While I was trying to make sense of her Hobbesian viewpoint where “every man is against every man”, I was also trying to see through the eyes of such people as were branded selfish.

Was it some kind of genetic makeup that rendered some people more aware of others’ suffering or was it sheer upbringing and the environment that pushed some and vice versa. Sometimes, I think, others’ suffering does not hit us as profound because either we are an absolute alien to it or because having undergone something similar, it no longer held the same gravity as it did for us the first time.

For an infant, a transition to be able to walk is a big thing, for an adult, it is a given. More specifically, it is a delight, when your kid begins to walk and once he is grown up the same thing is not a matter of profound pleasure, at least not as much. It might rev up the joy of parenthood but beyond that there is an impenetrable numbness.

Coming back to my friend’s banter, I think she was right, to a certain extent. If only we could look through the eyes of the people around us or at least paid heed to what he/she was saying, it would make all the positive difference. Our feeling might have gone old but all it takes is a bit of imagination to be the other person or simply borrow the pair of shoes the other is wearing to get a feel of it.

Getting into one such pair,
Yours, Manjit

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More than 40 countries have established academic forces to protect their languages. Cardinal Richelieu was the first, founding the illustrious L’Académie française in 1634 with a mandate “to give rules to our language, and to render it pure and elegant.” France deemed it necessary a few years ago to amend its Constitution, specifying French as the official language of the republic.

Culture & language: the English language
In no area of culture is the collision more intense than over the English language. The web has changed English more radically than any invention since paper, and much faster. According to Paul Payack, of the Global Language Monitor, there are currently 988,974 words in the English language, with thousands more emerging every month. The British Council says the English language now has special status of one kind or another in 75 countries. One-third of the world’s books are published in English, two-thirds of all scientists read English, three-quarters of the world’s mail is written in English and four-fifths of all electronic communications are in English. English has become the common linguistic denominator, though it is not an essential minimum factor that if you are proficient only in Hindi or a language other than English you cannot aspire for a high office in India. Whatever you are a Korean executive in Shanghai, a German official in Brussels or a Brazilian biochemist in Sweden, you’re probably speaking English. The world attempts an international brand of English, though not always intelligible, it is its native speakers who have lost the most.

English Continues its Run
The English language has come a long way in 425 years. In 1582, the English grammarian Richard Mulcaster could say that English was “of small reach, stretching no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all.” In the same year William Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway, and the language itself has since flourished as magnificently as the playwright himself. More than one billion people now speak it. Another billion people are learning it. Despite all the new Englishes, it’s the American (movies) and British (stiff upper lip) versions that carry prestige. Australia, USA and Britain, in particular, have invested heavily in branding themselves as destinations for learning English.

English in India
English is a language of intellectual and creative activity in India. After independence and from 1950s onwards, English began to acquire a distinct Indian voice through innovations. In the domain of Indian Writing in English, since the themes and substances are Indian, most creative writers in India emphasize that English is at home in India and India at home with the English language e.g., the British English, that is becoming foreign by the day. Authors such as Mulkraj Anand, RK Narayan, GV Desani, Khushwant Singh, Manohar Malgonkar, Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, R. Parthasarathy, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, are conscious of their multilingual situations. Literature and language become great when they break out of geographical and linguistic confines. This takes us back to the initial question of the mystery of language and literature. The Black Pagoda or the popularly known sun temple at Konark in Orissa is a testimony to both being prose and poetry blended in sculptured artistry.

What is Hinglish?
The latest to hit the language scene is Hinglish, a hybrid of English and south Asian languages, used both in Asia and the UK. English is being spiced up with a sprinkling of words from the sub-continent. This fusion of languages has generated some indigenous phrases. “Timepass” is a way of distracting yourself. If you need to bring a meeting forward, you do the opposite of postponing - in Hinglish you can “prepone”.

In Hinglish, English and the languages of South Asia overlap, with phrases and words borrowed and re-invented. It is used on the Indian sub-continent, with English words blending with Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, Kannada, and many others, and also within British Asian families. Hinglish perhaps enlivens ‘standard’ English. Is it really a pukka way to speak? And if you had to get somewhere in a hurry, would you make an “airdash”? South Asian languages have fused with English to take on a new identity. Embrace this pick and mix approach. It is natural that languages will adapt and change to whatever is around.
The user of the non-native, Hinglish variety is bi - or multilingual, with creativity manifested in different kinds of ‘mixing’, ‘switching’, ‘alteration’ and ‘transcreation’ of codes. This variety reveals the use of native similes, metaphors, rhetorical devices, and idiomatic expressions.

