It's so lovely to be in South India, where the women all wear flowers in their hair - and this is Ancient Tradition. So floriculture must be an ancient business here.
Reminds me of that old hippie song about San Francisco, California, the City of the Golden Gate:
If you are going to San Francisco,
Be sure to wear flowers in your hair,
For on the streets of San Francisco,
You'll meet Gentle People,
With flowers in their hair.
All across the nation,
What a Strange Vibration,
People in Motion,
People in Motion...
Sounds like a "catallaxy" to me.
Well, here in South India, the men do not wear flowers. But, recalling the movies of the nawabi culture of the North, I chose to wear strands of these flowers - jasmine and mallai (mogra) - on my wrists, smelling them once in a while by lifting my wrist to my nose, in true nawabi style - and it was wonderful indeed. Better than all the "perfumes of Arabia." And much better than any "after shave."
Radha sells me these strands of flowers every evening on Beach Road, Pondicherry - and I have renamed her Eliza Dolittle. After all, they have renamed every Big City in India. Even Pondicherry is now Puducherry. And I have renamed myself. So why not rename poor Radha.
Do READ George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion
. Eliza Dolittle sold flowers in London's Covent Garden Market. And Henry Higgins refers to her as a "squashed cabbage leaf from Covent Garden" when he first encounters her. Her father, Alfred Dolittle, was a streetsweeper. And she "became a lady" only by learning the Queen's English.Covent Garden Market today is a very SWANKY market. No cabbages are sold there anymore. But lots and lots of FLOWERS, for sure.
They weren't morons, these Fabian Socialists like Shaw and Professor Bernard Crick. They were just fatally misguided. Don't ever read Shaw's An Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism. Read my "An Intelligent Woman's Guide to Capitalism" instead. You can find it here.
I asked Radha (or Eliza) how many kilometres she has to walk to sell her flowers on Beach Road. Through a translator, I learnt that she walks 4 hours up and down every day. Her jasmines were quite dead by the time she tied them on my wrist. Yet, in just 8 hours, there strands of mogra and jasmine could have been airlifted to AMSTERDAM by KLM Cargo - and Amsterdam is the Biggest Flower Market in the Whole World. Do read about the "Tulip Mania" that occurred there some centuries ago, when fortunes were made and lost speculating on tulip bulbs. You can find a good account of it in a book available at www.mises.org.
Our great country can produce the most exotic flowers in the world. On the Western Ghats, anthurium and the great Bird of Paradise flower grow everywhere, in every home. These cost over 200 rupees for a single flower in Nude Elly. Imagine what they would fetch in Amsterdam.
And so it is true of Srinagar, Kashmir, where saffron is grown. As I sat on my houseboat deck sipping Kashmiri tea every morning, shikara after shikara would draw up selling something or the other. And one of them was of a flower seller. He sold me a lovely bouquet of the most exotic lilies I have ever seen. And he sold me bulbs too. And many other seeds besides. He also sold me some fantastic Kashmiri charas.
Flowers are grown around Nude Elly too - but see what a mess the WHOLESALE flower market near the Qutab Minar is. See how these flowers are transported.
I started off these SPIKES for all you children with the song "Teach your children well," which is a "hippie song," for it was these hippies who were always "on the ROAD," and so it was they who "needed a CODE that they could LIVE by."
The hippies called themselves "flower children."
They were great people, and very gentle people, with superb music - the music of WOODSTOCK, 1968 - and their message was all about Peace and Love.
To this we must add FREEDOM and GOLD.
I grew up around that time - the late 60s and the early 70s. I grew up on this music. I must have seen WOODSTOCK 50 times, in Nude Elly's Chanakya Theatre, then brand new, with a super wide screen and quadrophonic stereo sound, sitting in the Front Stalls, which cost just 60 paisa then. Imagine, 60 paisa for watching WOODSTOCK!
You must hear this music. Good music is very good for the SOUL.
Music is also "metaphysical" in a sense - because it does not EXIST in any PHYSICAL FORM. It is a very strange and mysterious FORCE. You sit in an ancient cathedral in Europe, like I did in the City of Cologne, and hear the Church Organ - and it sounds like GOD's MUSIC. You cannot determine where music comes from - and where it goes. You can examine each of Roger Waters' 110 guitars, and you cannot say where the music comes from - the strings (which are just metal) or the box (which is just wood). You can pick up a bansuri - the Indian bamboo flute - but I bet you'll never manage to get a single note out of it without many months of training under a MASTER. Does bamboo produce music? Or does Hari Prasad Chaurasia? Respect music. It is also the most beautiful metaphysical force in our world. Saraswati plays the veena.
As I said, the hippies were "flower children." They were Gentle People. You must try to be likewise. The First Principle of Libertarianism is NON-AGGRESSION. Unless someone aggresses on you - in which case you have the "right to self-defence." But let us hope you never need it. Let us hope we all can live in peace and harmony with the whole world, in catallaxies.
All across the nation,
What a Strange Vibration,
People in Motion,
People in Motion...
You are all delicate flowers, my beautiful Rock-n-Roll children.
Look after yourselves.
And hear the music of the "flower children."
In their time, the hippies LOVED India.
They came here in droves - to Smoke in Freedom. To play their Music. To live on the cheap, without even backpacks, just a jhola. Wearing loose batik-printed tops and loose bottoms. They made Goa a tourist haven, and Kathmandu, too.
Be flowers like them, my children.
Peace, Love, Music, Non-Aggression, Freedom - and GOLD.
I will be with you all again tomorrow.
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