Spanish flying IV

Spain was becoming a blur. But each time we stopped, usually at a small town that was a main street and a few old buildings, we found something new, something to marvel at, something to make us laugh, ooh and ahh, giggle nervously and perhaps even sigh with more than just a hint of sadness. It was all about passion and heat, brilliant sunshine and chilly evenings, wild swings of mood and colour that could bewilder even as it delighted.

Seville was one such stop we made. It was a bright sunny afternoon when we drove into the city, through tiny winding streets, locals and tourists wandering about in the middle of the road and even a clown who juggled oranges across the hood of the car and then darted into a schoolhouse door with a manic laugh. In the centre of all this rose the Giralda, a golden-orange minaret once used by the Moors for the azaan. We wandered into it and upwards, climbing up a steep spiral of stone stairs and sloping ramp, breathing heavily and holding on to the cold iron of the railing. Windows allowed occasional peeps outside, an ever-widening vista of an urban sprawl that combined the modern with the charm of the old. At the top, we exchanged cheery greetings with an English couple who were on their way down, while a large Spanish family exclaimed and smiled at Mum’s tikka and my nicely-lined eyes.

From there it was a short hop to the cathedral where Christopher Columbus’ tomb was. As with almost any and every old church in Europe that I have been to, it was cold enough to keep ice cream frozen at ‘room temperature’, and we shivered in our wrappings even as we huddled together near the bank of candles at the altar. Wonderfully carved wood loomed grandly around, overhead, overwhelming, drowning any reverence I felt with a feeling of how fabulous a disaster it would be if there was a fire. Shaking off the direness, I walked over to look at Chris Columbus. And came back a few minutes later, highly indignant, to hiss at my parents, “He’s not there!”

It was almost a personal affront. Though the elaborate tomb stands proudly in the massive church, Columbus is not in it. By the end of the telling and as my indignation dissipated very slowly – after all, I was brought up on the song “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety two” – I was completely confused about where the poor man actually was buried, Spain, America or somewhere in between. Let him stay here, close your eyes and pretend, my mother soothingly suggested, while my father voiced irreverent ideas about how he could actually be alive somewhere, sort of like Elvis.

But the mood persisted. As we walked through the streets of Seville, now emptying of the local population and roamed only by the occasional group of camera-hung Japanese, I couldn’t help wondering how poor old Columbus had disappeared, since there was some little mystery attached to the story. And by the time we got back to the pretty little pensione at which we were staying, I was dolefully contemplating my own feelings about not knowing where my body would be. The lady who owned the small hostal did not help with her ‘Hola! Buenas tardes!’ and the small hostal with its sepulchral lighting and doors that did not quite fit did nothing to cheer me up either. My mother was convinced that there was a corpse laid out in the house, since the Senora and her family seemed to be dressed in deepest mourning, only a faint touch of white sparking the stark black of their clothes and the melancholy mien they all wore as matching accessories.

And as we drove away the next morning, only one thought cheered me up. I had appropriated the Senora’s pen!

Writing the way it is…

For a long time now I have not written anything remotely resembling fiction – no, not even this blog, which is all the actual truth, occasionally very slightly embroidered for effect. But there was once a time when everything inspired a story and all that I wrote was madder than real life. My real life, that is. Aiding and abetting me in this were a few very interesting people, who gave me the push I needed at the time and still continue to be willing cohorts in my creative crimes. They read everything I wrote and encouraged me to be madder with each piece, forcing all sorts of crazy plot lines and linguistic convolutions out of my over-excited brain cells and revelling in the results. None of what I produced was Pulitzer worthy, but it made me happy and said what I wanted to say and feel at that moment in time.

My favourite story was written as a travelogue, but with a little bit of fiction thrown in for fun. We had just come back from a trip to China and Thailand and I was raring to write. So I did, on every aspect of our wanderings, talking about food, sightseeing, people and everything else, from environmental issues to textiles, for every newspaper that was part of the group I worked with at the time. But there was still one story that needed to come out of me and I say down and wrote it - on the ancient city of Ayutthaya and a monk I didn't meet...or did I? It stayed in the editorial cans for a long time, far longer than I was used to and wanted to tolerate. So, one day, getting my act together as only I could, I sent a copy to my fiction writing teacher in college on Long Island. She was not too acerbic in her comments or critique, but pointed out where my perspective was slipping, what I should have phrased how without losing my own identity in the change and why she preferred a certain word to one I had used.

