Category Archives: Articles

Good Reading: Bonnie BHASIN

“ Dad” Mahinder Nanda Esq; Global CEO of the Male Shaver’s PLATINUM Guild & SUDOKU Wizard..

As a young boy at BCS there lived amongst us thinnies’n skinnies a couple of hairy rascal gorillas in both the Rivaz & Lefroy Dorms… one I distinctly remember was a chap, short stocky compact with a loaded bristles-forever-face. The dude was sixteen but looked like yes, a mature gorilla with hairy arms that sort of nearly touched his ankles. If his hair wasn’t dark and jet black I could have sworn he was a Gorillorangutan, yes you too may have guessed, his parents “could” have been Gorilla and Orangutan one of each and “could” have met in the tropical jungles when hot-humid-pissing-down-in the rain forests, both seeking shelter from buckets of rain holding huge wild ferns over their heads, sitting next to each other staring ahead into the dark green sweltering heat with dragon flies a plenty…but as instincts call they both turned towards one another and Sweet Hallelujah it was LAFS; simplifying it-it was Love At First Sight, quite a scandal amongst the Gorilla and Orangutan tribes, but who gave a toss of banana scandals… and so the priest , another rascal of a Chimpanzee calling himself “ The Most Reverend ChiChoBonaparte” wed the 💏 couple in love ( thankfully the Orang was a Lady of the Highest Order and the Gorr a Gentleman who was a graduate from the esteemed HSBC, the Harvard School of Baboons & Connivers ( not the bloody bank).

Recollect readers the hairy Cottonian’s parents only-possibly, “could“ have been the two Apes…no?

The chap was a Rivazian and I looked at his face in awe; he was in Fifth Form and I in Upper One, so we were around ten years apart along with the fact his face, a layer of thick blue-green of bristles; we guys were silky smooth something like Cadbury’s chocolate.

Having the courage to ask him one day about his bristles and how they came about etcetra … he appeared smooth as silk too.. baffled! but still I ventured to ask nervously and he…“ I shave twice a day “ .. “Lola” replied with a confident smirk ‘n swagger and just jazzed off like a real star of the bristle brigade into the Tara Devi sunset ..yes Lola and another new fandangled word for him “Jhariaa” or thick bushes with bramble that butterflies-afraid-to perch on was his second nick name.

Many of us wondered what that word “ shave” was all about…

Of course I tried to ask many in Lefroy, even the surdies who boasted Rapunzel hair under their turbans; none had the foggiest about bristles’ n beards and how “Lola the Jhariaa” was ahead of the hairy curve.

Lola passed out from BCS and except for a scant one or two strands emanating from some other dude’s follicles I never encountered another Gollirorangutan passed my ten years in School.

Another year and two passed.. I was going to join the band of gypsies as The Merchant Marine called.. By now a few strands had emerged in my regale chin too and I was told by the Company Superintendent “ report on board with your packed kit bag; a shave every day with a decent hair cut”. ….

The first ablution! Shave! And still I was lost. My Father was away to Sandheads so Mum said she would book a trunk call to Bombay and I “ should speak to Mahinderji who will be able to explain slowly carefully and simply how you should shave 🪒 “
I remember trunk calls during the early 1970’s were a Big Deal; with water and sewage in the trunk line it was required to shout loud and hard as there were 2000 kms between Calcutta and Bombay..as it was important that your neighbours heard you, so impressed by the howls and screams after all this was a Trunk Call not a telegram..

