert plumber. He even fixed the island's only tap on Mompracem, which was dripping with such a loud thud every minute that it kept everyone awake. Enter the Portuguese Plumber, who fought with the delinquent tap for a week, but to no avail. Then one day, there was a loud crash from the well, the earth shook, and Yanez was heard to swear loudly. And then: silence. The Mompracemers started to count... 50 seconds... 58.. 59.. 60... 61... 62... nothing. Only that within minutes the whole island, utterly exhausted, fell blisfully asleep! So how did he do it? After a week's struggling with spanners, screwdrivers, fists and boots, he finally plugged the leak with... a coffee bean. But seriously, does Sandokan think the world is running short of water? The Americans seems especially alarmist, but then they always are... As a little girl, Verdeluna used to go to a nearby cave with her family to fetch water from the well there. It used the be called the Cave of Spirits because the local shepherds would spend the night there with their flock, and the next morning they'd always notice a couple of lambs were missing. So the story went that the spirits of the cave didn't live by water alone... Don't be afraid of the spirits, says Sandokan. They're present, but we need them for the equilibrium of our cosmos. The pirate also has a ghost aboard his gallion, who plays silly tricks like turning the ship around when it is heading straight for the enemy, just as Sandokan shouts all'assalto!!! But on another occasion, the ghost cooked Sandokan the most amazing breakfast, with coffee even more exquisite than Yanez'. Verdeluna is convinced the spirit is a girl-ghost. Turning pirates away from battle, and making them coffee, are feminine things to do. So what would Verdeluna do in her place? Make Sandokan stay in bed of course, and get the coffee from Yanez! But wait... Verdeluna feels a sudden sense of peace, quiet and relief... And even the bathroom tap has stopped dripping... Could it be that...? #49 - Verdeluna is struggling to assemble an Ikea bookshelf, while Sandokan is out snorkelling among the coral. Verdeluna loves coral necklaces, especially the one she got from her Granny Benedetta, along with a glass of ice cold lemonade. And Sandokan has fond memories of an Italian Renaissance painting by Piero Della Francesca, of the Madonna with her child, little Jesus is wearing a coral necklace [note: probably Piero della Francesca's Madonna di Senigallia, about 1474]. How does Sandokan know about Italian art? From a calendar brought along by Yanez, of course! Which brings us back to the Ikea bookshelf. Yanez once proposed selling his flat-pack, do-it-yourself gallions to Ikea, but they couldn't find a store big enough for them. Now Verdeluna is desperate to find the instructions that came with her furniture... Sandokan, heeeeelp me...! There's only one thing to be done in such cases: all'assalto!!! So, after another romantic excursion among the stars, Sandokan raises the big question: just what is Verdeluna going to do with her new bookshelf? She is turning the whole house upside down, redecorating all the rooms. Wasn't getting rid of The Twit stressful enough? They say that after divorce, restruc.. restrutu... restructuring the house is the most stressful thing that a person can do. Verdeluna loaded some old sticks of furniture onto the Fiat 131 and drove to the local dump to get rid of them, but before she could even enter the site, five youths surrounded the car, opened the doors and dragged all the rubbish out. With Verdeluna screaming in terror, they drove away in their old van with her discarded belongings loaded on top...! Sandokan is furious. Amateur pirates! It's people like that who give the profession a bad name. That's the problem with your cities, you pretend the problems aren't there instead of confronting them. So what would be Sandokan's solution? Giving away Granny Benedetta's lemonade to everybody! #50 - I like the night, like any honourable pirate... Connecting... Connecting... Waiting... Like I wait for the wind when I want to leave port... Sandokan has helped Yanez stock up his kiosk with coffee bags, but the thought of that exquisite aroma made the bags as light as feathers. Speaking of which, Verdeluna followed a feather blown by the wind with her kickyodelling friend, Olivia. It started out as a game but became quite serious. And so they trailed the little feather this way and that, their heads in the air, counting the stars, until it flew towards the port. And so they gazed at the little feather as it drifted ever higher, ever higher, and ever further away. "Auf Wiedersehen,'' said Olivia, the South Tyrolean. "Auf Wiedersehen,'' echoed Verdeluna. Porzellana! We nearly fell in, didn't we? Then they just stared into the distance, and got gloomy, until Olivia announced she would go home and make a zucchini strudel. Would she eat it all alone? - Nein ! Tomorrow I vill bring half to ze shop for you! A very practical lady, says Sandokan. If she'd known Hamlet, it would have been a case of to strudel, or not to strudel... Sandokan explains the Day of Light, a Mompracem festival when the fishermen place all kinds of objects by the sea that represent missed opportunities in life. If the next day, the sea has washed some of the items away, that means another opportunity will soon present itself. Ernest Hemingway put down a swordfish made of sugar, to remember the day he went fishing in a rickety old boat after having some of Yanez' exquisite coffee! When he came back from his trip after three days and three nights, Ernest had with him the biggest swordfish ever seen by man... except it was so big he'd had to tie it to the side of his boat, and it got eaten by sharks. Hemingway went to his cabin, and disappeared for a whole week, until the smell of Yanez' coffee brought him back to the world... And another fisherman left a wooden giraffe, to show his pining for a long-necked ukulele player that once visited the island... Verdeluna once visited a safari park in Fasano with The Twit and their children, and when a giraffe started licking their car windscreen, Renato had the brilliant idea of honking to scare it off. With the result that an equally scared elephant decided to sit down on their vehicle, and The Twit, ignoring all instructions to the contrary, got out to inspect the damage. Within seconds, a troupe of monkeys descended on him and undressed him to his underwear... A small feather has settled on my computer, Verdeluna, the feather that Olivia and you followed to the sea. I will keep it, and put it on the beach on the Day of Light... ...to be continued You'll find daily updates of Kabir's radio show CH@T online at kabir-bedi.com... |
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