Globalization and Hinglish
Throughout the world parents keen for their children to achieve are spending over tuition for English-language schools. China’s English has its own Mandarin term, Yingwen re. And governments are having English their own nativized way, recognizing that along with computers and mass migration, English is the turbine engine of globalization.

Hinglish, in its own way, is also the language of globalization. There are more English-speakers in India than anywhere else in the world. Satellite television, films and the internet have made more and more people in the sub-continent exposed to both Standard English and Hinglish. FN and AN are invariably used for someone joining a new job, or taking leave in a particular part of the day. It happens only in India.

Some Hinglish opinions
There is also a view that Hinglish is expressing itself as a language with high overtones of an emotional ploy with people who use languages spoken in Asia. South Asian countries have accepted the sell-out for economic enrichment, their self esteem taking a back seat. The colour of money dominates the language, in moulding Hinglish reach its summit which is still on its ascent.

Some people opine that the Indian middle class, steadily growing in power on all fronts is losing linguistic ground to Western consumerism, using Hinglish to draw attention. Consider it as legislation of language, hardly acceptable since languages were not created through any legislative diktat. Not a consumerist language, but Hinglish is a language grown for consumer durables for a constant ringing of their cash registers.

Some magazine and journal editors have gone to the extent of advising their scribes against code switching and code mixing within languages and to use shorter sentences rather than long literary ones. There are those who Sanskritise English all the same giving a fillip to Hinglish which has come to stay and cannot be wished away.

Hinglish and power
The arrival of Hinglish and the influence of Indian words on English are also a reflection of the rise of the Indian sub-continent as an economic power-house. David Crystal has described India as having a “unique position in the English-speaking world”. “Hinglish is a linguistic bridge between the major first-language dialects of the world, such as British and American English, and the major foreign-language varieties, such as those emerging in China and Japan.” Hinglish is the result of the productive linguistic innovations determined by the localized functions of a second language variety, which also implicate new communicative strategies or the ones that get transferred from local languages.

The Times of India reported: “Brand India has shaken, stirred and otherwise Bangalored the world’s consciousness.” To Bangalore” is a favoured Hinglishism, meaning to send overseas, as in call centres.

Old Spears and ShakesThere have been much older crossovers between English and the languages of the Indian sub-continent, with words imported through the soldiers and administrators of the British Raj. They include “pundit”, a learned man; “shampoo”, a word for massage; “pyjamas”, a leg garment and “dungarees”, originating from Dungri of Mumbai. Even the suburban-sounding “caravan” and “bungalow”; “bandana” and “bangles” were all taken from Hindi. It is pedantic to mention that. English has absorbed words from all over.

A recent study in Birmingham, looking at groups of Asians and whites in youth clubs, found that white teenagers quickly absorbed words to use as insults, a tendency with all speakers in all languages. Derogatory words first. Karen Corrigan a linguist at the University of Newcastle was one of the organizers of the conference, Sociolinguistics Symposium. ‘People think of migration as a new thing, but it is not,’ she said. ‘There were Vikings and Normans, Irish and many more who influenced language, and the same thing is happening with Asians today.’

Speakers of Spanglish, Singlish, Japlish, Chinglish, Indish
The modern rival to English in fecundity is Chinese, and with 1.3 billion Chinese now being officially urged to learn English, the result is ‘nomogamosis’ ( the Hinglish dictionary explains it as a state of marital harmony; a condition in which spouses are well matched.”). There are many similar offspring. Drinktea, for example, is a sign on a shop door meaning closed, but also derives from Mandarin for resting. Spanglish, used in parts of the USA is where people shift seamlessly between Spanish and English, and where hybrid words are created - such as a sign “No hangear” meaning “no hanging around.” Speaking Singapore Singlish la?