The trunk call was all I needed..

to understand the beard to be weeded

Mahenderji, a real shaving ace

Asked me to feel the contours of my face

Mine was smooth rough low high beard

Don’t fret it will feel initially weird

Now wash your face with hot water

A nice badger brush to build up lather

those days the cream he used was Old Spice

Impressed me do not roll the dice

stick to that cream good advise from the wise

Now a safety razor with seven’o’clock

that I applied, nicked and in shock

Follow the lines of your chiseled face

Long confident strokes you will make

Like the smooth Kalka Simla train

Beware never ever against the grain…

and so my story goes, it was Thanks to Dad Mahenderji I learnt the art of shaving. He was a little skeptic on showing me tricks on designing my moustache since he had a gallant sophisticated bigote and I wasn’t allowed to sport one.
Whenever my ship docked after transatlantic voyages at Bombay, I bounded across to Silver Oaks to meet the Global CEO of The Male Shaver’s PLATINUM guild who studied the fine contours of my face; we heaped praises and plati-accolades on each other’s fine performances most he-to-me in his humble way; I always took copious notes but I knew then I still hadn’t achieved the ski lines or the glowing freshness of DAD’s and had much to learn, to complete many badger-creme-razor voyages before I could shave on a dark night with only lightning striking the palms above in a pouring rainforest…. as a Gorilla and Orangutan madly in love holding hands sat watching me…

.. till date the shaving lectures I received have being ingrained in my memory…….perhaps it was the deafening rock concerts I went to, the roll, pitch and pounding of my ship catching me off balance that I shaved my tuft against the grain too often and Alas! My Beard is amongst the damnedest sharpest roughest the world has ever seen or anyone has felt ( wink ! wink!)

But I remain ever grateful to “ DAD” who continued to impress the Yanks with his mathematical wizardry; fifty years ago whilst visiting Japan Dad met Emperor Shōwa Hirohito who asked him “besides Honda Toyota Kawasaki and Seiko what else could the Imperial Rising Sun give to the world”?

Dad whilst enjoying a plate of salmon sushi and saki smiled and bowing to His Royal Highness … whispering questioning “Royal Highness .SODOKU.?”

Confused HRH Shōwa with a high brow responded …”Please expand Nanda San ….”
… and Dad replied.smiling again …
“ Your Royal Highness…Suji wa dokushin ni kagiru “

And that’s when it all started …
First THE ART OF SHAVING &
Later SUDOKU WIZARDRY

🙏❤️🙏Dad!
Wizard of Many
Dragon Slayer of Sudoku …..from Easy to Evil.
Global CEO of The Male Shaver’s Platinum Guild

Bonnie ( Vivek )Bhasin
Lefroy 1961-1970
Still Shaving .. imperfectly
Still referring to copious notes..

(Also in memory of Lola the Jhariaa Sharma .. wherever your growth has taken you..Bro 🙏)

08 Aug 2021

BCS 162nd Founder’s Day 28th July 2021

Up in the greens of Simla
on a magnificent spur
S I T U A T E D
is an institution steeped in history..
As young boys we arrived
with some trepidation
some anxiousness and many not knowing then…
WHEN..
time is finally up
through the stone corridors
the dorms, the classroom, the Irwin Hall, Linlithgow, Remove, Main School, the Biology and Chem lab, the flats, the courts, the bakery, the war memorial, the art block, Chipu’s, the Lodge and The Chapel….
walking running singing howling acting sitting grubbing laughing smiling melancholic ..now at so many points on the planet ..
we yearn to be there
even for a brief moment.
Today I close my eyes
and arrive through the global positioning systems in my mind..
like a drone hovering above capturing the entire print of this beautiful place…
I can see ..
we all arrive
in mind body and spirit..
all in congregation
each drone different
each drone uniquely the same..
like mists rising after
today’s sweet summer rain
we inhale the bouquet of the earth , the pine laden wind…
looking down from the skies
we see the young Cottonians
looking up at the sky
pointing at us
smiling from the benches
they shout at us in glee..
our propellers create a whirlwind..
they hold on to their school caps
as their metal badge beat on their chest…
insisting we all land ..
but today ..
not today
we came above
in the sky
to pay obeisance
to our great institution..
on our one hundred and sixty second Founder’s Day
we know …
Bishop Cotton School,
Our School … will be there for us..
F O R E V E R 🙏

Vivek ( Bonnie) Bhasin
28 July 2021
on the 162nd year of my Alma mater.

