It was not until 1950 that India finally became the Republic of India. Shortly after, India opened a brand new embassy in Buenos Aires and my journalist father moonlighted as a translator (English to Spanish and Spanish to English) at the Embassy.

I may not remember all that well but it was about then that my mother would sport the Indian mirror bag when she went to parties. It was her favourite purse. Perhaps my father gave it to her as such a purse would be unavailable in Argentina.

But India as a concept and country was exotically alien to the then 8 year old me. My grandmother often told me the story on how on a ship from Manila (to the eventual destination of Buenos Aires) in 1938 they purchased a couple of items when the ship docked in Durban, South Africa. The bought them from a man who was selling them out of a small boat. Since that day those two items were called Abue’s (Abuelita) camphor babies. They have been everywhere and are now in our Kitsilano home.

One of the pieces of furniture is a lovely Chinese camphor chest. The other is an octagonal, foldable and highly elaborate end table. It was only yesterday that I looked it all up in Google and found out that the table is an Anglo/Indian rose wood table.

India has been in my life all along!

During the short (one exposure) session in the Cultch dressing room Mehta told me that her mother had one just like it.

I am sure that somewhere both our mothers are smiling at the tidy symmetry.

Honour - The Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan

I visited my friend Licenciado Felipe Ferrer Junco in the early  90s to write an article about him for Vancouver Magazine. At the time Ferrer was the Federal Police Chief in Acapulco.

From the beginning he told me, “I am going to show you everything I do here. But you must remember to be careful in what you write as it could cost me my job,”

But the most shocking but at the same time rewarding experience (besides being allowed to shoot off a few rounds on an AK-47) was Ferrer’s very modern interpretation on how women were to be treated.

A lovely young woman in tears was shown into his office. She told Ferrer that she had been raped by a young man who had promised to marry her but now had reneged on his vow and was marrying someone else that coming Saturday. Ferrer asked her to tell her in what church the ceremony was going to be held.

Using some rather nice Mexican epithets I will water down he said, “If that f…..SOB thinks he can get away with this in the sanctuary of a church he is mistaken!”

A few days later (not quite Saturday) Ferrer took me on a tour of the darker side of Acapulco. Mexicans have a neat word for red light district. They call it a “Zona de Tolerancia”.He stopped his car at the infamous Acapulco house of ill-repute called La Huerta and took me inside. Some of the women inside who had loads of makeup reminded me of the famous photograph of a pair of Tijuana prostitutes taken by Cartier- Bresson. Since Ferrer was known in the house by his position of authority we were offered rum cokes.

Cartier-Bresson

As we left, not far from La Huerta I spotted our jilted woman. I pointed her out and told Felipe, “She is a common whore. And you plan to nab that guy?”

Felipe stopped the car and very seriously (and again using language I cannot place here) said, “Do you think that just because she is a whore that she is not a woman with rights. That man promised to marry her. I am going to put him in jail.”

The Acapulco groom

This he did. Later Ferrer took me to the local clink and I was able to photograph the young man behind bars who was wearing a rather nice black suit.

The above lesson I learned from my friend the police chief has served me well. Not too long ago I photographed some exotic dancers dressed as London Bobbies. The photograph (the only time I ever used a 4x5 camera) was used to decorate the then rather famous strip joint called the Cecil Hotel.

The location for the session was an old warehouse in East Vancouver that reeked of rotting onions but that had a white painted brick wall that was one of the necessary features of our photograph. I had brought a large sheet and draped it over a rope which became the area the women could change into the uniforms. My assistant told me, “Why do they need a changing area? They are strippers and they are used to taking their clothes off.”

Thinking of Felipe I immediately answered, “They are women and we have the  obligation to respect them."

The show Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan which opens tonight at the Vancity Culture Lab (an intimate theatre for such a delicate subject matter) at 8pm deals with many of the subjects I raised above. The play is written and performed by Dipti Mehta and directed by Mark Cimigliaro.

I was able to attend a dress rehearsal yesterday Thursday and I can tell you that this is a play that reveals the travails of young women in Mumbai (and of course in many other parts of the world) who are pressed into prostitution by economic, by their parents or simply because they have the ambition of someday being able to go to New York.

Mehta not only plays the young girl in question but her mother and other nefarious creatures of Falkland Lane.

Somehow the brilliant colours of the set almost compensate for the tragic story revealed in 65 minutes.

This play is part of the ongoing Diwali in BC project that has Encounter (with lovely Indian dancing but again with a serious subject) simultaneously showing at the Cultch’s York Theatre.

In my Buenos Aires youth Doctor Imperiale was our family doctor. I had many problems with queasy stomachs. He would come and prescribe apple sauce, queso fresco and soda water. I almost do not want to even think of the horrible unbuttered melba toast that was part of the terrible diet.

Here in Vancouver we had Doctor Eliot Mintz who once hypnotized our eldest daughter then around 11 who had numerous warts on her knees and legs. She told Ale to rub each wart with a penny and to then dig it into the ground in our home garden. The warts were gone in a fortnight. Doctor Mintz died so we had to find another doctor.

We now have Colin Horricks, only the second family doctor we have had since we arrived in Vancouver in 1975. He is a warm (always smiles) gentleman whose practice is on 16^th and Granville.

I recently went to him for what I call a service check. In Argentina we call brand new cars “cero kilómetro”. Unfortunately I know why most new cars in Vancouver do not have a zero in their odometer. Some years ago while working for Canadian Pacific Limited I had to photograph the unloading from ships at our ports brand new Japanese cars. These came down from the ship at prodigious speed by what anywhere else you would have deemed the drivers to be of the reckless kind.

I picked up Lauren at the end of her Arts Umbrella Dance class today. She is 15. She has a sister 20, a father Bruce and her mother Hilary. Today she did not object to my question ("Who is the most efficient member of the Stewarts?") and immediately raised her hand accepting my opinion that she is the most efficient (perhaps the only one) of her family.

I watched Casi-Casi go up our stairs. He does it gingerly. I believe that like his two masters, Rosemary and yours truly, he must suffer from arthritis. Casi-Casi is 12 years old.

The picture you see here I took around October 14, 2011. Looking at it made me think on how we go back and forth interacting (as in passing by or passing through) with people (and animals) and never give it a thought. Would either of them know or remember this? 

I may have been 7 or 8 and my mother organized my birthday party on an August 31^st in our Melián 2770. People came, a piñata was broken, a tail was put on a donkey and a cake was eaten (I passed on that as I have always disliked birthday cakes, even others’). And yet of one of those parties there is an image that is seared in my memory.

Our house had a very long but narrow garden. A tiled path was on one side from the gate at the street to where it went on to form an L when It hit the outside wall of our bathroom which was next to our kitchen.

I remember seeing this beautiful young woman greet me at that bend. She was Inesita O’Reilly my first cousin and godmother. She was I know now 19 years older than I was. We had met 19 years before (of this meeting I have no recollection!) when she was present at my baptism.

Of the second meeting I remember nothing except for that L-shaped incident.

For many years after, beginning around 1965, Inesita was one of my most loved woman in my life. She died this year.

Thinking about it has made me attempt to recollect all those inateractions between us that may have included a kiss, a hug, a chat, a laugh or sharing a pizza on Avenida Cabildo.

I have no idea if Casi-Casi is able to delve into this process of transfer. I think that in this picture the cat was at his young peak while Lauren was a child about to grow up.

Today as we were eating our breaded chicken breasts Lauren felt something at her feet. She said, “Well, hello Casi. How are you?”