Malaga

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Malaga (Spain)

Normally, before going on a vacation, I spend some time on The Net and do a lot of research about the region we are planning to visit.

However, our Andalucía vacation was an exception, because my daughter had decided that we should spend some time with her family at a home-stay at Malaga.

We were, of course, very willing. Who wouldn’t like to spend time with their grand-daughter, daughter and son-in-law?

We also decided to visit Brazil as a side-trip from Malaga and as this was an afterthought, we had to juggle our flights and travel-plans quite a bit. This kept me rather too busy because now the focus had shifted from Spain to Brazil.

Crazy?

Yes, everybody called us that and we agreed but we DID finish this crazy itinerary ultimately.

The only consequence was that I had not done any research whatsoever about Andalucía. We totally depended upon our son-in-law and daughter for all the information.

This was both good and bad, according to the context. It was good in the sense that everything that we saw was a surprise and a delight because we did not know what to expect. Had I done my usual research, the element of surprise and the euphoria of discovery would have been lost. It would have been just a confirmation of facts that I had gleaned from my reading.

It was bad in the sense that it put unnecessary burden on my daughter because she had to answer all our ignorant questions.

Sometimes, ignorance is indeed bliss. Our Malaga home-stay was very blissful for us, especially because of our charming one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter.

The home we had rented was within a stone’s throw of the Malaga Beach. We ourselves were not particularly enamored of the beach. I mean it was clean, safe, dotted with bikini-clad beauties and palm-fringed but the sand was black.

Very few beaches along Costa Del Sol, of which Malaga is a part, have white sand. Mostly the whole of Costa Del Sol has black-sand beaches.

However, it was exhilarating to watch the enthusiasm of our grand-daughter as every morning, she gathered her colorful plastic toys, pail, spade, rake and stood near the door leading out, bleating ‘Beach, Beach’ in a plaintive manner and looking at us beseechingly. It was her way of demanding (I should rather say ‘commanding’) that we should take her to the beach.

On alternate days, we made sight-seeing trips to towns within a radius of 150 kms. The towns famed for their Moorish heritage buildings – Cordoba and Granada, the town famous for its deep ravine and the bridge over it—Ronda as well as the famous Rock of Gibraltar; all these are within driving distance of Malaga.

Malaga too has the usual Moorish forts ‘Al-Kazaba’ (‘Z’ is prounced as ‘S’ and so I renamed it “Kasba Peth”) and ‘Al-Kazar’, the palace on the hill Gibralfaro.

The Roman Theater that is located just below Al Kazaba and which was discovered as late as in 1951, reminds us that Malaga has a long history. It was populated by Phoenicians, Romans and perhaps Vandals (The name Andalucia may have come down from Valdalucia, though this theory is disputed.) before Moors and by Christians after the ‘Re-conquest’ to date.

They all have left their mark on the city. The Phoenician salt-pans for preserving the fish have been excavated and they are located below the ‘Picasso Museum’. The Roman Theater is being restored to its former glory and The Moorish imprint can be seen in Al- Kazaba and Alcazar on the Gibralfaro. The so-called ‘One-Armed’ cathedral now stands on Visigothic foundations.

From our beach-house, we made two trips to the historic city-center of Malaga. In the first trip we visited the Roman Theater, the ‘one-armed’ Cathedral, Al-Kazaba and ‘The Picasso Museum’, which the city of Malaga hosts proudly because Pablo Picasso was born here.

I had heard of ‘one-armed bandit’ but not about a ‘one-armed cathedral. It is one-armed because the builders of the cathedral simply ran out of funds. (This seems to be a standard practice in building profession. You have to just look at the unfinished/half-finished buildings in Mumbai, which still get ‘occupation certificate’, get occupied by the tenants and ultimately fall down.)

However, the cathedral is still majestic. Especially noteworthy is the huge pipes of the church-organ.
Fortunately, all these monuments were either spared or have been restored after the fierce ‘Spanish Civil War’.
In my mind, ‘The Spanish Civil War’ is a vast confusion even after reading about it. So are WW1 and WW2.

I mean, I like to read about wars. In this, I am quite normal, I believe, since everyone agrees that ‘Yuddhasya Katha Ramya’; (War-stories are interesting.) but I like my wars to be straightforward, the protagonists identifiably black and white. Hence I am very fond of the great Epics – Ramayan, Mahabharat, Iliad and Odyssey, where I can recognize Heroes and Villains plainly.

I even like Westerns.

However, I am still unable to make out who were the heroes and who were the villains in the Spanish Civil War as well as WW1 and WW2.

Picasso just added to the confusion in my mind when I tried to make head or tail of his picture ‘Guernica’, which is supposed to depict the atrocities of the war. (Both literally and figuratively) I mean, when you see ‘Guernica’ you can see head of a horse and either tail of a cow or a human arms along with an assortment of other unidentifiable objects.

“Arts”, whether performing Arts or Paintings, are supposed to evoke different emotions in a viewer.

In Sanskrit, the nine basic ‘Rasa’s or ‘Emotions’ are Shringara (Love, Sensualism, Eroticism), Hasya (Humor, Laughter), Adbhuta (Mystery), Shanta (Peace), Roudra (Anger), Veera (Courage, Militancy) Karuna (Compassion, Sympathy, Pity), Bhayanaka (Fear), Vibhatsa (Disgust). Every Artistic endeavor is aimed at making the audience experience these emotions (or combinations thereof) vicariously.

Picasso’s paintings meet this condition fully.

I DID experience all these emotions while viewing his paintings. I mean his paintings of nude women sometimes made me laugh, sometimes I felt seething anger and sometimes pity for the nudes. His landscapes totally mystified me. Some of his portraits were quite fearsome and some, quite simply disgusting.

I have never known such peace and calm as when we left the museum.

I sincerely hope that the paintings evoked in me exactly the same emotions that they were meant to evoke, by the great painter.

If that is not the case, then something must be terribly wrong with me.

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