July 2021 Summer Writings of the macabre-Past Future Tense “ El Capitano? “

Havin’d fcukin enuf of the
sentimentality longing melancholic conundrums including sadness, reminiscing and bleeding cold shivers down his hardened spine ..
He clambered down the gangplank and got his sorry ass on the road towards the high street..
‘Twas a Saturday night on the Caribe Isla“ El Amanacer”, a hot humid summer night as hurricane Matilda had swept past a day earlier having rocked the place like a massive fiery dragon with a two hundred mile long lashing tail, taking away roof tops, shaving palm trees and making the parakeets shriek with jumbled feathers; the slim Bharat Natyam dancer lost her story telling as her jingles broke loose and collared around a lethargic Siamese cat who turned bloody alert hissing , the monkeys howling with chattering teeth fled upon to purple mountain their young screaming , the donkeys collapsed braying and the horses bolted into the raging sea; some married dolphins ..their other hoofed mates were later found grazing at flower pots on pink cottage roof tops ..the storm surge swept across as a tidal wave ..not a blade of grass nor a sliver of Gouda cheese was spared..

…But now….the island was steadily returning to normalcy; cows too had renegaded from the sheds swimming towards a black swirling hole, so milk was scarce……the farmers all a helter-skelter, peacock butterflies and humming birds vanished into the melee..now drying their wings and rejuvenated fluttering returning to plush spoilt garden as leaves still trembled gently with echoes of the past screeching screamin’n whistling banshee winds..

This dude was on shore leave ..moisture and beads of sweat formed on his forehead and the rest ran down like big rain drops down his hairy chest and smooth back, his neck was wet, his ruby red italian silk shirt clung to his heavin’ and pantin’( in soft whisper..) even his four-hundred dollar bills stuffed down his socks felt like blotting paper squeaking along with his leather boots.. Bandidos were at large, hungry frikin vultures waylaying kids, sailors, boot leggers and even grandmothers, snatching and grabbing their 100 year bags that had powder puffs and lipsticks from Elisabeth Arden; all who passed through Calle Caliente* the hot street needed to exercise “bien-ciudado” extra carefulness as these low lives slinking in the shadows of broken doors, garbage bins and dung.

The Main Gate of the port was what he had to negotiate before he could venture out to the bar “El Corazon con Piña Colada”
across the street where strains of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t fear the reaper” were on melt down and a quartet of ‘ungfellows came on … Kids callin’ themselves Greta van Fleet; no frikin nonsense, with God’s given grace they hit the deck with Motown Funk #4… this had him now on a banter to get out…to be there.

He thought he’d sail through the iron metal grill that was half open but just as he got closer a woman cop in luminous green uniform and a top hat 🎩 in black ostrich feathers blocked his path and pushed him into the inspection cabin. He tried to struggle but she rammed her baton into his gut and his breath wheezed stumbling, collapsing on to the sugar cane mat.

There were still three minutes left for the funk to taper down as the cop asked for his ID… he dove deep down in his jeans pocket but WTF, the dude had forgotten it in the hell hole of his blistering hot cabin..

“C’mon Ma’am.. the only boat in harbour, and-I-am-he-just-me the you-know-who ( not wanting to pull rank) whose havin’ fcukin enuf and needs to get to the other side, so give me a break; it ain’t no jailbreak ya know, I’ve shed all the soft velvet mushy feelings and even cut my chin whilst shaving with my razor; to feel the burn I splashed whisky on my face-you-can-feel-it…”……

“ I can see you’re pissed to high noon but me gotta see who you are, I need to see your ID” she said.

He looked into her face and saw her eyes, one eyeball ruby red and the other cobalt blue. Her lipstick was coal black and a tattooed crab on her right high cheek bone. She smiled wickedly and her teeth flashed diamond sparklers, her long slender neck had five strings of Mallorca pearls; now don’t you dare question him as to “how’d you know.. them
Pearls n’all ?”… well Mikimoto, Mallorca, Hyderabad whatever, the dude had worked the boats in the Philippines and knew the absolute best came from Pinctada Maxima mollusk as those days it was nine dollar fifty an hour and a bonus if Fagin the Jew accepted the full catch..