The story was finally used and given a full broadsheet page spread, almost, interrupted by money-making ads but carried over to the next sheet. It had the photos I had taken blurred into the background, the most evocative image blown up enormously, setting the mood and tone of the story without my having to push the point. The central character was an ancient monk, inspired by a wonderfully calm and soothing stone figure that sat solemnly in the precincts of the ruined temple complex, a yellow scarf around its neck, staring sightlessly and timelessly into the distance. Those eyes saw truths no man could know, and had lived through a history that should never recur. But the monk was a wise man, one who told his tale and let his listeners make of it what they would.

In this telling, I found a certain peace, too. A sense of calm and of a wonderful confidence in my own abilities that could not have been discovered in other stories I wrote, from the romance novel with holes where the steamy parts should have been (I was 13, how did I know anything about steam then!), to the fantasy-horror tale of the aspidistra that ate a girl’s prom dress to the uncompleted serial-saga of Claudette the purple elephant who wore false eyelashes and blue mascara and had to deal with a plane crash in the Thar desert. Those were fun, but they did nothing to make me feel like I was a writer. My monk did.

Spanish flying III

We were in Santiago de Compostela – which you must have got by now if you read this – and seemed to be eating most of the day and evening. Most days began with a large vat of café au lait and a wide range of breakfast bits and bobs to choose from. The first day I, who is known to almost never eat anything before noon, wandered through buttery croissants, tangy cheese and Parma ham, before sliding blissfully into a deep dish of fresh-cut fruit. By the third morning, I was biliously averting my eyes from anything edible and burying my over-fed nose in an enormous bowl of herbal tea redolent with the soothing scents of peppermint, chamomile and hibiscus.

But Galicia exists just for the tummy, or so I am convinced. The meats, the vegetables, the aromas, the spices, the fish, the olive oil, the bread….well, perhaps not the local paysan bread. The first time I met the bread roll, I was delighted, since I absolutely revel in the smell and taste of fresh pan, or pain or just plain old pau, especially when slathered in butter and eaten warm out of the oven. So when I saw the rolls nestled into a basket, steaming gently in the chilly morning air, dampening the snowy white serviette, my mouth opened and I stared covetously, enough for my mother to hiss disapprovingly in my direction. I headed straight for that pile of bread and picked up one roll, hot and brown and crusty and placed it on my plate.

The sound startled me. It was definite, hard, loud, its maker threatening to break the china or bounce off into the far end of the hall. Balancing it carefully in the company of a couple of pats of butter and a small dish of fresh strawberry compote, I went over to sit down. My stomach growling gently, my tongue already feeling the texture of the tiny loaf, I broke it open. Or tried to. This was country bread, I knew, but I didn’t realise that they used jackhammers at the dining table in this part of the country. Ever the optimist, I took a stab at the roll, literally, trying to work my knife into it and slicing through. To no avail. The knife edge slid off the crust and crashed deafeningly on to the plate, attracting all eyes to my struggles. Pink through my sunburn, I gave up and attempted to dig my thumb into the roll, finally succeeding in tearing off a small piece. It was completely worth all the work – the bread was delicious, soft inside like the Indian gutli, with the wonderfully yeasty, homey fragrance and flavour that only fresh baked bread has. Over the week we were in the area, I managed to develop a lovely case of tendonitis of the thumb, but I had one happy tummy.

As ubiquitous as the rock-hard bread was the flan. Basically caramel custard made in small moulds, one serving each, it was eggy, milky and sweet, the burnt sugar and cinnamon flavour taking over from the egginess that was rather off-putting. I headed for it the first night, wanting something sweet to seal my enormous meal of fish, veggies and, of course, bread. It was divine, the warmth and sweetness the ideal end to a long and cold day. And then we met again at lunch the next day and then at dinner…and again at lunch and dinner…and again….Today, ‘flan’ is a cue for the family to remember that summer in Spain and those wonderful wee and wobbly puddings and go into fits of hysterical laughter.

