Kuru (Part 2)

The dream I had was very real. I remember the texture of the stone slabs, concrete with large jagged bits of stone and big grains of sand in it. I remember the smell of the sewers, the hissing of the drains; and as I walked the concrete paths between round-pillared façades, I smelled Chinese herbs and Indian spices, the smell of fat pork sausages and curing roast pork. I saw the cracks in the cement-coated floors, the grimy paint and grey whitewash; I saw the men in white singlets with holes in them, and khaki shorts.

When you have a dream like this, it is very real. It makes you think about labyrinthine ways that lead you back to where you were before, of the hollowing-out of small shops, the cramped quarters and the high houses which are falling apart. You think of what the mission used to be and what it has become. And you know that without the clean air, the fresh wind, it will all fall apart.

It is almost like extreme fear or like enlightenment; you wake up laughing and you wonder if you are crying and whether it matters or not. And you wonder if, with all those years left behind, washed away, washed up on another beach too far from home, you are not already too old to do anything about it.

Perhaps, nobody wants to do anything about it. Some people just want to move on, out of their lost neighbourhoods. They won't look back until somebody else has levelled the shameful old places and built new glass and steel and stone to replace them. It may have been home; then it became just a place, not even a memory. This is what progress is all about.