… this woman, the cop..she had a barker strapped to her right thigh, a mean SOB with an eighteen inch barrel something like DH*. .. no no .. this gal wasn’t going to let him out without a song, without a passionate plea that …

“ when I was young
muddled and fuddled even with apple juice
fair maiden you looked after me
as I toddled and later hobbled on one foot
resting my other so gently on the grass
the winds of time
did change me
as the arrow flies never arrives ..
I grew older
but you left me in the park
on the swing
and vanished with your little things and my baby socks..
You just faded like an oil painting
bleached on a hot summer day
instead of the beach..
you were to stand still in the Louvre…
never did they show you the door
nor banished..
for I was still sitting on that swing
as you crossed the seas and the oceans leaving me to stare at wild wind blown spaces..”

The lady smiled at him,
within her fertile mind
pictures of the past at last grew more vivid as she remembered that early winter morning when she rose ..
the fog was thick
she could taste it
and then she saw him..
the toddler standing in the corner
with a wild zebra to his left
a timid unicorn to his right
and a black flamingo fluttering above him…
.. she had no choice but to return to her tribe as she walked and got lost in the fog..

“ and this is now how you appear with strong demands to cross the frontier of our lives stories ?” She asked ..

“ I was but a child and you left us”..he says ..”then and even now my mind sways; I have faced severe storms on the oceans and in my tormented soul I have come ashore to cling to that Cherry Tree and become part of the landscape, let me through I plead to you.. you know I am not old and not new to you.. so what ID do you need ?”.. questioning ..

The high pressure system right above has flattened the sea now glassy and Venus will set soon yet striking a sharp light across that ricochets on to both their faces, illuminating each other.

Apologies were emanating from his face and slowly she absorbed the full meaning, the entire truth..
She backed away soft and saddened ….and pressed the orange button…

… the gates gently opened without a sound, the hinges well greased.. his eyebrows all cocked his lashes a flutter and his doe intact in his shoes he walked away no second look .. just straight on .. and then more briskly into a trot; finally speed hit his heels and he was gone, way gone, never to return..

ETD* was at 0500… Shore Leave ended… Pilot boarded but no sign of the bounder… they searched high and low, near and far even in the Bar “ El Corazon..”
but he was no where to be found.. possibly following the tail of Hurricane Matilda..

The Mate was now in temporary Command as he set sail for Bermuda… all what was left in the propeller’s wake were some screeching seagulls and “ The Fleesh” going on low key at the Bar playing their last song “ el jardin *“ as the first rays of the sun hit La Isla Amanecer…*”

*DH Dirty Harry
*ETD Expected Time of Departure
*el jardin The Garden
*la Isla Amanecer The Island of Dawn

Vivek ( Bonnie ) Bhasin
Summer’n Sweden🇸🇪
July 2021

Memories from the battlefields of Vietnam, R&R in the Korean DMZ and much more… – by Joe Joshi

Joe Joshi (Rivaz 1954 to 1963)

I was in BCS for 10 years beginning 1954, as was my younger brother. My two elder sisters went to AHS (Auckland House School).
My parents, both successful doctors of medicine in Burma, said they wanted us to get a proper education in a British boarding school for children in India. My parents were born and educated in Burma, made a good fortune as a surgeon and doctor of internal medicine. They loved Burma, had many friends and family there. Life was good for us.

I got a good education after BCS, a B.A. degree with English Honors, a diploma in mass communication from Berlin, a commercial and combat pilot license and an honorary M.A. degree for excellence in journalism. I have travelled all over the world several times, having worked in many countries or been there and done that on vacation. I speak 5 languages fluently, have many good friends worldwide and a few ex-girlfriends.

