Lisbon’s old architecture is interesting, but its modern commercial and residential buildings are breathtaking
THE most interesting aspect of the bifocal syndrome is that it creeps up on you without there being any indication that you have been ‘claimed’. It is a euphemism I use for the common and vulgar (in the etymological sense) term ‘middle age’. The two are synonymous, as you go from one pair of specs to two, and then opt for bifocals. So from undefined aches, pains and other twitches, one day you just have to accept that you’re middle-aged.
A bifocal personality, because it is so slow and inconspicuous in its formation, tends to take you by surprise. There is this image that one has of oneself — an image formed over 45 years of close communion. Then suddenly, one is confronted by this ‘other self’. This new self has been formulating for quite some time, of course, but so imperceptibly that it goes entirely unnoticed till one day it hits you like a railroad engine.
I had once written about one historic summer when my husband and I set out to see Europe, but wound up with more adventures and insight that we had actually bargained for. Not dissimlar is our account of our journey to Lisbon.
Having narrowly escaped arrest and after a harrowing interrogatory session with the immigration staff at the Lisbon airport, we were finally reunited with the solitary figure of our daughter who lives there.
Our daughter, who knew of our trauma and who had undergone her share of grilling over the phone by the Portuguese immigration staff, swiftly bundled us into a taxi for a 40-minute journey to her apartment. Immediately she came up with the most important question: How, she asked, had a prestigious airline as ours, made the basic error of making us land at Lisbon without a valid visa? My husband and I rushed in to explain. We talked in unison for a few minutes. Sitting behind him, I caught the cab driver’s look of amusement in the rear view mirror. Our daughter loudly hushed us, deciding, I think, that if she were to understand anything she would have to steer the conversation. Her questions were crisp and precise. And she named us turn by turn for answers. Some part of my mind protested against her behaviour, but the cab driver’s look stopped me from commenting. Also, each answer was being contested by the other spouse. My husband and I got into arguments contradicting each other at every step. After attempting to disengage us from interrupting each other and at times interrupting our own interruptions, our daughter took to loudly pointing out landmarks. Too dazed and too stressed to even think straight, we welcomed the break and tried to absorb Lisbon as it flew past us at phenomenal speed.
My husband, who was trying to catch sight of the landmarks before they whizzed by, now became aware of the taxi’s speed. A series of neck-craning exercises and he had the speed at which we were trying to maintain contact with the Earth. His gasp was self explanatory. The taxi was travelling at 100mph. This was announced in Urdu, a few expletives added and the driver (who, I’m sure, by now was aware of what was happening) was politely reminded he was well over the official limit. The driver, like cab drivers anywhere in the world, chose not to understand English at that point of time. With mounting panic, my husband told my daughter to translate the matter into Portages. She mumbled a few words to him. The speed dropped temporarily by a few miles per hour as we continued to hurtle towards home.
At the apartment my husband and I were completely exhausted. Explanations were given again, this time with a lesser degree of interruptions. Hot tea (I had brought teabags with me) was gulped and a holiday forcibly cut short took off to a pattern.
Late next morning, my husband and I were finally ready to leave for the airport to get our seats changed for the return journey. My daughter tried hard to get us to book seats over the phone. Our experience, manifested in our bifocal spectacles, was to undertake the 90-minute journey (this time by a more affordable bus) and book tickets in person.
For some subsequent days my husband and I continued to linger over breakfast, quite often taking a post-breakfast nap while the daughter held on as much to her patience as her carefully planned itinerary for each day would allow. We would leave at leisure, not too bothered if we didn’t see even half the places on the day’s agenda and be perfectly happy to return by 7pm.
Our priorities had clearly changed. My daughter had planned things keeping in mind the parents who tended to go careering round site seeing, ticking off places on lists compiled by the local tourist office. She was getting to know her bifocal parents. There were no lists on our side. The biggest mall of Lisbon was vetoed (all malls in the world are the same, we argued), and extensive eating out was firmly crossed out (too costly on the wallet and the stomach).
My husband and I took to wandering around once we had arrived at the first destination of the day. On our part, I can truly say that in a fortnight we had absorbed as much of Lisbon’s character as was humanly possible.
The sidewalks of Lisbon struck us immediately. Rome had patterned pavements, but Lisbon’s were a class apart. Made of contrasting black and white uniform stone pieces, the patterns, we were told, were projects undertaken by the local students of architecture. The most outstanding designs were used for sidewalks and pedestrian streets. The designs had to be admired in silence, standing still for 10 minutes (while daughter gulped the strong local coffee at the nearest cafe — no doubt to calm her nerves). In our ‘aimless’ wanderings, one day we saw a sidewalk being laid on a bed of sand. Precut stone pieces were being embedded with wooden hammers onto the sand. We stood there watching the pattern grow. My architect husband was fascinated. The sand bed would absorb the heavy rain, the embedded stones could be uprooted anytime and re-laid to a new pattern. Ingenious! Our daughter, in the meantime, consumed more coffee than was good for her.
Lisbon’s old architecture was interesting, but its modern one was breathtaking. One particular mall where the daughter had to virtually drag us was shaped like the mast of a ship. Its clear roof had ripples of water running through two layers. The effect of the shadows cast by the water on the floor of the mall was as peaceful as it was beautiful.
Then we spent hours sitting on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean. We were not only amongst tourists though. Many local people, I noticed, also found time to sit by the numerous boardwalk cafes leisurely enjoying coffee or a drink, watching the people, the waves or the marine traffic yonder go by. Nobody in Portugal seems to be in any kind of hurry. For my husband and I it was a pace that was pleasing. I noticed that even our daughter, once she had accepted we would not go cantering round, relaxed into her routine cups of coffee while staring into oblivion.
Photography has always been an obsession with us. The difference though is in the ages of our children. Where once they happily went and stood where told, now our daughter was aghast. We were being too ‘touristy’ she complained. We keep forgetting, I told myself, she is now in the working world and not used to stand prettily by the very colourful murals of one particular underground station. A good sport, however, she did as she was told.
The visit to Lisbon, which had started off on a stormy note, turned out be one of the most enjoyable holidays ever. The trick, I realized, is to now pick places and set a tempo that are more in tune with our syndrome.
Lisbon’s old architecture is interesting, but its modern commercial and residential buildings are breathtaking 
