Excerpt
Excerpt
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"BEHIND A CULTURAL CAGE"
- A NOVEL BY -
PRANAV S. JOSHI
Website: http://sites.google.com/site/lifecageint/
Chapter one
On a Friday morning in February 2006, the gods gazed at the city of Beijing, while celestial messages smiled and vanished into their orb of imagination without revealing the order of the day.
The city was breathing with cold, unaware of the warmth that it would bring to a Chinese man living in India who held tearful conversations in his mind with his land of ancestors.
The horizon was apologetic for being unable to show up in the lingering mist, which was negotiating its adult existence with the juvenile sun. The sky was largely naked, dressed in rags of thin clouds that looked like crippled creatures, shifting shapes, longing for the fluffy flesh that they deserved. The wind whispered to the surroundings in fragmented pattern, preferring not to shout, hug or play with its strength of insanity. Birds shrieked from the foliage of scholar, oriental cypress and other native trees; their delicate wings caressing the moist leaves; their minds calling out memories of their flight paths, dotted with parks, landmarks, sounds and culinary attractions. The Yongding River was calm, repairing its sanctuary of sediments and tales. Stone lions beckoned from their lofty thrones to counter the conspiracies of corrosive spirits. History paddled anxiously around the Forbidden City, trying to decipher the voice of China from the hums, echoes, thuds, roars and dreams emanating from the soul of the orderly, powerful civilization.
Celebrations for the Lunar New Year had declined in intensity, yet their presence could be felt in the colourful hutongs (alleys) and urban enclaves packed with the locals and the waidiren (Chinese tourists) battling toxicity of the cold weather with antidotes of hot noodle soups. The waiguoren (foreign tourists) chattered in warm clothes, holding maps and cameras, their valleys of minds efflorescing with enthusiasm, their curiosity clamouring to visit the conundrums of Asian wisdom.
On the busy roads, bicycles scurried like horizontal sticks, pregnant with the weight of their fearless riders, determined to defend their kingdom of space against the might of the cars and taxis — the necessary evil diapsids of the motorized world.
The life was gathering pace, gradually, calmly, holding on to the buffered grandeur of Beijing that was donning new attire in its ancient landscape, learning and sharing secrets with the rest of the world.
The China World Trade Centre was no exception. An international education fair had just begun in its Exhibition Hall. Booths were flooding with flyers, decals, promotional offers and the must-have corporate gifts. Voices tainted with sales pitch drifted like waves within the hall, rising over their domain of decibels, and then subsiding, bruised and catalyzed by the ingredients of the academic world.
A strange booth in a corner intrigued the visitors.
A tanned, pint-sized, young Chinese man stood on a bridge-like structure in a steel cage carrying a poster:
Hey, you!
Show me your life cage, cultural cage and love cage.
I will show you how to add a whole HUMAN inside them.
PS: I'm not an artist. I'm not culturally a guinea pig. Please don't murder me with your imagination.
The man's face displayed ugliness, unnatural ugliness. By Western standards, it was a weathered face. By Asian standards, it was a face that had escaped narrowly from the demonic and clownish territories, and was striving for a thread of grace. Drawer-like mouth, riotous hair, cauliflower ears, ill-fitting nose, sunken eyes and pitted cheeks — he was simply a man having a less-than-perfect face, saved by a shapely chin and an impressive forehead. A beige-coloured Indian dress, complete with a stylish silk kurta and a five-yard dhuti, adorned his less-than-perfect body. A Mandarin jacket hung like a hunted animal on his shoulder.
At one end of the bridge, there was a statue of a dragon; while at the other end, there was a statue of an elephant. In the middle of the bridge, a Merlion statue marked its presence with a little boilerplate: Bridge of Civilizations.
Behind the man, a cloth banner displayed a sane, education-specific message in Mandarin and English:
Dear visitors,
Destiny is calling you.
Win business empires. Win success. Win love. Win gold medals during the 2008 Olympics.
Sign up for a course at our LifeCage International in Singapore. Hurry. Seats are limited!
To complement the message, two cheery, young women stood in front of the cage, carrying a stack of glossy brochures and bookmarks shaped like dollar signs. One was a Chinese woman; the other was Caucasian. Both were beautiful; both were wearing cheongsams; both were greeting the visitors in Mandarin — Zao an, Ni hao, Nimen hao...
Visitors would scan the booth, collect the brochures and talk to the two women to find out what courses the LifeCage International was offering. Thinking that the Caucasian woman was bilingual, the visitors would talk to her in Mandarin with enthusiasm, and then realizing that she could not go beyond the usual greetings, they would abandon her or continue in broken English, albeit without enthusiasm.
Some visitors would stare and smile at the man in the cage, guessing what animal thing he was doing. The man would spot such curious visitors and raise his poster high up in the air. Those who could not read English would slaughter their smiles and shake their heads, thinking that the man had written something wild or unwholesome inside the poster.
Feng le (Crazy)!
The weirdness of the booth soon earned publicity across the education fair. Clever marketing stunt, huh! Nope, it's a popcorn trick. Doesn't work! Judgements jogged on the tracks of commercial emotions.
Amongst the crowd of the regular visitors, a group of government officials entered the hall. After a little commotion to ensure that the things were in order, the organizers brought the officials for a quick tour of the exhibition. A man with a missing front tooth became a guide who laughed, coughed and issued details about the various universities and institutes that had occupied the exhibition booths.
The group arrived at the booth of the LifeCage International.