I am a veteran editor in print and broadcast news, now writing a book on my experiences in the battlefields of Vietnam so many years ago that stunned friends and foes. I am sending a preview of that book:

I had to rework some parts of the full package on the fall of Saigon since I first wrote it for The Bulletin newspaper in Bend, Oregon, on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
I ran a somewhat similar version, including other thoughts, on another anniversary when I was in Laredo, Texas, and for the Korea Times in Seoul. Yet every time I try to put this together, there are so many flashbacks of sidebar stories I wish to include. But as the years pass, a compulsive guessing game continues to which I fear finding answers.
For instance: where, I still ask myself, is the beautiful woman who has come to symbolize for me the lost world of old Cambodia? Offering a fruit in her hands, sheathed in an emerald-green sarong, she moved with the sensuous grace of celestial dancers carved on the friezes of Angkor. She came one Buddhist holy day to a 15th century temple as late monsoon clouds darkened the sky. Our eyes met fleetingly through a curtain of incense perfumed by jasmine, and then she melted into the vivacious swirl of worshipers.
Where is the lovely girl, who wrenched herself up from a hospital floor in the refugee camp of Aranyaprathet decked with flies and feces to tell me her story? An American pilot had mistimed his bomb drop by a few seconds, so her right arm was now sheared off, the collar bone jutting out naked and already greenish with decay. Her little body trembling with pain, she looked at me and smiled: the fathomless stoic smile I think saved Cambodia from collective insanity — and melted my heart.
And what about Mark Basinger. He was just 17 months old when his father died. He has no memories of the man who left on a train in August 1966 and never came back. His mother remembers, though. And when she recalls Capt. Richard Louis Basinger, her tears flow.
Mark still watches old newscasts from Vietnam and thinks: “That’s where my Dad died.” And he wants to know more. He has pieced together a Web site that pays tribute to his Dad, his more than 350 helicopter combat missions, and his death on May 12, 1967 when his helicopter was hit by an enemy mortar round near a Marine outpost at Con Thien.
Capt. Basinger was 24 years old, 14 years younger than the son who so desperately wants to connect with him. Mark now wants to go to Vietnam. He will, he hopes, visit the spot where that helicopter crashed.
“I’m just trying to feel a part of him,” Mark says. But his mother tells him he need not go to Vietnam to do that. “Look in the mirror, son,” she says, “and you’ll know your father.”
And where, I wonder, is Helen Nguyen — the stunningly pretty mamasan at a Tu Do Street bar in Saigon. She didn’t have any time for me because I wouldn’t buy her the $25-a-shot Saigon tea. Our paths crossed again shortly before the fall of Saigon and she didn’t want to let me out of her sight. She brought a mattress and slept outside my hotel room door.
And remember Ha Thi Tran? I left Saigon three days after the Viet Cong gained total control of the city. Helen joined me and one member from India of the International Control Commission on Vietnam as we made it to Bangkok via Hanoi. Ha didn’t want to go to Hanoi and failed to show up in Bangkok a week later as planned. Neither did she make it to the sprawling refugee camps of Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodia border. She was not on any of the refugee boats in the years to come and I continue to search for her today.
“I am not going to Hanoi because there is more hell in there than the rest of this ugly war put together,” she said. And I understood why Ha, being a South Vietnamese feared going to Hanoi.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
By Joe Joshi
Senior Editor, Korea Times

