The Ant Blog

Episode 4:  Deleted Pasts, Tim Howard Saves and Christ the Savior: History Lessons in Salvador Watching the Belgium vs USA match in Salvador was a slightly awkward experience. More than two thirds of the stadium was there to cheer for a Soccer team, while everybody else was watching a football match. It was a foregone conclusion that the “Football” team or Équipe de football, to be precise, would beat the “Soccer” one. But for a short while it seemed that there was nothing that Tim Howard, the brave American goalkeeper, could not save. (as illustrated in the adjoining image) Exhilaration at watching your last world cup football match in Brasil paired with a strange sense of unease that neither team playing deserves a place beyond the round, for various reasons. In retrospect that could sum up the entire Salvador experience. Something exhilaratingly beautiful and incredibly exotic, that you  wouldn't  trade for anything else, paired with that itch in the g...

Episode 3:  Montezuma and Mexican Waves in beach-side Fortaleza Fortaleza is way up north of Brasil and is a good three hour flight from Sao Paulo . And of course, the next stop in our ‘ as insightful as an ant’s view of an elephant’s posterior ’ whirlwind tour of Brazil is this little beach town turned into a fast evolving economic hub. The economy of Fortaleza is fueled in large parts by tourism, given its long winding pristine beaches; but much to local disapproval, it has ended up attracting all the other add-ons of the beach bum economy (i.e. think Pattaya ). Benny, a Mexican born American citizen is in the city to study Portuguese as part of an exchange program and his dissertation for the next six months is on  the effort to clean up the tourist trade in Fortaleza. We are staying in a eighty year old Portuguese house tucked away in a quiet part of the town, with a sweet sixty five year old- Ana, her two daughters, six dogs and several Portuguese learn...

Episode 2: A shot of Chile: Futbol at the Vila El Guaton is a cute, unassuming bar tucked away in a little corner of the Vila Madalena - SamPa’s (i.e. Sao Paulo’s) most famous neighborhood. Vila Madalena is a labyrinth of winding roads that seem to slope up and down at will and is peppered with enough bars and restaurants to feed and thrill the entire population of any small European nation of your choice. If that’s not thrilling enough, take a look around you and you will notice, unless you are blind or have a terrible hang-over, that the walls are full of mind blowing graffiti and sublime street art. Bernardo tells us with no note of exaggeration that to many it is like a temple. “You go to Vila when you are down and something spiritual happens.” Grafitti at Vila Madalena So we walk to Vila from Bernardo’s place and pass two magnificent churches and even a Necropolis to boot, in search of spiritual tranquillity before the all-important Brazil-Chile match. We are...

Episode 1:   Cats, dogs and the amazing Play-man Bunny: A                            party in Sao Paulo It’s not easy traveling from India to Brazil. One could argue that this is an exaggeration, considering that all that one does is pass a sleepy immigration officer, browse through the liquor section in the duty free to plan the arrival bootlegging, board a flight, watch the most boring movie on the in-flight menu to put you to sleep, eat bland food, drink bad wine, transit through a sterile airport somewhere and do the same thing all over again. That the aforementioned One can deceive oneself with great dexterity, is the conclusion. Let me put this succinctly- you leave home at  2 am , board a flight at  4:30 am , fly for approximately 20 hours and land at your destination at  3 pm . i.e. you did all the above mentioned rubbish twice over for 20 long hours and realize that some 7 hour...