Crying Over Spilt Wine

An image of a sculpture came through WhatsApp a few weeks ago. It was unsettling. Part of the sculpture’s body was missing, and one could see the sea in the background. It felt like someone had punched me in the gut. This piece, and several others like it by French-Sicilian artist Bruno Catalano, are installed on beaches in France (Marseille) and other cities around the world.

Thinking about it, I couldn’t understand why I felt that way. To be moved by a sculpture is a curious feeling. The piece is supposed to represent the sense of loss felt by those who leave their country of birth and move to a new environment.

Speaking for myself, I feel no sense of loss as such. Yes, I miss the sweet song of the koel, the torrential rains of the monsoon watched from the comfort of an easy chair on a verandah, and the friends and family I grew up with.

But then I have discovered the uplifting chirp of the blackbird of England coming into its own in the spring and summer. I enjoy the long summer evenings when the day is full of potential. I have, over the years, developed a lot of good friendships with bonds nearly as strong. Half the ashes of my first-born are mixed with the waters of the Thames. My younger son has found his partner in a wonderful local family.

That missing part of the man with the suitcase still bothered me until a little disaster resolved the issue.

While returning from our recent trip to Belgium, I bought a lot of wine from the duty-free shop at the Le Shuttle terminal in Calais. The trouble with duty free is the word ‘free’. It’s got a delusional quality about it. One forgets the difference between duty-free and plain-free. It’s like the lactose-free, gluten-free, nut-free and sugar-free products on the supermarket shelves. If it’s free of everything, why is it so bloody expensive, is the thought that goes through my head whenever I pass that shelf. I still end up buying such things. Such is the allure of ‘free’. I forget the number of times I have withdrawn unneeded cash from ATMs displaying the words ‘Free Cash Withdrawal’.

They say just because elephants are cheap, you don’t have to buy them. But I had forgotten this wise adage. I purchased 14 bottles of wine. It was nearly half the price there when compared to the supermarkets of England. The irony is that I consume less than half a bottle a week. Anyway, I secured the cases in my boot, travelled all the way across the Channel and to Southampton with everything intact. No breakage.

And then the devil asked me to empty the car upon arrival. No, don’t take a break, it whispered in my ear. And why make an extra trip from the car to the kitchen? The suitcase with four wheels is a doddle to push with one hand, and you can carry a case of wine in the other, it instructed me. So I didn’t demur. The devil has terrific power of persuasion.

I could hear the bastard laughing when he suddenly locked the suitcase’s wheels, and the case—carried forward by its own momentum—flew out of my hand, sending six expensive bottles of Chablis crashing to the floor and shattering two of them. All savings wiped out. I might as well have bought them in Sainsbury’s.

The feeling, as I watched weeks of pleasure puddle like rainwater on the kitchen floor, was like being punched in the gut, like being winded. And so, I finally understood Bruno Catalano’s sculpture. More importantly, I realised that every loss is replaced by something. Nothing is permanent. Not loss. Not grief.