Perhaps one of the most memorable times I spent at the dining table was one lunch, when my mother and I walked after a trip into town in as Daddy Dear and his colleagues were just finishing their meal. Of course, he stayed with us, but so did a few and fond old friends. Before I knew it, but after my aching thumb had managed to pry open the bread, I was deeply embroiled in an argument with James Morrison – known as ‘Jim’, for obvious reasons – a Nobel winning physicist, on the virtues of green peas. He hated them. I liked them and still do. From opposite sides of the gustatory fence, we duelled. I am not sure who won, but he took the honours in making me laugh. My giggles left me with a stitch in my side and a memory of Spain that only I will ever have.

Dance, the dervish

A friend of mine dropped in at work this afternoon. He is, in actuality, a friend of a lot of people I know, and a popular figure in the cultural and social scene in the country. More so abroad, where he is better known and perhaps more often seen. His name is Astad Deboo, and I am very happy to count him as one of the people I am always glad to see. Even though with his flamboyant personality, larger-than-life image and sheer ebullience, I have to be as happy to know that I see him only once every so many years!

Astad is a contemporary dancer, one who does not do anything that anyone can fit neatly into a box, or into a conception that can be called ‘dance’. He works harder than almost anyone I know in the field, and prides himself on being able to do the wild thing in a disco, on stage or on a Bollywood set, all with equal élan, always staying true to his Indian roots. But he has, for the most part, kept away from films, opting only for the occasional project that gives him not just creative satisfaction, but a great deal of enjoyment, on his own terms. He told me today that the promo song for Omkara was one of his, and he said it with that little metaphoric tweak of the collar and rise of the head.

I met Astad many years ago, when I interviewed him for a Mumbai newspaper. At the time, he was dancing more in Mumbai, albeit complaining about the lack of opportunities and encouragement in the country, in sharp contrast to that abroad, where he always has been lauded and welcomed with the proverbial open arms. And his resentment is loud and clear, but honest and completely merited. He has been given less attention and fewer opportunities in India than many of his peers, even though he works so much harder and perhaps deserves it more.

My friend is a media delight. He always has the most wonderful photographs of himself available, his portfolio constantly replenished, his image ever changing and, sometimes, fabulously OTT. For the past few years he has had a haircut that attracts attention everywhere he goes, on the street, in the corridors, in my office. And he is loyal, affectionate and completely wonderful as a friend. In small doses.

Astad is someone my mother was rather interested in, as a dancer, as a personality. And he has always been pretty fond of her, keeping her updated on his work and life and talking for hours to her over the phone and in person. For the past few years, his life and ours – my family’s – have moved apart. But with today’s visit, perhaps that old bond can be re-established. In a whole new format, of course.

Spanish flying II

We were in Santiago de Compostela, in northern Spain, and Daddy Dear was busy with his conference. With left the accompanying persons – as Mum and I were used to being called – with not much to do but gently wander through the city and be good tourists. So, draped with warm woollies, cameras and affectionate advice from friends and a relative, we wandered off after a breakfast of milky coffee, croissants and good cheer. The morning was chill, the breeze cutting through my jeans and boots as if they were not there. We were driven down to the main square and then abandoned.

But Santiago is a place where abandonment is the only route to take. You need to let go and absorb the history, the culture and, of course, the food, which is as delicious as Galician cuisine can possibly get, which is as delicious as Spanish cuisine can possibly get. But first the exercise, to take off the calories before you put them on. You walk up a series of steps and a ramp to get to the main Plaza del Obradioro, where grandees stepped over ancient stone and pilgrims made their way to the cathedral door. After all, the city is at the end of the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage path that leads to the blessings of Saint James the Apostle. At one edge of the plaza is the Plazo de Raxoi, seat of the Galician Junta, looming squat but powerful, almost as if it is making sure that only the true devotee will worship at the shrine.

The façade of the enormous church is awesome, its grey stone reflecting the cold and the sharp wind blowing bits of paper and, oddly, an empty box of film across the cobblestones. I watched it idly, wondering how far man has progressed and how he (and she, of course) still has not learned that no garbage is good garbage. Something of the kind, anyway. I was too cold to be my usual logically coherent self. I huddled for a moment against Mum as we gazed around the vast expanse of square and then, giggling a bit with chattering teeth, we ran inside the cathedral.