The new breed of speakers isn’t just passively absorbing the language—they’re shaping it. English now has a plural connotation, ranging from “Englog,” the Tagalog-infused English spoken in the Philippines, to “Japlish,” the cryptic English poetry beloved of Japanese copywriters (“Your health and loveliness is our best wish,” I read on a chocolate wrapper in Sri Lanka just yesterday. “Give us a chance to realize it”), Haiku, to “Hinglish” that is everywhere from fast-food ads to South Asian college campuses. “Hungry kya?” (“Are you hungry?”). In South Africa, besides Swahili, many citizens have adopted their own version of English, laced with their own words.

Linguistically speaking, new world non-native speakers of English outnumber native speakers 3 to 1. David Crystal says in English as a Global Language, “There’s never before been a language that’s been spoken by more people as a second than a first.”

Hinglish Relatives Overseas: Cockney, Southall, Estuary, Yorkshire. Liverpool, Bradford, Bombay NY
Arfaan Khan, a linguist of Reading University UK, has predicted the emergence of a ‘whole new dialect’. ‘This will be an increasing trend,’ opined Jeremy Butterfield, editor-in-chief of the Collins dictionaries. ‘If new words are used enough, they will end up in the dictionary, and once they are there they become English words. With the increasingly British multi-cultural society, perhaps in 50 years English will have adopted a mass of words from all the different cultures living on this island.’ Those who complain about the loss of the purity of the language are just passe.

‘English is a mongrel language, and always has been,’ said Butterfield.
All languages are works in progress. The globalization of English, unprecedented in the history of languages, will revolutionize it in ways we can only imagine. In the future, suggests Crystal, there could be a tri-English world: one in which you could speak a local English-based dialect at home, a national variety at work or school, and an international Standard English to talk to foreigners.

Food tastes delicious
It is within ‘culinary speak’ that the largest changes seem to have occurred. ‘The British food habit has been transformed by the arrival of Asian people in the community,’ says Mahendra Verma, director of the Hindi programme at York University. ‘The words are entering local vocabularies. Masala is replacing spice, mooli means white radish, and the word balti is actually Hindi for the type of pan that the dish is cooked in.’
Accepting the words will also help the British understand what is being said when actors in Anglo-Indian comedies use Hindi and Urdu phrases. The young create their own dialect dressing: ‘bling’, describing their fancies as ‘tik’ ‘thik’ and drinking ‘chaa’ or ‘chai’. Asian words will continue to enrich English, innit? Many Asian words have already been naturalized into English. Besides cheetah, having left eastern shores, others vying for a place are dosa, idli, samosa, dal, sabji, ctm (chicken tikka butter masala), atm. A rich spread indeed! One is reminded of AC Baugh’s statement on how sorry a British dining table would have been without the French invasion. Innit?

Big Brother (pun intended) guards our English?
‘Asian-speak’ has been spicing up English, with words such as ‘bheja’ ‘fish fry’ forecasting an explosive impact of the language used by second-generation immigrants.

Aadab, Hello, Namaskar, Namaste, Vanakam, Sat Sri Akal, Kasaa Kaay, Ram Ram, Swagatam, Welcome

Hobson Jobson, all Nabobs, Sahibs and Boxwallahs, Saheb, Saab and Sahibas.
Welcome to the ‘Queen’s Hinglish’.

No holds barred.
Plenty of errors using English. In India; being the examination season, one is more likely to hear

~ “I’m going to give an examination.”
You don’t give an examination, you take one!
Many of us notice this:
~ “I will revert back to you shortly.”
The word ‘revert’ itself means to return to a previous subject or condition, so the insertion of the word ‘back’ in the sentence is not required. It would be fine to say:
~ “I will revert to you shortly.”

Difficulties for English and Hinglish
Not everyone is as open-minded about English, or its advance. Others say such defensiveness misses the point. “This is not about English swamping and eroding local identities it is about creating new identities—and about making everyone bilingual.” (David Graddol).

Hinglish Writing Technology
Some people are of the opinion that e-mail, mobile, and s.m.s are spoiling the English language. They complain of not being able to understand the vocabulary, the grammar and the syntax. Try looking at it another way. Was writing a pleasure in your school days? The scramble for the sharpener; the eraser. And after all the hard work your teacher complained of bad handwriting, the wrongly spelt words. Not anymore. Word processing and technology have converted writing to less of a strain, though there are conventions that cannot be ignored.

