Portrait

i just realized i forgot to blog about the panorama. and since i have always been too impatient to maintain a travel journal with any of my travels, i’m hoping that blogging it will turn out to be an equivalent. i really regret not keeping an account of my trip to india about 2 years ago. that was really quite fantastic.

anyway, yesterday before we went to the beach, quite at the risk of boring saurab half to death, i convinced him to take me to the william mesdag museum. mesdag lived from late 18’s to the early 19’s, and was famous was having painted, with utter devotion, many scenes of the beach. dan haag is one of the few such popular beach cities. it seems people travel from all over the country to come to beaches here during the summer. now rest assured, its nothing like any of the beaches at home. but its a fully commercialized beach well built for lots and lots of sun worshipping tourists and visitors. it doesnt have any shade or any green, but the strip of beach is quite wide and its just pakced to its capacity with white people getting pink. its out of the movies. anyway, will mesdag drew this very same beach a little over a 100 years ago, and the contrast between the scenes depicted in his painting and what i witnessed yesterday, is what’s interesting. it has changed so drastically. im mesdag’s time, the beach used to be a place for fishing and the fishing communities. its not anymore, and hasn’t been for decades.

the panorama is just the biggest painting from all his paintings, and the central attraction of the museum. you walk up these narrow, steep steps and step into a kind of a really large dome, and find yourself surrounded by, well, the beach. mesdag, his wife amd 14 of his students painted a life size, humongous drawing of the beach on a busy day, and this screen on which it was painted, is streched around the walls of this dome. you stand in the middle, literally surrounded by the beach as it was more than a century ago. the soundtracks of the waves and birds also add largely to the effect. its quite overwhelming really. i imagine it must have been a near impossible task he took on. but its simply amazing. its so massive, and so intricately painted. the details are all in place, there are people, and fisherman, and ships and boats, the sand glistens, the sky is flawless and blue, dotted by a few fluffy clouds, there are sea gulls soaring high above you. its fabulous.

i just wanted to record that.

i promised someone that i wouldnt drink till i get to london. what kind of absurd deal is that? god knows why i complied. because i bet he isn’t even attempting to keep to his part of the deal.

i really wish that there was someone with me right now. any of my friends. i’d give nearly anything to have one or more of them with me. its lovely and exciting to be almost alone, but it would be more perfect than i can say to have someone that reminds me a little of home. i dont miss anyone too much, i’m actually having too much fun to miss people, but i suppose wishing they were here constitutes to some extent that i do miss them…?

also, i miss the food.