It was dark, as all medieval stone churches tend to be, and cold, but without the breeze to slice through all the wrappings to us. Candles formed brilliant but tiny auras of brightness around the altar and all along the walls, lighting up the stone faces of myriad saints tucked into their niches, watching over the crowds that prayed in silence and not so quietly, chanting as they watched the priest intone his verses in a soft, sibilant but carrying murmur. We sat down in one of the pews to watch, wait and, hopefully warm up, still huddling together with hands tucked into Mum’s shawl.

Suddenly there was a rushing sound and everyone looked up. The scent of a hundred flowers flowed over us, bathing us in the most divine cloud of reverence. An enormous sensor swung on its chain from the central dome high above our heads, an instant spike of vertigo and an irrational fear that the links would break and the massive metal container would come smashing down on the unprotected heads below. But nothing happened, and the incense holder went on its pendulum course, as it had done for so many years before us and would do for ever more.

We left the cathedral soon after a stroll around its confines, peering into the gloom at the pilgrims, the tourists and the saints. It was time to move on, to find more that the town had waiting for us. It was also time for lunch.

A little big deal

I walked into the house yesterday evening after work and found people there. Not just my father and Small Cat – who knows she is as much ‘people’ as most people we know – but visitors, of the ilk that we do not often get. These were people who were now strangers, to me, at least, since I had not seen them since I was about 20 or something thereabouts. But I had grown up with them in my life, as friends of my parents, so I could not do my usual social stint of nodding a polite hello and then retreating to my own room. But because I had known them to long, I could take my time to start making conversation.

So I pottered around the house getting at least a little unwound from the office and chatting with Small Cat, who had beat a hasty and scared retreat under the chair in my room. She had to be coaxed out to eat the dinner of tuna that she normally barrels into the kitchen for, and peeked furtively at the guests after each bite. And then, after she was done, fled again to her security position. I, meanwhile, took as long as possible to get set to sit. Lighting the lamp, pulling down the blinds, closing windows…all rapid-fire jobs, were dragged out for as long as possible. It is not that the visitors were bad people, or even those I did not like. It was just that I knew that they would do a long stint of reminiscing and may talk more than either my father or I was comfortable with about my mother.

But I was surprised, in a way pleasantly so. My mother was not mentioned, except in casual passing, until they were leaving, when the lady told my father how much I looked like her now (“Obviously, I am her daughter!” I hissed indignantly and illogically at him later). And while the gentleman babbled on with some degree of incoherence, the lady burbled paeans to her success, the success of her children and their children and their various friends and relations….

But at the start of my socialising with them came something that was amazingly incongruous, in a way very irritating, and disturbingly familiar. The couple was seated on our three-seater couch and the lady patted the cushion between her and her husband, asking me to come sit there. I almost instinctively refused, vaguely repelled, saying that I would stay near my father, but the suggestion grated. It was as if I was a very young child again, one who would have her cheeks pinched and her hair ruffled. Which left all of me ruffled. It reminded me of an evening years ago when the front door bell rang and I opened it to find a gentleman standing there staring at my knees. While my knees were at that stage fairly pulchritudinous, I did not think they deserved so much attention. It turned out that the gentleman was one who had been rather closely bonded to the family at the time that I was born – my parents and I, an infant a few days old, were brought home from the hospital in his car. And he had not thought that I could have grown up a little from that period in our lives.

Even while I know how associations stick and how age is comparative, I will never be comfortable with the words “My, how you have grown!”. I always start thinking sadly of the piece of chocolate cake I should not have eaten and the jeans that once fit me perfectly without my having to breathe heavily to get into them. I see myself ballooning alarmingly from a wee baby in a cradle to a full-grown adult, soft curves, spike heels and all, as if it were faintly unsavoury an activity. And I cannot help feeling that the assorted traumas of the years I spent growing up were all for naught.