On Monday, April 28, 1975, a late-afternoon thunderstorm rumbled outside the open balcony windows of Saigon’s Independence Palace as 71-year-old Tran Van Huong, lame and nearly blind, clutched the arm of an aide and stepped slowly away from the microphone. He had just given up the presidency of South Vietnam after only six days in office. Another aide scurried forward, removed the red-and-saffron seal from the rostrum and replaced it with another, the outline of an apricot blossom containing the Yin and Yang symbol, an Asian sign for the combining of opposites to make up the universe.
Only then did ex-General Duong Van “Big’’ Minh, chosen as president to make a last desperate plea for peace, begin speaking. He appealed, as expected, for an immediate ceasefire, unconditional negotiations and national reconciliation.
Later, as war correspondents stood on the palace steps to watch members of the new “peace government’’ drive away, a correspondent for the Hongkong Standard said: “Perhaps now we can have some hope in this catastrophe.’’
He was wrong. The Viet Cong’s answer came less than an hour after Gen. Minh’s speech when a series of explosions buffeted the city. Communist pilots flying captured American fighter planes were bombing Tan Son Nhut Airport, though no one knew then where the planes had come from or who were flying them.
The heavy flak guns at the palace balcony opened up and there was pandemonium as policemen and soldiers all over the city began blazing away at the sky. The firing lasted perhaps a half-hour and then sputtered out. Soon the nervous city began to move again, its people hurrying through the dusk to get home before the 8 p.m. curfew closed in.
We could not know it them, but the bombs falling on Tan Son Nhut signaled the last battle of the Vietnam War.
Before dawn Tuesday, when artillery, rocket and mortar fire began pounding the airport, government resistance quickly evaporated.
That day, under the guns of Marine helicopters from a naval task force offshore, the final evacuation of U.S. Embassy staff and other Americans began. In the rush to get out of a city going mad, many desperate would-be refugees were seen clinging to the landing gears of the “iron butterflies’’ and babies were thrust at departing Americans by mothers hoping to at least get one child to a carrier of the 7th Fleet.
But most Vietnamese began to lose hope of being evacuated when U.S. Marines and American civilians used pistol and rifle butts to smash the fingers of men, women and children trying to claw their way over the wall of the U.S. Embassy. Those who didn’t make it also saw that helicopters landing on ships of the 7th Fleet were quickly unloaded and heaved overboard to make room for the next one.
Refugees who used sampans to reach the U.S. carriers sets their boats on fire to keep them from falling into communist hands. It was getting dark now and the tranquil waters, as far as the eye could see, was covered with burning boats. It looked like a vision from hell.
Those who made it to the ships, and those who didn’t, wept.
At that point, my life changed… Something died in me. I was on the waterfront with an arm around Ha Thi Tran, my Vietnamese girlfriend. Amid the clatter of helicopter blades, she silently wiped away her tears and I was shaking.
I had seen many horrible things in Vietnam, but could always turn to Ha for comfort. She was a breath of fresh air, a pretty girl of 22 with a quick, natural smile that made others smile. And she loved to wear the ao dai (Vietnam’s traditional flowing tunic over trousers with slits up to the waist). Ha always was so focused on whatever she did and could analyze situations others could not even comprehend. She made me feel there was some hope in this crazy Asian war.
We returned to the Caraville Hotel and sat by the window of our third floor room. I opened a bottle of beer as Ha pleaded on the phone with the operator to get us a line to Washington, Hongkong, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo… anywhere.
Amid the chaos on the street below, we could see Vietnamese women offering money, gold or sexual favors for sponsorship promises and refugee documents, but nearly all the foreigners had left Saigon by then.
Ha and I stayed up most of the night talking about how our lives had taken us in different directions since we met in early 1969 under a hot, cloudless sky at My Khe beach near Danang. Most Americans remember it as the GI oasis called China Beach.
We also recalled our daily trips to Vietnam’s media centerpiece, the MACV (U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam) center in Saigon where Ha would translate the daily command briefing which put information (true and false) on the record during the 5 o’clock briefings.
There were several hundred reporters in Vietnam and competition was fierce. There also were would-be journalists, actors, teachers and some characters of dubious background with ambition and a taste of adventure. Many were frequently wounded. In the end, more than 70 were dead or missing.
Ha also was with me a few days earlier when 76 infants were killed in one of the first flights of Operation Babylift.. The C-54 Galaxy cargo plane was loaded with 300 infants, toddlers and caretakers when it plunged from the sky near Tan Son Nhut Airport.
Memories of that tragedy tore at our hearts as we talked about it that night, even though we were already numbed by the war’s horror.
Operation Babylift was authorized to evacuate 70,000 Vietnamese orphans, many fathered by American GIs. Some 2,000 children, with toddlers placed in cardboard boxes along the isles of the aircraft, made it to the U.S. before Saigon was lost to the communists.
Although Ha’s parents were not rich, they helped their only child acquire an education. Ha was studying business administration in Philadelphia.
We finally went to bed exhausted and dreamed of the country she had lost.
The day after that, Wednesday, April 30, Saigon surrendered. The gold-starred red-and-blue liberation flag fluttered over the palace.
After 30 blood-soaked years, the Vietnam War was over.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Filipinas forced into sex trade
By Joe Joshi
Senior Editor
Korea Times
June 2, 2003

Dongducheon – Shirley, a young Filipina, stands in front of the bar where she works in vampish boots and a skirt so short it leaves little to the imagination.