Kamala Das is most effusive and eloquent on English and our multilingual situation, besides Raja Rao, Nissim Ezekiel, Khushwant Singh, Jug Suraiya, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Shobaa De, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai and others. She says:

I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one, Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother- tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics. friends. visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half
Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am, don’t
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
Incoherent mutterings of the blazing
Funeral pyre.
(Summer in Calcutta: An Introduction)

Come over to any metropolis or a growing town in our country and you will find that Hinglish - bicultural and bilingual advertising - holds sway. Pizza and pasta are passé. Eat Parathas (restaurant) in Bhubaneswar, Dalema or Odissi (dance, it’s also a cuisine). Join in a bhoji in Puri. Try Sikkim momos in Delhi, khichdi, kichadi, kedgeree (in Mysore and Chennai). Have a meal at King’s Kourt. (Mysore) or late Amjad Khan’s (Sholay?) at Topkapi (Bangalore), Fish or Mutton thali in a ‘Military’ hotel. (Karnataka), or a Veg. thali distinct from pure veg. thali, meaning the latter is without garlic and onion. Portuguese adopted the word sari in1498 with Indian women and taught us to eat pav roti and vada pav, with feni or vindaloo in Mumbai. Ask for your favourite delicacies from cuisines around the world at Kadhai, Dekchi, Tawa, Khana Khazana, Biriyani, Aahar, Nakli Dhaba, Chapati, Chhapan Bhog, and Dum Pukht (all Indian eateries). Or you can prefer Chaineez (sic) or Tandoor. Roshogolla, Sen Mahashaya and ‘.Sondesh’ shweets (Bengal) are more so in pronunciation as is G. Pulla Reddy in Andhra Pradesh.

Get out the juices and tastes melt in your system with tambakhu, gudhaku, pakhaal (water rice) butter milk, yoggurt(sic), ghol dahi (Orissa), rasam ( all over South India), kadhi (Maharashtra), lassi (Punjab), tambul (Meghalaya) depending on the regions you are staying in, whether an Indian or a videshi. Don’t end up without paan (betel, beetel, beetle, bettle, betle, beltee, betlee) preferring the variety, Kolkata, Maghadi, Benaras, Nagpur, Manipur, and the spelling displayed on the kiosk. Idli (Udupi) has almost become the national breakfast of our country just as d & r (dal and roti) seem to be heading towards a standard Hinglish dinner.

Conclusion
There are puritans in all cultures who say you can be the master of one language only, pure, holy and sacrosanct. They advise you not to try to cross two or more languages. Do we only have one fixed identity? As Charles Morgan said we all wear masks and when we shake hands it is really not so, but a clash of armour with armour. In real as in reel life, we do step in and out of different identities. Can’t we? So the same with languages?
The British, South London, RP has always boasted of my (English) language. It will always be the same. Sorry. Shakespeare’s English was different from Chaucer’s. The evolution of language is never going to stop, more so for the English tongue.
ATBKITCUL8R (got it?)
All The Best Keep in Touch See You Later.

That is the English of the future.

References
BBC News, Magazine, 8 Nov.2006
Anushka Asthana, The Observer, 25 April 2004
Graddol, David: English Next, Milton Keynes, Open University
Newsweek, 7 May 2005
English Today, OUP, January 2007
Nav Bharat, 22 June 2007
www.rediffmail.com
www.languageinindia..com

Acknowledgement
Most grateful thanks to Smt Pushp Lata Negi, our librarian, who searched the appropriate lines from Kamala Das, besides some other references.

About the Author
Dr Vijay Kumar Sunwani is the Principal of the Regional Institute of Education (NCERT), Bhubaneswar, India. He teaches English Literature.

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I loved it so much that I was amazed to discover that it is S J Bolton’s debut novel – I simply had to find out more about this incredible author and so we go in touch with her publicist. Thankfully, Sharon turned out to be an equally incredibly nice individual and was only too happy to answers our questions – even some of the stranger ones!

So, feeling like an explorer who has just uncovered some ancient burial site full of priceless antiquities, I set about trying to discover what makes this writer tick and how Sacrifice came about. Read on to find out...