Spanish flying - I

A few years ago, we wandered through Spain. It was, as always, a work-vacation, where my father had a conference for a week and then we wandered through the country, stopping at random to explore, recoup and, of course, eat. And we met some very interesting people, folks we had known for years and others we had never seen before. There were also lots of sights to see, from magnificent cathedrals to stunning art, landscapes that shattered reason and small towns where ghosts ran through the streets. And each moment was an experience to be treasured, to be remembered, to be savoured.

We started in Madrid, landing at an hour that seemed unearthly after leaving Mumbai in the middle of the night. The hotel was cool, calm, quiet, almost gloomy, its walls and floors a dim jigsaw of water-coloured mosaic, the central elevator shaft a silent column that whisked people up and down. My room was around the corner from the one my parents occupied and between being terrified of windows that would not open and a door that creaked horrendously, I managed to dream up all sorts of visions that were as horrific as the box office was for Lady in the Water. A couple of days we spent wandering through the cool mornings and sunbaked afternoons in the city, tramping across painfully cobbled plazas and wandering down shaded lanes with laundry draping over balconies on apartment blocks coloured vibrant pink, green and yellow.

And then it was time to go north. The great adventure began early one morning, when we tramped, bags and baggage in tow, down to the car rental office. While my father filled in forms and my mother examined all the tourist literature, I got into the car – a Renault – and started it. It obliged, efficiently, neatly, hummingly. I put it into gear, watched carefully by the man who was handing over the keys, and urged the little chariot to move forward. It sat there, its small button nose perky, almost sniffing the air with an eagerness to get on with the trip. The man beamed fondly at me, waved me forward. I wiggled a little in my seat, trying to tell the car that it was okay to move. It just sat there, obdurate. I had a little chat with it, telling it how I was actually a pretty good driver, I knew which side of the road to be on and I did have a valid and untagged license, but it didn’t respond, except to chirp almost disparagingly when I hit the horn in my effort to find the brake. It just was not there. The man was starting to worry, that was obvious. And I was starting to get annoyed. Eventually, when my parents came out to investigate, the brake suddenly came undone and we shot off towards the opposite pavement.

Leaving behind a visibly alarmed car-hire official, we got on the highway and headed for Santiago de Compostela, where the conference was scheduled to be, at the northern end of the country. We got there late in the evening, and were greeted affectionately by old friends. Come out on the terrace after you settle in, we were instructed, and we did, hair and clothes blowing in the chill breeze, fingers and toes numbed by the cold, noses flowing with the unexpected and sharp change in temperature. A huge pot of dark red liquid was brewing under a large umbrella, wafting its interesting scents towards where we shivered. It was red wine, being simmered with coffee beans and goodness knows what else, spicy, fragrant and, best of all, hot. A close friend came up to give my mother a hug as she held her glass. Startled, she jumped; the poor man recoiled, his shirt wet, his chest probably seared. My father watched, smiling, while I stood there, my eyes watering, hoping that we would soon be fed and sent to nice warm beds inside…

Inside, outside

Over the past few months a lot has been done in our apartment – tiling, polishing, painting, woodwork, refurbishment and much more. And in the process, I found myself going back in time a little, to when I was not just younger, but far more enthusiastic about doing this, that, the other and a good deal that was fun and adrenaline-pumping. One of these myriad assignments was as text editor for a plush lifestyle magazine. It was actually all about large and very luxurious homes, with a bit of personality of the owner thrown it for interest. It was a fun assignment and taught me that a lot of editorial work is make-believe.

And then it grew, rather out of control. It all began with the biannual magazine, but ended with a very large, heavy and – giggle – “authoritative” book. Sponsored by a former cricket player turned businessman, it had big names attached, from Mont Blanc to Baccarat to Burberry and everything from the design to the tone of the writing had to match. The primary reason for the volume was to use the enormous collection of very nice images that the magazine had accumulated over the years, which were mouldering in the stores after being paid for, at exorbitant rates. So the book was conceived, the plan formulated and the begging began.