“Work,” she says simply, a helpless smile spreading across her pretty face. “Work, that is why I came. In the Philippines there is no way to make money.”

Prostitution is an old trade but not an honored one, so Shirley prefers not to give her family name. At age 21, she has a plenty of company in this U.S. military base town where bars have names like The Dungeon, DMZ, Sunshine, Papaya, Blackjack, Platinum and Olympia and young women loiter at every corner on the strip.

More than 99 percent of the bar girls are foreign, most of them from the Philippines. Others come from Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. All of them cater to the sex tourism boom in this town close to the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.

Lina, who is very popular among the soldiers who frequent the club where she dances, put Dongdecheon’s lure simply: “One-zero-zero-zero,” she said laughing, “instead of one-zero-zero” – indicating a chance to earn $1,000 a week instead of $100.

But the laughter can be short-lived, promised money illusionary and the human cost high. Scratch the surface in the bar area and a world of violence, xenophobia, disease and misery is revealed.

For the sex trade, the balance of supply and demand could scarcely be better. “The business of trafficking for sexual exploitation is booming,” said Lee Bong-chol, who manages a neighborhood convenience store. “It is an industry now worth several billion dollars a year.”

Some of the Filipinas come here without illusions, however reluctantly, that prostitution for a wealthier clientele is the only way to feed their families and fashion a future. Others come deluded, lured into thinking they will work as singers or barmaids, but are forced into unpayable debt and deprived of all freedom in the end.

Maria, a Filipina with so many curves, it made my head spin just looking at her, was waiting outside the nightclub for a soldier who had just paid a $200 bar fine for her. Maria told me she saw no alternative to her current work on the strip. Her parents are dead, killed in a car crash when she was 16 and still at school. She took a succession of odd jobs, but they were insufficient to support her 10-year-old sister. Hardship, dead ends, vague dreams of getting married and maybe finding happiness, brought her to this God-awful place.

She stops talking abruptly, saying she has to go, when the soldier comes out and puts his arm around her waist. Of the $200 bar fine, Maria will get about $33. The bar owner gets the rest.

Maria takes a wad of notes out of her bag and hands it to her bouncer who has a distant look, track suit, Adidas sneakers, gold chain and sleeves short enough to reveal the bulge of his muscles.

Lorna, 19, also from the Philippines, is standing outside a nearby strip club. Unlike Maria, she is in the second category of women, those deceived, trafficked and ultimately trapped. She came to South Korea believing she would marry a rich man. Her husband turned out to be a poor farmer.

Lorna says she was locked up 24 hours a day and escaped when she was allowed to see a doctor. She was recaptured by her broker and had her passport taken. She was then told she had been “sold” to the bar where she now works. She has no money, she says. Her gaze is vacant.

Some of the Filipinas at the clubs are undocumented workers, others have three-month tourist visas arranged by gangs that bring them under false promises. Their stories tend to resemble one another. The women may be teachers, farm laborers or unemployed, ages 18 to 30. Often they have one or two children to support. They receive false offers of temporary work and good earnings. Travel and visas are arranged for a large sum of money – the women’s debt to the gangs that organize their transportation and work. After arrival, passports and any money are taken and the women are deposited in small guarded apartments. Then they are told what their real job is to be.

The average rate in brothels is $200, but no more than a tenth of that reaches the women’s pocket. Their “owners” buy food and pay rent, and the debt becomes intractable. The women are terrorized because they are often unable to pay off the debts. And they are paralyzed, afraid to go to the police, terrified the gangs will do something bad to a member of their family back home if they try to escape.