Sacrifice revolves around Shetland Folklore, what was it about this particular legend that inspired you to write a novel about it?
I’d had an idea buzzing around for a couple of years: that of a woman, who desperately wanted to be pregnant, conceiving a child that was in some way alien and that would, ultimately, destroy her. I had a feeling I could base it on Germanic, Scandinavian or Norse legend. So I pitched up at the library one day and found the section on mythology. The legend of the Kunal Trows caught my attention partly because it had a lot of similarities to my own idea, but mainly because it was so fabulously creepy.

This is your debut novel, when did you realise that you wanted to become a writer?
Relatively late in life because, for a very long time, it never occurred to me that I could do it. I feel stupid, looking back, because all the ingredients were there: I’ve always read avidly, my job was 70% writing (albeit technical stuff) and I’m one of those people who have an imaginary life running in parallel with their real one. It took a push from someone else to make me think...I wonder. Once I started, it was like falling off a log. The stuff just poured out. Of course, it was still a good while before I came up with anything publishable.

What made you choose this particular genre?
I write the sort of book I love to read. Crime with a twist. I enjoy the excitement, suspense and the sense of characters-in-peril that you get with crime stories and I tried to put a lot of that into Sacrifice; but I also love plots that are original and unusual.

How much time did you have to spend researching all the medical and other technical details contained in your novel?
A lot. I have no medical background and I had to start from scratch with the forensic stuff. I enjoy the research. I’m learning a huge amount all the time.

Why did you feel the need to have so much detail?
Partly because it was very important to me that Tora should be credible as an obstetrician. The reader needs to believe she is capable of delivering a baby and of taking care of business in an operating theatre. Later, her medical and obstetric skills are important factors in her cracking the case.

Are there any characteristics or traits as a trained actress and dancer that you feel aided you when writing Sacrifice?
I’m told I’m a very visual writer and just about the first useful lesson any aspiring performer is taught is how to deal with rejection and how to keep on going. Aspiring writers need to be able to do this too – big time!

Tora is an unusual name – where did this come from?
I honestly can’t remember.

What made you create Tora as an obstetrician?
Babies and childbirth are at the heart of Sacrifice so Tora’s profession made her ideally suited to investigate what is happening on the islands. Her privileged position at the hospital gives her access to information not available to the police, enabling her to take the story forward when the police investigation has stalled. Also, I was rather intrigued by the idea of an obstetrician having fertility problems. I think that could really play with someone’s head.

Will we be seeing Tora again, or was she a one-off heroine?
I think you might see Tora again. I certainly don’t see Sacrifice as the start of a series, it just wouldn’t be credible for an obstetrician to be involved in ongoing villainy. But I think there could be one more story involving Tora and her friends. Maybe in a year or so.

Talking of credibility, what made you let Tora forgive Duncan for his part (albeit short-lived) in the murderous islander schemes?
I think Tora understood how hard it was for Duncan to break the ties that dragged him back towards the Trow community. His initial involvement was hardly his fault and in the end, he does the right thing. You raise an interesting point, though, and I do wonder whether, ultimately, Tora will ever again be able to fully trust Duncan.

What was the intention behind the sexual tension between Tora and Gifford?
Tora’s attraction to a man that isn’t her husband adds to her confusion, helps to throw her off base and, in the end, completes her sense of being surrounded by those intent on harming her. At one point she says, “whichever way I looked, men I loved were going down for this.” I do have a sense, though, of unfinished business between Tora and Gifford. It’s all been nicely shelved for the time being but at some time in the future...

Right, onto the personal side of things: What is an average day, for you, like?
I get dragged out of bed between six and seven, wave my six year old off to school, walk the dog, sit down at my computer and write, (stopping to eat, load the washing machine or take the dog out) until 3pm when I do the school run. My son is with me until bedtime. We might go swimming, have a friend to tea or just watch a movie together. Andrew gets home around eight. I usually cook and then I watch a re-run of Friends while Andrew carries on working. I do most of my reading in bed, so I’m usually in it by 10pm. Not remotely exciting, I’m afraid, but I need a very normal life to balance all the scary stuff going on in my head.

What terrifies you more than anything else?
The prospect of losing someone I love.

Now that you are a successfully published author (congratulations!), what is next for you?
I’m currently finishing off my second book and starting to think about my third. I love my life at the moment and the best I can hope for is that it carries on exactly like this.

