Author: thetravelingminstrel

Gori, hometown of the most (in)famous Georgian

Do not look up Gori on a map. You might chide me for going to a place that is less than an hour’s drive away from the zone of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. South Ossetia, a separatist region of Georgia that is closely allied with Russia, is inaccessible to tourists traveling through Georgia.

Gori, however, is lovely and I’m glad that I was able to have enough time to stroll around its old city, buy steaming cheese khachapuri from a random bakery, and see its medieval fortress and quaint old town — Gori sites normally overlooked for its main attraction. History enthusiasts come here for only one reason: It is the birthplace of the most (in)famous Georgian: Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, known to the world as Joseph Stalin.

All in a single compound, one can find the wooden house in which he was born and in which his father, Vissarion Dzhugashvili, maintained a shoe workshop in the basement; Stalin’s personal bulletproof railway carriage that he used from 1941 onwards; and the stately Stalin Museum that was built in 1951.

Nagged by the question of how someone so dashing and acutely intelligent became the ruthless tyrant that he was, I squeezed this sizable book into my busy schedule while planning this trip. Doing so earned a valid question from my goddaughter as to why I was reading about him if I knew he was a bad guy. Haha! But this book is informative, and engaging, but also heartbreaking. Young Stalin’s life turns out to be the stuff movies are made of. This award-winning biography doesn’t turn one into a Stalin sympathizer, however. It offers an in-depth understanding of the world that nurtured him (“a ferociously Caucasian kaleidoscope of east and west”), the times and the circumstances surrounding the would-be dictator, and a rather sinister intimation of how idealism mixed with unchecked personal trauma and history can dangerously spill into collective trauma and history.

Stalin is celebrated as a hero for defeating the Nazis, but part of me still cannot grasp how anyone can revere him and overlook the Holodomor and the Great Purge of his rule in which the death toll was millions more than that of the Holocaust. But who am I to judge when Filipinos also have a penchant for charismatic strongmen who disregard human cost for political gain?

But before I end up touching on something too sensitive, let me just say this: It should be a crime for a war criminal to be this good-looking. 😅

Like drinking the sunlight of a Georgian autumn

November 16, 2024 — That cliché about turning forty? I don’t buy it. People shouldn’t wait that long for life to begin. I am, however, a believer in new stories and new adventures beginning at forty. 

As light often precedes sound, the moon casting an ethereal halo over the city greeted me as the plane landed. The polyphony followed; of old and new, of east and west, of a language that sounds like a blend of High Valyrian and Dothraki, of autumnal chill and inner fire. 

It is almost midnight in yet another junction of the immeasurable Silk Route, one of the oldest trade centers in the Caucasus. A stone’s throw from where I’m staying is an underground market that was part of a network of tunnels dating back to the 4th century where East and West have traded goods and stories for hundreds of years. 

It is safe to walk at night. I have only encountered friendly faces and a group of men intoning the most otherworldly polyphonic singing at a roadside table as if it were the most natural thing on earth. At every turn lingers the influence of Scheherazade, mother threader of stories in the East, and Penelope, mother un-threader of storytelling in the West. Here, the narratives do not seem to contrast, they coexist. They take turns coaxing travelers to find their own stories to weave, and to unravel. 

Looking around and looking within, I can tell you that forty (and Old Tiflis), is a wonderful place to be. And I cannot wait to see Old Tiflis (and forty) shimmering in the sunlight!

November 20, 2024 — “It’s likely and unfortunate that you are probably only dimly aware of Georgia—the country, not the state. It’s tucked away beneath Russia, next to Turkey, a contentious, strategic piece of real estate under constant pressure.

You should know Georgia because it’s nice. Because the food is excellent. The country is beautiful—some of the most beautiful scenery on Earth. It’s a place you should absolutely visit if given the chance.

But you should know it as well because it’s important. Because it emerged from years of Soviet rule into a chaotic, awful, lawless period, yet managed to turn itself around into a functioning democracy in a few short years.

And because, as you will see, it is still under constant threat from an increasingly belligerent Russia.

It’s a fascinating and very welcoming country. And I hope we convince some of you to visit it.”

Don’t take my word for it. Take Anthony Bourdain’s. He said that, and I took his word for it. And so the first restaurant I checked out was one that he visited, and I ordered a dish that he also had (lamb ribs “semichka” with pomegranate sauce). Since that first dinner I haven’t had bad food or bad wine. 

I’ve been pairing most of my meals with the amber wine for which Georgia is known, and I don’t even know where or how to begin with Georgian wine. But as a preview, let me just say that it tastes exuberant. It’s like drinking the sunlight of a Georgian autumn.

