The Travel Essay

Java is unusual. It is green; it is full of trees, fields and villages. The cities have an old world charm. There is a slow pace at which life unfolds. This book of photographs tries to capture these timeless features.

In India the monsoon makes landfall in Kerala, first. It then travels across the subcontinent and brings water to a thirsting land. There is a precision as to when it will arrive. Meteorologists play god in announcing its arrival with a confidence seldom seen in the other sciences.

There is a difference in the air. It is fresh, with the faint smell of a burning field. The harvest is just over and there are fields, brown in places, burnt black in others. In amongst the brown there are fields of green speckled with little yellow flowers. Then there are the spinach, potato, cauliflower and cane fields, as far as the eye can see. There is a lush fertility to this land. This, is the Punjab.

It may seem otherwise but Calcutta (or Kolkata as it is now known) and Dhaka (or Dacca as it was once known) are really cities that belong to each other. During the Raj Calcutta became the pre-eminent centre with commerce and administration at its heart. Dhaka became a provincial backwater for the British administrators.

For as long as I can remember, it was known as Madras. It is now known as Chennai after Indian chauvinism has reared its ugly head. But no matter. A rose by another name will smell just as sweet. So it is with Madras.

I came to know of Manado when I was a schoolboy. It was from the name of a famous Indonesian actress, Maria Manado. She was a beauty in her time, having appeared in numerous Malay movies. So it was that we came to associate Manado with paradise: a place where there were beautiful women.

The flight from Singapore left at an early hour. It was full. Almost all the passengers were Chinese Indonesians returning from their shopping and medical trips. The journey was short: within an hour we were already landing in Palembang.

When I first went to Penang, I was twelve years old. The images in my mind are fleeting, at best. It was a very hot August when we, the family, arrived on the island. I can remember taking the ferry from Butterworth and watching the waves as the vessel cut across the Straits.

he land is dry and the view is one of a brownish-white expanse as far as the eye can see. The sands are white and, in places, red. The far distances appear as wavy images through the hot air rising from the desert. Off on the horizon are specks of rocky outcrops, but otherwise it is as if the sea would come back to reclaim this land.