I don't blame you one bit. Will you be sticking to creating thrillers based on legends and historical myths or do you intend to generalise within the crime thriller genre?
I think legend-based thrillers will always be my favourite sort of book but I don’t think I’ll get away with it every time. My second book doesn’t have a legend as its inspiration but it does see people struggling to deal with the repercussions of past events. And it has lots and lots of twists – it’s about snakes!

Snakes - Yikes! I once had a faux crocodile skin pair of shoes (yes, really) ..., what’s the most expensive or outrageous pair of shoes you ever bought?
A pair of black, Dolce et Gabbana kitten heels. The first time I wore them was in the Seychelles, shortly after we got married. We’d hired a yacht and, one night, climbed aboard our dinghy, motored to the beach and walked across the sand to the restaurant. The shoes were ruined, of course, but the memory lives on.

Now that you’re a successful writer, what are you going to/ have you treated yourself to? - cos it sounds like it's about time for more treats to me...
I have a picture in my head of a 40’ yacht with a black hull and gunmetal grey sails, called Sacrifice. (I’m dreaming now, you understand...)

For the benefit of those of us who have no kids - how difficult is it really to cope with the demands of children as well as the need to write a book?
The school term is much shorter than many people imagine. So, whilst having a whole year to write a book might feel perfectly achievable, writing one in the 30 week school year is a different proposition entirely. I do feel under constant pressure to do the maximum in the time available. On the other hand, I’m incredibly lucky to have a job that I can do from home and that can fit so easily around the school day. And there’s nothing like a demanding small child for keeping your feet on the ground and reminding you about what’s really important.

Thanks Sharon! Sacrifice is out now.

Originally published at Truth About Books. Reproduced here with permission.

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The Ginza line meaning Silver Coin is Tokyo’s pride and joy subway as it takes you through the largest business districts. As a tourist one could easily get trapped within the gigantic department stores, brand name shops and expensive coffee shops. However this drab winter day, I stayed on till the end of the line - Tawaramachi. Exiting the station I walked about five minutes and followed past a giant plastic chef's head towering over a five story building and came to the only logical explanation, I had reached Kappabashi, the Kitchen District, or Restaurant Wholesale District.

My love of the Japanese culture from Shinto shrines to karaoke bars is only outweighed by my love of Japanese food. From creation to presentation Japanese food never ceases to amaze me with its art form and delicate flavor. I have drank at Izakaya’s (Japanese style bars and eateries) I have bought Sake from a vending machine and eaten sushi off a rotating bar but Kappabashi is the real place. The place where the sushi chef’s buy knifes, servers buy uniforms and suppliers buy hand painted rice bowls and single serve soya dishes.

An enclosed street shopping district, Kappabashi is open year round and offers everything from paper plates to designer crystal in over 150 stores. It caters to both home chefs and culinary tradesman alike as things are sold in packages of 4 to 400. Shops sell picnic necessities, anything lacquer, bento (lunch) boxes, and restroom signage. Perhaps the most impressive of my finds however was the infamous plastic food stores.

The plastic food phenomenon is a conversation piece in the homes of all gaijins (foreigners) living in Japan. Almost every restaurant in Tokyo is fully equipped with a plastic food display of their tastiest items. The displays are commonly found just outside of the restaurant and are accompanied with a full menu. The presentation itself is elaborate right down to the exact vegetables included in cream sauce pasta and a parmesan cheese look alike sprinkled on top.

As a tourist in Japan, these displays serve as a universal language and foolproof way to order food. The customer simply points at a plastic representation rather than attempt to explain something line Chrysanthemum Egg Soup or Tube Shaped Fish Cake. Salads are always well represented with half cut eggs and oddly colored radishes. Ramen noodles are equally impressive with circular green onion bits and chopsticks miraculously suspended in midair at the end of an elongated ramen noodle.

A plate displaying the ever-popular Spaghetti Bolognese could cost you upwards of $60.00 but will eliminate all doubts from potential customers with it’s small bits of beef and perfectly round noodles. Some of the reproductions are so amazing that you are inclined to dive in on the spot. For some of the dishes the plastic mold is actually made by pouring hot wax over the actual food and then painted with flawless details.

