Change

From now on will be posting only on the following blog

www.prashantbhatt.blog.co.uk

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Kind regards and best wishes

Prashant Bhatt

Commonwealth cemetery-Tripoli

 

There is no reason why cemeteries should be places of gloom.”

 

Sir Frederic Kenyon,

 How the Cemeteries Abroad Will Be Designed, 1918.

                        For further insights…    www.cwgc.org

The principles on which the founding members started this monumental work are being followed with great diligence

And feeling Life grow beyond our physical space realities, I remembered the final words of the movie “Saaransh”.(Summary) where a father watches flowers grow at the place where his son’s ashes are ..

His life had an end, my life will end.

But life itself has no end

 

 

 

 

Misnomers and Identities

 

The Cemetery at Shara Mansouri, Tripoli

 

We think about various identities and try to find our roots.

 

Misnomers and Identities

 

The answer to the query that is this truly an Italian cemetery is

that it is not. The name, as it is popularly known by the locals

is a misnomer.

 

I have found tombs of many different nationalities here ranging

from Chinese, Canadians, British to persons from New Zealand,

South Africa  and the Indian Subcontinent.

 

The national identity is a misnomer, a concept which will get

outdated over a period of time.

 

Mediterranean identity.

 

In my many years in Tripoli and roaming around in the Mediterranean

region I have come across what may be called a Mediterranean identity.

 

Many of the people who have it may not even be conscious of it.

 

People from the Indian subcontinent who have made this their home, having

come here for work, but stayed on and merged into this beautiful place.

 

Or East European –former Stalinist Bloc workers, escaping from the

atrocities and now business dealings of the so-called communists (who were

actually just bureaucrat exploiters)

 

Then there are Maltese-who debate and carve a distinct Mediterranean identity

merging and yet separate from Europe

 

Salvador and Salem.

 

Writing these lines, I recall one of my friends..who died recently.

 

The son of an Italian mother and Libyan father, he lived in Italy where he

was known as Salvador.

 

In Tripoli he was known as Salem. His children grew in Tripoli.

 

He died in Italy but his body lies in Tripoli, as his last wish was to be buried here

 

Which country did he belong to?

 

Was he Salvador or Salem?…A little of both..a multicultural multilayered

extremely talented person, an artist, excellent cook, comfortable in several

languages..and a very compassionate human being.

 

Whatever he was, maybe if you could sum him up in one word..

 

He was from the Mediterranean.