It was not easy to put together. The publisher wanted Names to write it, from the introduction to the end-note. Letters and faxes were sent out, phone calls were made, lunches were hosted, tea was poured and yours truly decided to do a bunk until stuff was available for me to work on. But when I got back a long while later, having been happily and conveniently out of India and determinedly out of touch, I found that there was total chaos. No writing had been done, because none of the desired writers had agreed to do their bit. And we had an oversized dummy, an oversized ambitious streak and an oversized wish-list, but an undersized budget, an undersized deadline and a sadly undersized body of evidence from which to find inspiration.

Nevertheless, we soldiered on. The managing editor and the publisher were sure the project would happen, on time and in place and, while they argued, I wandered around the shops around the building in a happy haze of retail therapy. Finally, the decision was taken, after much cogitation and campism. A reluctant participant, I would run away whenever I could, being completely uncooperative and obstreperous, and would be found in the nearest bookstore or shoe shop, only to be dragged back to the office, not quite kicking and screaming, but protesting wildly all the while. A stern lecture from the inner self later, I sat down with the team to chalk out just how it would be done.

And it was a masterpiece of time management. I was working full time and had only the odd weekend to spare. My managing editor was a busy woman herself, but very firm about keeping my button nose to the grindstone. And once I had pinned my own self down to work, that’s exactly what I did. The book was divided into chapters and took very little time to actually write. The boss took on a little, a little more was farmed out to people who said they knew how and the rest was left to my imagination. Which took on its serious avatar and set to finish the job the best it could.

It was not a complicated book. What we did was do a walkthrough of a home, from the walkway to the bathroom, taking in the foyer, the living and dining areas and the bedrooms on the way. Somewhere along the way we filled in the bits and pieces that go into creating a home from a house, and used details in the photographs we had to add interest. And, while some words became favourites (patina, finish, lush and more), on the whole it was a well designed, well written, well executed product that I still see in bookstores in various parts of the country. And, even as the kudos did collect and the celebrations happily fizzed though the social scene, we knew we had a product that we could and would be proud of, glitches and all.

But only we knew how it all really came together – and that’s our little secret!

Turning the page

I have a habit that the family encourages. It occasionally goers spiralling out of control, but no one minds, beyond mildly grumbling that we have no more space for storage. And, no, it is not my shoe fetish, the one that my father teases me about (just to clarify, I do NOT have 189 pairs of shoes and not all of them are four-inch spikes either) relentlessly. It is not my dreadfully decadent tendency to read soap labels, nor is it the inescapable need I have to close cupboard doors and slide shut half-open drawers.

What I do, sometimes furtively and deviously, is buy books. Not always after a great deal of browsing and pondering, but by first genre, then author and then series. As a result, I have the strangest conglomeration of literature (in a manner of speaking) that I know of, mixing romance with crime, food with travel and ancient history with modern chick-lit. Eclectic, yes, eccentric, perhaps, exotic, very often. All of this works perfectly well in a library, in a newspaper format or in a logically considered discussion on literary taste, but not so sensibly when it comes to shopping.

But the way we do it makes more sense than the actual doing of it, if you know what I mean. Perhaps the first thing I do when I am anywhere near a bookshop, in whatever city I happen to be at that moment in time, is to find the most sympathetic face amongst the sales staff. It is very often male, and I use the age-old knowledge of the power of woman and smile beguilingly, until I have the chap’s attention, to the exclusion of any one else in our little ‘friendship’. Casually cheery chat, a little personal Q&A and I have a friend for life, which in the book-buying biz is the magic formula. So whoever it is remembers me, finds me what I want and almost always sends me a sweet greeting card for major festive occasions. I also get an occasional call asking where I am and why I have not been to the shop in a while, but those are part of the game and, after a point, I am actually interested in talking to the man.

So now I have people in my life who are not just kinda nice, as the phrase goes, but also truly useful, which is a bonus. There is Mahesh, who owns his own bookstore in the distant suburbs, who once in a while wakes up and gives me what I have asked for many moons earlier. Then there is Sanjeev, who is part of a well known shop and has actually found me two books in the short span of a week after I asked him for them. And there is a nameless but very helpful young man at a huge bookstore chain who always comes bustling up to me when I walk in and demands to know, persistently, what he can do for me.