The trade in women from the Philippines has spread throughout South Korea and is increasingly well organized. The gangs that dominate the business are slick, flexible and elusive. Everywhere, women are reluctant to testify because they are afraid.

If they are going to testify, these women need witness protection, often new passports and assurances they can remain in South Korea. But government authorities will not provide this. And the gang members are much more sophisticated than the police.

At age 21, Raquel graduated from college with a degree in business administration and left the home of her poor, widowed mother to come to South Korea and clean the houses of upper-class families.

For years she scrubbed the floors, washed dishes, hung laundry and baby-sat toddlers — all the while cowering as employers called her stupid and sexually harassed her. Now she is a nightclub dancer.

“Many times I had to leave my job because of the sexual harassment,” said Raquel who has no valid travel document or permission to work in South Korea. “I always had to eat after my employers did, on separate plates, as if I were a pet. In fact, I think pets have more privileges.”

She has no pension plan, no social security, no health insurance, working practically in slavery. That’s because South Korea remains in the dark ages when it comes to the treatment of foreign workers, particularly the undocumented ones. This is despite repeated efforts by activists to reform antiquated labor laws and President Roh Moo-hyun’s promises to improve conditions for all workers.

One young Filipina outside a bar who refused to give her name, has a tattoo of a rose on her upper arm and a ravaged look in her big brown eyes. She seemed a waif broken before she could live.

She sells her body voluntarily. At least this is “voluntary” work in the sense that it is the only work that she has been able to find that allows her to make what she called a “reasonable living.” She plans to stop working next year.

“I met an American GI here who is my stable boyfriend and he wants to marry me,” she explained. “He understands why I have to do this. If things work out, I plan to go and live with him in America.”

…..

In continuation….

Sunday..
The quiet day..
I rise with the sun
and hear a multitude of birds..
Is it the dream I had last night
or the arrow that flew as Rush rushed past singing “The Garden..”
I had butterflies in my gut..
weakness in my knees
my body spoke
but did I listen? Ever did?
“ Pack your bags Gypsy-you Gitano-you Ziginare* “ they whispered.. “it’s time to leave, to depart again yet again and now again…”
They smiled at me as I floated down…
Walked with me on the charted path..
through the corridors I trudged my shoes hitting the shining stones where we and you’ve walked..
They opened the doors..
I silently stepped in
so many memories..
and songs of praise echoing all around ..
every moment was precious,
every step was slow and measured..
I reached the Alter..
I stopped and looked and knelt..
staring up at
Our Good Shepherd..
And the voice..
“ The Navigator has come home..”
I closed my eyes as my thoughts swooshed from the mountains to the valleys and shot across the lands arriving at the oceans of the world, zipped over the continents looking down at all those faces who knew me more than I knew them… and in those priceless seconds I was back where I belonged.
It was time to leave, yet again…
I turned and bowed my head as they smiled and I knew..
walking along the passage besides our Chapel to
The Lawrence Gate.. with a heavy heart..
I glanced up and saw Linlithgow and the stone steps leading down to the Irwin Hall, the Chapel and the Dining Hall.
Yes.. I see myself as that five year old coming down those steps in a queue, no sound no whisper..
I stopped and call for you..
Can you not hear me? Read my lips or at least acknowledge my presence..?
My presence is an old man who moved out of your five year old shell.. you look happy my five year old ..
and me your sixty five..
“ I and I we both are.. but I am not leaving this place; I am barely five .. but you must go back into the cacophony of sounds at this age your stage .. for me your young one, I will wait for your return eagerly…”
The steps remain
The corridors remain
everything else is frozen in a time zone .. except myself ..I continue to grow and age..
Whilst my other I, stays…
don’t we both still have the same name ..?”
“Yes yes I plead- no never change even if the clock ticks away, I will hold back time…
And I will but return to meet you .. perhaps then..
you will leave
and
I will stay..”🙏❤️

My School
Living in its own time ..
Vivek Bonnie BHASIN
Lefroy 1961-1970
*gitano-ziginare : Gypsies
Easter Sunday 04 April 2021


– Vivek Bhasin