In autumn, Sighnaghi is tinted by all the colors of Georgia’s wines.




The Georgia Book Stack

A light rain was falling, a fine spray, unlike what rain is in the tropics. Within a couple of hours the deep purple of evening entered through that same window and transformed the spray into delicate snowflakes that vanished even before you could touch them; inconspicuous magic in the micro details when one season gives way to another.

It was toward the end of the trip when I took this photo of my traveling companions on the windowsill. Absent from the stack, but verily lodged in my consciousness, are Euripedes’ Medea and Percival Everett’s For Her Dark Skin.

I went to Georgia accompanied by seven books, and after jaunts to Tbilisi’s charming bookshops, a modest number of three Georgian masterpieces were read on the train and during long drives, then added to the pile. 

The eclectic curation is an education in itself as it includes a Greek tragedy, a rather feminist and modern retelling of the tragedy, a wonderful and informative chronicle of Georgia’s unique wine culture, journalistic reports and stories from the early years of post-Soviet Georgia, the greatest love story of the Caucasus, literary criticism, a portrait of young Stalin that is also a portrait of a nation, a painful recollection of the Georgian-Abkhazian armed conflict in the 90s, epic poetry, and Tolstoyan short stories.

Once again, people wondered whether I had gone to another destination just to read. But I know they’re only kidding. 

For who isn’t aware that reading and traveling are not separate experiences? They are halves of a whole that lend clarity and depth to each other.

In our travels, what we notice, perceive, and experience — and what we contribute to meaningful interactions, or how we overflow — largely depend on what is already inside us. “Nothing flows out of a jar except that already inside it,” writes the preeminent Georgian author, Shota Rustaveli in The Knight in the Panther’s Skin.

In life, reading and traveling are merely expressions of how one chooses to take their fill.

Ha-Joon Chang: Edible Economics

Because ’tis the season… to be eating! Edible Economics was a suitable appetizer for this reader who did not want to bite off more than she could chew on a seemingly daunting topic. And because ’tis also the season when most of us have so much on our plates — figuratively and literally — these bite-size treats from Ha-Joon Chang whet the appetite but keep it from being too overwhelmed. The book’s intent is simple: To make the topic more palatable so the reader may “eat” economics better in the future.

As soon as I closed this book, I could already imagine those who would criticize this for not providing enough solutions, or for not being meaty enough. Perhaps it is, for those who are seasoned in the field. But I don’t think it was written for them. This is definitely not a textbook. (Thank heavens!) It is a starter from which I learned a lot.

While we feed our souls with the company of those we love, and feed our bellies with the season’s treats, it’s never a bad idea to feed the mind with books, and with something one knows little about but which has massive consequences on our lives and the world we live in. So… bon appetite and happy holidays!

Laura Esquivel: Like Water for Chocolate

A quick and enjoyable re-reading of my initiation to the flavors of Latin American magic realism — in anticipation of Salma Hayek’s production of the upcoming series adaptation.

Recommended by my best friend in our early teens, this is the book that led to highschool years enlivened and colored by the novels of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz. This is also the book that made the kitchen a more magical place for me. 

Reading this with older eyes shows me how much I’ve grown, how much I’ve outgrown, and also how much I did not understand back then: It seems to be oozing with more sensuality now. The romantic passages are no longer what strike me the most. When John Brown encourages Tita to express herself through writing and thereby carving her path to freedom, I realize that nothing Pedro ever did could top that and I was rooting for the wrong man all along. Now I’m no longer concerned about whether the adaptation is faithful to the love story, I’m more concerned about how faithful it is to the kitchen magic.

“My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves… Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.”

Eric Ambler: The Mask of Dimitrios

What makes me buy a book for its cover design? My favorite city’s unparalleled skyline!

That is why I read Eric Ambler even though thrillers and spy novels are not my usual genre of choice… especially those written circa 1939.

It was the lure of Istanbul that pulled me into the orbit of Charles Latimer, a detective novelist vacationing in Turkey in the 1930s. There he meets a Turkish colonel who broaches the subject of Dimitrios, a murdered criminal whose body was found floating in the Bosphorus. Intrigued by the dead man’s notoriety, Latimer does his own investigating. What he uncovers is a web of international intrigue that leads him to Smyrna, Athens, Sofia, Geneva, and finally, Paris.

But I began to suspect that this book was not a regular thriller when Charles Latimer inspected the body of Dimitrios in the morgue and saw him, “Not as a corpse in a mortuary, but as a man, not as an isolate, a phenomenon, but as a unit in a disintegrating social system.” It is also worthy of note how Dimitrios, who had become the epitome of evil in Latimer’s mind, turned out to be, “A picture of distinguished respectability,” when he was alive.

