The Tao of Travel

One may doubtless be very happy in Venice without reading at all—without criticizing or analyzing or thinking a strenuous thought. It is a city in which, I suspect, there is very little strenuous thinking, and yet it is a city in which there must be almost as much happiness as misery. The misery of Venice stands there for all the world to see; it is part of the spectacle—a thoroughgoing devotee of local colour might consistently say it is part of the pleasure. The Venetian people have little to call their own—little more than the bare privilege of leading their lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this meager train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into attitudes and harmonies; they assist at an eternal

conversazione.

It is not easy to say that one would have them other than they are, and it certainly would make an immense difference should they be better fed. The number of persons in Venice who evidently never have enough to eat is painfully large; but it would be more painful if we did not equally perceive that the rich Venetian temperament may bloom upon a dog's allowance. Nature has been kind to it, and sunshine and leisure and conversation and beautiful views form the greater part of its sustenance. It takes a great deal to make a successful American, but to make a happy Venetian takes only a handful of quick sensibility. The Italian people have at once the good and the evil fortune to be conscious of few wants; so that if the civilization of a society is measured by the number of its needs, as seems to be the common opinion to-day, it is to be feared that the children of the lagoon would make but a poor figure in a set of comparative tables. Not their misery, doubtless, but the way they elude their misery, is what pleases the sentimental tourist, who is gratified by the sight of a beautiful race that lives by the aid of its imagination. The way to enjoy Venice is to follow the example of these people and make the most of simple pleasures. Almost all the pleasures of the place are simple; this may be maintained even under the imputation of ingenious paradox. There is no simpler pleasure than looking at a fine Titian, unless it be looking at a fine Tintoretto or strolling into St. Mark's,—abominable the way one falls into the habit,—and resting one's light-wearied eyes upon the windowless gloom; or than floating in a gondola or than hanging over a balcony or than taking one's coffee at Florian's. It is of such superficial pastimes that a Venetian day is composed, and the pleasure of the matter is in the emotions to which they minister. These are fortunately of the finest—otherwise Venice would be insufferably dull. Reading Ruskin is good; reading the old records is perhaps better; but the best thing of all is simply staying on. The only way to care for Venice as she deserves it is to give her a chance to touch you often—to linger and remain and return.

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

by Nirad C. Chaudhuri

AT THE AGE of fifty, a scriptwriter for All-India Radio, not having published any book, Chaudhuri was possessed by a revelation. "It came in this manner," he wrote. "As I lay awake in the night of May 4–5, 1947, an idea suddenly flashed into my mind. Why, instead of merely regretting the work of history you cannot write, I asked myself, do you not write the history you have passed through and seen enacted before your eyes?" That enlightenment came three months before India's independence. He set about immediately, struggled with some chapters, then hit his stride; and the result is a masterpiece, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951)—a man in a particular place and time.

No better book has been written about India. That Chaudhuri was from the town of Kishorganj, in East Bengal, makes it all the more valuable. He was born in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, and died in 1999, in England—a long life in which he was an eyewitness to the most dramatic changes in India. But the book is filled with the details of life—food, caste, religion (a shocking description of animal sacrifice at a Kali temple), life in the provinces and in the cities: Chaudhuri lived in both Calcutta and Delhi. Far from being a serene book, it is argumentative, critical, sometimes denunciatory, as Chaudhuri was in his subsequent books. But he was that rare bird, a traveler in his own country, with a feel for the people and the land and the seasons. Then, as now, East Bengal was famous for its rain and its floods.