Looking at The World With New Eyes

Travel gives me new eyes. I notice things I would miss in Thane where I stay. ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’ they say, but it surely breeds blindness to change. I present to you my interesting discoveries.  

I go for my morning walk on the road which leads from Kingston Hospital to Wimbledon.

This tree caught my attention; it was a dead tree. It had turned completely black. And it was standing next to the stump of a big tree which was withering away. I clicked a photograph of the dead tree and the stump.

And a few days later the dead tree was also cut, leaving two stumps of trees standing next to each other. It makes a tragic scene if you are a tree lover. I have taken this photograph from the other side to highlight the recently cut tree. The sign ‘End’ adds meaning to this photograph.

Have you ever seen a parking lot for children’s scooters? Boys and Girls, most of them 3 to 5 years old, go to the school on their scooters and they park them here. ‘A place for everything and everything in place’ as the Japanese say. All wear helmets while on their scooters!

I go to Westfield Mall for my shopping but that is not my main purpose. I like to click photographs in the mall which is beautifully designed. Two levels of the mall and unusual design of the roof make it unique.

While in London I visit Tate Modern, and I have often written about it. I got down at London Blackfriars (you may refer to my earlier blog post which will tell you why it is called ‘blackfriars’). You walk through a café and arrive at the path that leads you to Tate. I looked back as I came out on that street (with my new eyes!) and I realised that I could be right under the bridge. I walked back. And clicked this photograph framing it under the bridge. You can identify the familiar buildings.

There is always a singer in front of Tate. I must have clicked half a dozen photos of them. This will go as a good street photograph. The lady was keenly listening to the singer while occasionally speaking to the child in the pram. Artists do well when they face appreciative audience.

And finally, this takes the cake! I went to Euston and noticed this sculpture and clicked several photographs. Have you noticed the cat? Let me tell you about the man and his cat. I am copying what I read on this website about it.

‘It’s of Captain Matthew Flinders, the British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, and also the man generally considered to be the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of the continent. He’s famous in Australia, but until recently, fairly little known in the UK.

He commanded HMS Investigator on a survey expedition to study the coastline of Australia and was to become the first ship to circumnavigate the continent.

The ship was deemed unseaworthy after it limped into Sydney, and he sought to return to the UK on another ship. Unfortunately for him, that ship stopped off at French-controlled Isle de France (now known as Mauritius), and as Britain was at war with France at the time, he was imprisoned, and not released until 1810.

He returned to the UK, where he worked on his magnum opus from the voyage, but it was published just one day before he died in 1814, aged just 40. He was buried in a graveyard in Camden, but over the years, the location of his grave was lost.

And in the UK at least, his legacy pretty much vanished, to be someone spoken of by historians and people familiar with Australia’s early European history, but not much else. To mark the centenary of his death in 2014 though, a sculpture was commissioned.

His cat, Trim, is by his side which we’re told adds a slightly surreal and playful dimension to the composition.

They put the sculpture inside Euston station close to where he was thought to be buried, in part due to the urban myth that Capt. Flinders was buried under platform 15.

Around the plinth, the text reads: In commemoration of CAPTAIN MATTHEW FLINDERS RN 1774-1814 who named Australia and charted its unknown coast’ with the help of Bungaree and the crew of HM Sloop Investigator’ (Unquote)

So much is known about ‘Trim, the cat’ that there is a Wiki page for this cat! And many details of the cat which died in 1804 are available and preserved! Kudos to the British and their penchant for keeping record of everything!

Is there any other cat for which a Wiki page is made except of course the Schrödinger’s cat ?

Trim the Cat fell overboard the ship but surprisingly swam back, endearing itself to the crew! Schrödinger’s cat exists in our thoughts, it is not real.

We began with two dead trees and are ending up with two cats!

Travel gives us new eyes, and it also opens our eyes!

Vivek S Patwardhan

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others/ All work copyrighted.