Enough!

So just as you wonder why I have been rambling on depressingly, let me reassure you that I loved Cuba. One of the reasons the writing hitherto has seemed depressing is that it is literally just the first 6-hours' worth of notes.

When in Cuba, when you think fun, think the arts. Disregard the fancy beach resorts, where nary a local is likely to be seen, all-inclusive, no doubt serving fat American buffets at every meal.

No, the wealth of Cuba is in the people, in their smile, their hips and the gorgeous music they create out of nothing and nowhere. I will come back, despite all the hassle, just for the music. And maybe the next time I will actually have the guts to get on the dance floor.

Walking around Habana Vieja (literally, "Old Havana") – which is actually being restored to real beauty currently – music spilled out of everywhere. Every home, or every other home, god knows how, seems to possess some kind of music player and the appropriate medium. Music blares, music seeps, it soars and it weeps. On every street, every night, often even during the day.

People swarm on the streets as the sun sets. Families and friends get together at the doors of the ground-floor apartments, often in 2 or 3 storied buildings, some with huge doors and a large courtyard within, probably a single-home dwelling for the erstwhile sugar barons who ran the country, and ran it to ground.

Men and women lounge at the doorsteps, on the sidewalk sitting on rocking chairs, standing at the corners, swaying, in age-delineated groups. Chatting, no doubt sharing stories and finding ways to consolidate and acquire things, sell others.

On this first evening, I was just getting a taste of the music that lives in these people. Later in that evening, I was at Hotel Florida. After the initial brush with the gorgeous prostitute, I waited it out for the band. It did not start till nearly 11 pm. But I was glad I waited it out through my first, very weak, mojito and the second which I ordered stronger. The bar had remained fairly empty till about 10.30 pm and by the time the band started, there was a motley crew – what seemed to be a mix of local boys and tourist girls, a large group of 10 in 5 neat pairs; a fat man and his companion, who I though were from Miami for some reason. A skinny black man and his older, fairer companion (she was probably 60) in a jaunty yellow bandana and a black dress. He was later joined by an exceptionally seedy short, stout fairer man with a gorgeous – GORGEOUS  - rubia (blonde). Sundry other characters, including the two white tourists, one of whom was chatting up my goddess-prostitute. (If I had been him I would not have waited 2 hours to bed her, by the way).

Anyway bear with me, for the cast is important.  The 5 or 7 piece band started and the music was just amazing. The even more amazing thing is that I did not hear a band that was not amazing, at any point in my trip. 

The skinny black guy and old-woman-in-black took to the floor and just glided away in mesmerizing footwork. The short man with the blonde joined and she – I am sure she was a tourist – shook it, heavy as she was, and I realized the beauty of a fully-fleshed woman for the first time. Well, er…, not for the first time, if you get my drift, but there is never a reason not to rediscover. The party of 10 would step out now and then, one guy with a girl, then swap and this carried on. The girls looked like sisters and ranged from the ugly-cousin-of-Sarah-Jessica-Parker to elegance personified, in terms of looks, and also correlating with their dancing abilities.

The 5 boys with them were probably just amateurs, but if I could pull them out of Cuba and bring them to Singapore, I would mint money running a salsa school. They were just incredible. As I was to learn over and over again, men doing the salsa always preen and cock and posture – it is clearly what god herself meant to be the mating ritual of the human species. 

Not that there was any character to the place – it was an old fashioned room, a bar at one end, the band at the other, tables and chairs in between, incandescent lighting making it reasonably bright.

I sat there completely satisfied. My travails with the immigration, with the hustlers, with the heat and the humidity, witnessing the poverty and the inequality – all of it forgotten, when I saw these beautiful people doing what they could only do – and could only do, given what few other options they have for anything.

Cuba vive en su musica y su cultura.