O Meu Diário de Coimbra

Harmoniums and Harmony

Before we begin, I want you to listen to a few moments of each of these.

Got it? OK, now this:

Stay with me.

A few mornings back, I was sitting at Pastelaria Visconde, the cafe near Mosteiro da Santa Cruz. It was early, a little after eight, and the Praça do Comércio had one eye open. Were you on vacation, it would have been one of those glorious days — probably a few hours before your trip to the airport to return home — where you had a few moments to wonder what it would be like to live in a place like this at a time in your life like this. How would you do it? Would you, if you could? The chocolate cake, a bolo it’s called, in front of me, with strawberry chunks and almonds was perfect; the breeze, perfect; the hat on the woman at the next table, perfect. Down the square, in front of a clothing store (loja), a beautiful man, playing a soulful flute was in the middle of that Barber piece, and this was after he played Bach and Mozart. Then, behind me, I heard clanking and moaning and chanting. It was a group of Hare Krishnas. They got closer, the music got louder, so loud, in fact, the flautist stopped just as he started Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He simply couldn’t, wouldn’t be heard over them. The Hare Krishnas, most in orange sarongs but not all, stopped in front of the cafe and chanted, while playing on their mridangas and hand cymbals. Theirs was the sound of a leaf blower, heavy equipment at a construction site, wailing babies on either side of you on a flight. One member of the group had a portable harmonium, an instrument which was banned on All India Radio (AIR) for decades because it sounded too much, the overseers of the station said, like something that originated in the West — and because it was awful.