I wandered for a good three hours, ate at a small ramen stand and pondered my purchasing options. I decided upon plastic grapes to place with a set of antique glass grapes that my grandmother had bequeathed me. I compared prices and colors from store to store in search of the ideal grapes to rest with my heirloom and my Ginza line adventure ended only with the perfect bunch.
I set route back to the station loaded down with kitchen glasses, a sushi platter and a few Christmas presents primarily in the soft plastic vegetable variety. As the train began to fill with salary men in dark blue suits and black shoes, for the first time as a tourist in Japan, I felt ahead of the game for I knew the secret location of their explanatory menu items and polyethylene tea biscuits.

Originally published on Vagabond Poet. Reproduced here with permission.

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As the title hints, "The Slums of Atlantis" sets up the expectations of Atlantis' past glories like ninepins and promptly knocks them over. It begins humorously, supposing philosopher dogs and waters privileged by association with the magnificent, then intensifies its nascent irony in contemplating the fate of the fictional city's "exploited breed."

"Stonehenge Revisited" is a brief image of the "devout and lunatic," an impossible snapshot taken by moonlight.

"In the Coarse Morn" shows a kingdom in decline, a hint of the desert encroaching on what was once green and rich, and the effect it has on the spirit of a city. In the end, this is a city grown so harsh and cruel that one wishes for the catastrophe that will make it clean -- a spiritual, ecological and social holocaust, quick or slow.

Destruction is slower, and more peaceful (although insidious) in "The Death of Statues," in which we see the "slow rot/creeping up their legs," and the passivity of those who cannot fight their deaths, and have no means or wish to.

With "In One's Perception of Light" the theme shifts to a more personal kind of archaeology -- that of memory, and the constructs of childhood. "Memory's Refrain" continues this: "unfurling like smoke," memory fills all spaces and becomes, for all intents and purposes, reality.

"When Clock is Egg" is more abstract than the previous poems, and probably my favorite, although I do not pretend to understand it. It seems to speak of the hatching of time, and the ripeness and potential of "this ground," from which "any reality could be born" -- whether the ground is solid or ethereal, real or imagined.

"Shells: The Next Generation" paints an unsentimental picture of parents helpless under the weight of memory, and of children as a kind of parasite, stripping the shore of shells. Although the beach is remade every day, it will always be stripped before the "lone beachcomber" can find the shells he seeks; like Sisyphus, he will never complete the task that is his collection.

"Heavy Weather" strikes a lighthearted note, imagining gravity that changes "like the weather," sometimes striking us down and sometimes letting us fly.

The Bradbury-esque "Origami Rockets" counters "Shells: The Next Generation" with a childlike, idyllic vision of travel to the moon.

"Sun People" and "Knife People" are "what if" poems that depict, respectively, a hot world, stuck in a cruise ship summer, and a sharp, damaged, bloodied world. The latter seems facile until the last lines: "when you are sharp/you have to cut."

"In the Cluttered Attic of the Mind's Sensations" returns to the theme of the archeology of memory -- or the surreal housekeeping of the dream-life. It's an appropriate segue into a series of poems that use the name and images of Dali and other artists: this set begins with "Revealing Their Eyes" -- which traces Dali's and Van Gogh's paths to the same conclusion, and ends with "Each Note Waiting: images of the static, expectant moment before the explosion of creativity or history."

"Visions of the Blue Clone" and "Shadow Light" are love poems and introduce a science-fictional element to the collection; science flirts with fantasy in "Of Glass, Of Fire, Of Elements Abundantly Defined" -- a twisted, mad-tea-party look at the periodic table. And with "Future Fourth" and "Mandates for the Fifth Enclave" we segue into an archaeology of the future -- respectively, a "hellish life" where the fireworks of the fourth of July are a mockery, and a drowned world where preserving history, if not people, is the only hope. History "is razed" in "In the Sweltering Ruins of the Old City," reminiscent of Bradbury's "The Smile."