“But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town. The logic of Michelangelo’s David, Beethoven’s quartets and Einstein’s physics had been replaced by that of the Stock Exchange Year Book and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”

The Mask of Dimitrios does not read like a thriller. It is unlike those formulaic bestsellers that cater to superficial and momentary sensations. Those who seek such will be disappointed. It is rather a perceptive insight into that rapidly splintering era sandwiched between two World Wars.

What makes it terrifying is the way he seemed to be describing the world today.

Alina Bronsky: Baba Dunja’s Last Love

“Boris tells me what he’s seen on television. Lots of politics in the Ukraine, in Russia, and in America. I don’t pay too close attention. Politics are important, of course, but at the end of the day, if you want to eat mashed potatoes it’s up to you to put manure on the potato plants. The important thing is that there’s no war.”

Alina Bronksy’s wit has been on my radar for quite some time but it took one Sunday that badly begged for light reading to make me read her.

Having parents who are advancing in years, I find myself increasingly drawn to elderly protagonists. And so it was a joy to discover Baba Dunja. Her spunk, her kindness, her practicality, and her comic observations make her one of the most endearing characters one will encounter in books. 

But don’t think it’s all light-hearted fun. Alina Bronsky, being a Russian-born German writer, seems to have married dark Russian humor with good old Teutonic political satire.

Even though the government appears to be apathetic about this town near Chernobyl, and despite warnings of radiation levels, Baba Dunja and her cast of amusing friends and neighbors are undeterred by the discrimination against its residents and consider Tschernowo home. And I think that’s what this book is all about — the idea and process of home that we choose and make for ourselves, no matter what.

Hernan Diaz: Trust

“There was no greater violence than the one done to meaning.”

Succession, sans caricatures of misbehaving heirs like Shiv, Kendall, Roman, and Connor. But Logan Roy who has bent reality around his fortune? Logan Roy, the giant, who looks at people as economic units and pygmies that form a market? I see him here, along with the tragedies that come with capitalism. 

Trust begins with a novella called Bonds. That the two words are significant in the realm of both relationships and finance makes for a clever opening to a story about marital and familial bonds and the American economy in the early 20th century.

This is a nesting doll in book form, with each section revealing a different narrator, and consequently, a different version of the previous story. Within this brilliant play on literary structure, Hernan Diaz leads us to question the narratives we bank on and who controls them.

What I would like to highlight, however, is the often overlooked but none-too-subtle criticism of how women have been usually portrayed in literature and of their consignment to the peripheries of history; and while it has been said that this is about the equivalence of money and power and how the powerful can easily manipulate narratives, I choose to see this as a double-edged sword that shows how the powerful can easily be threatened by the sheer force of a story. 

And this book? Powerful. Truly deserving of the Pulitzer. 

William Dalrymple: The Age of Kali

In Hindu cosmology, world time is divided into four great epochs called the Yuga Cycle: Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and the Kali Yuga. As the cycle progresses through the four stages, the length of each yuga decreases, but social and moral decay multiplies. We are believed to be in the Kali Yuga, the age of conflict, sin, and disintegration.

This sets the tone for the book, so that a few pages in, I felt relieved that I did not read this before, or during, my trip to India. 

“This book covers so many sensitive areas that it is bound to raise a few cries of protest and dissent, particularly from Indians understandably touchy about criticism from abroad; but it is a work of love. Its subject is an area of the world I revere like no other, and in which I have chosen to spend most of my time since I was free to make that choice,” writes Dalrymple in the introduction. 

But as I read on, I began to regret not reading this before, or during, my trip to India! Unlike the three other Dalrymple books in the Vintage Departures edition, this is less travelogue than a compilation of articles and essays about the Indian subcontinent, from north to south and east to west, which are more political in nature.

Published in 1998, it includes interviews with Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan, and figures from opposing sides of caste wars and political parties. It is, therefore, a crash course on a part of the world that, despite its significant advances, is still reeling from the British Raj, the Partition, and religious discrimination. As an outsider and common reader, I have yet to encounter a more readable and insightful work that encapsulates caste and gender prejudice, corruption in government, the justice system and the economic obstacles of the subcontinent in a single book. 

Dalrymple rarely waxes poetic here, but this book stamps his authority in the field of journalism. As I read this amidst horrifying world events and the filing of certificates of candidacies by movie stars, social media influencers, and crooks here in the Philippines, I can easily believe that we are, indeed, in the Age of Kali.