Aliens are violently curious in "Under Alien Observation," and (perhaps) simply disturbing in "Oblong Creatures" (although the last line has a suspiciously "To Serve Man" ring about it). The alien is not the villain in "When the Alien Sat Down Next to Me," which is unexpectedly sad and more so for its honesty.
"Star Wanderers" strikes a note of hope, positing that once the human race is sufficiently integrated it can finally "consider/leaving the Earth behind/and wandering to the stars." "Take Five on Centauri Three" (written with Marge Simon) supposes the evolution of jazz in space, played not only by humans but aliens: "Old Earth's gift to the stars." And in the final poem, "The Dimensional Rush of Relative Primes," it seems the limits of the physical are largely transcended; Earth is not a place but an "instant," where an entity who may be human, alien, or something beyond temporal definition perches and waits to teach "her children's children/about the wages of space."

Shades Fantastic
By Bruce Boston
ISBN 0-9776665-3-0
Gromagon Press

Originally published on Multiverse. Reproduced here with permission.

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But one invention is so efficient, beneficial, and simple that it may be the best thing we’ve ever made. People across the land will celebrate that invention as we ride into June, Bike Month. The "modern" version of the bicycle with pedals and cranks was invented by French carriage-maker Ernest Michaux in 1861. It’s come a long way since then, but whether it’s a high-tech racing bike or a one-gear street cruiser, the bike is still a marvel of ingenuity. In fact, it may well be the most efficient form of transportation yet invented.

The best part of the bike is that you, the rider, are the engine. The fuel is what you eat and drink. Putting the human engine together with the gears, wheels, and frame of a bike gives you a mode of transportation that uses less energy even than walking. As for our most popular method of getting around, the automobile, there’s no comparison. According to the WorldWatch Institute, a bicycle needs 35 calories per passenger mile, while a car uses 1,860. Buses and trains are somewhere in between.

During Bike Month, it’s worth thinking about the potential this amazing invention offers. With oil prices climbing and environmental damage from car emissions increasing, bikes are becoming a more attractive form of urban transportation every day. Cleaner air, reduced congestion, safer streets, and lower noise levels are just a few of the benefits. As more people get out of their cars and onto their bikes, they’ll also become fitter, leading to lower health-care spending. The money that could be saved nationally on things like health care - not to mention the infrastructure required to keep so many cars on the road - reaches into the billions, but the money an individual can save on fuel, insurance, and maintenance costs alone is also substantial. And because biking is a lot of fun, it will probably increase what the people of Bhutan call "gross national happiness"!

But we still have a ways to go. Canadians and Americans use bikes for fewer than one in a hundred trips - although in Vancouver where I live, it’s a bit higher, at about 2.3 per cent. Compare that to the 20 to 35 per cent of trips taken by bike in the European Union and 50 per cent in China. (Unfortunately, the trend is reversing in China as the country embraces car culture.)

Shifting from car dependence will take action at the individual level, with more people simply deciding to get on their bikes, but governments must also do more to make it easier for people to ride bikes. And they can. In just three years, from 1998 to 2001, Mayor Enrique Peñalosa of Bogotá, Colombia, turned his city of 6.5 million from a gridlocked parking lot into a city where public spaces live up to their name. He did this by restricting car use, increasing gas taxes, and building hundreds of kilometres of bike and pedestrian paths, as well as investing in buses.

Making our streets safer for cyclists by giving them space to ride is an essential first step. The investment required is far less than that required for infrastructure for cars. Tax breaks for cyclists also help. Last year in Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty removed the provincial sales tax on bike helmets and bikes costing less than $1,000. Bikes are also exempt from PST in B.C., and the province’s $100 carbon-tax rebate could be put toward buying a bike or tuning up your old bike.

Employers can also help out by offering secure bike parking and showers for those who work up a sweat on the way to work.

Of course, cycling isn’t a panacea. In parts of Canada, the weather isn’t always conducive to cycling. And not everyone has the strength to ride up the hills in some of our cities. But if more of us choose bikes whenever possible, using public transport or at least energy-efficient vehicles when we can’t ride, we’d all be much better off.

So, get on your bike in June, and maybe you’ll like it enough to make it your preferred method of transportation year-round.

Originally published on May 30, 2008

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki is distinguished Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. He is also a co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

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It is by a constant inner growth that one can find a constant newness and unfailing interest in life. There is no other satisfying way.
—Sri Aurobindo

Try asking yourself from time to time: “Am I awake now?”
—Jon Kabat-Zinn

God lies ahead… he depends upon us. It is through us that God is achieved.
—Andre Gide

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