Women in the business are very different. The same store with the anonymous gentleman once gave me Binnie, a young woman who was fast became a friend, never mind that she rarely found me anything I wanted to read. And at another equally extensive and reputed chain, I discovered Rima, ruthlessly efficient, wonderfully au fait with almost every esoteric title I threw at her and totally apologetic that she could not help me more when I needed it.

Soon I will be at one of my favourite stores in Delhi, trolling the shelves for reading pleasure. And, after I find it, I will beam fondly upon another old friend, whose name I can never remember, and thank him for existing. He was put on this planet and in that store just for me, I always believe. Just as all these very nice people were!

The great potato saga

I read a bit in the Daily Telegraph today on how Christie’s had held an auction of old cookbooks. While some interesting volumes sold – like one by Thomas Muffet, who told his readers how curds and whew was made, perhaps the same recipe used for his daughter Patience, aka Miss Muffet, the arachnophobe! – one, written by a German, did not. It was the first known that explained how to cook potatoes. Which is a good thing to do; after all, potatoes being the food of life!

The first time I ever cooked potatoes was when I was about 12 years old. I spent a fairly long time talking my fond mother into allowing me to use the stove without constant supervision. Then, acting on my creative instinct, which was indeed most creative at that time of my life, I sat on the kitchen counter and grated my way through what seemed to be an endless pile of spuds. It was not without incident. After having peeled off bits and pieces of my own skin, I proceeded to grate more of my fingers into the heap of potato, very painfully and, regrettably, red-tingedly. Oh, well, I reasoned, we were all not pure vegetarians and it was family blood, so it was okay.

But the rest of the culinary adventure was not even as successful as this, albeit rather less painful. I chopped up some garlic, ginger and onions, macerated tomatoes and cleaned a heap of green coriander leaves. The plan was prepared for. All that I had to do was cook. I had a nebulous idea of how I would go about making what I could see as the end product, and took a deep breath before splashing some oil into a pan and lighting the gas.

That is as far as the theory went. In practice, after sautéing the spices and browning the onions, the potatoes went in. they were supposed to cook soft, then go slightly crunchy at the edges, keeping the basic shape and size of the shreds intact, even as they got completely cooked through. But my culinary skills didn’t quite match my conceptive ones and something went a little off. By the end of the process, I had this wonderfully fragrant and, I must admit, delicious mess. The problem was that it was just that: a mess.

As I got older and played more in the kitchen, I became fairly good at managing my potatoes. A few days ago, I boiled some almost completely done, then did a quick last minute sauté in a touch of butter, sloshed in a little red wine, some mustard and a sprinkle of thyme and let it cook down until the spuds were soft and smelling divine. Then a moment or two on high heat and the edges were crisp, a deep golden bordering the pinky-brown of the body. Matched with julienned zucchini sautéed in olive oil with paprika and broiled chicken breasts, it was not bad at all, even though I say so myself.

Maybe my favourite way with potatoes is the South Indian style. Chopped into cubes, sautéed crisp in a little oil tinged with sputtered mustard seeds, sprinkled with curry leaves and cayenne powder and finished with a squeeze of lemon, it is failsafe and delicious, ideal with the standard concoction of dahi chawal or dal and rice. Try this with sweet potatoes, avoid the salt and add some pepper instead of chilli powder and you find heaven in a pan. Try it. And if you know any interesting recipes I can play with, do tell…

Day and light

It’s a wonderful day outside my window. I hammer away at my computer keyboard, trying to write an edit that would be at least minimally coherent, and occasionally steal glimpses of my view, wanting to be out there with the fresh cool air, the newly mown lawn and the small puppies playing in the parking lot. Even the wisp of black smoke from the factory chimney looks clean and adds to the overall picture of an astonishingly bright and brilliant sky, a marvel of distilled clarity in a city that is normally heavily polluted and smog-clogged. There is a gentle breeze that cools the toes and nose even in the golden heat of the sunshine that beams down into our little enclave. A tiny butterfly does practice runs at the glass, veering at the last minute to avoid crashing into the closed window. The drivers lounge in the strip of garden, playing cards, sleeping, gossiping and reading.

And upstairs, in carpeted air-conditioned imprisonment, I watch, envious, sighing, wanting my freedom.

Chalk the line

A friend of mine is very firm about not crossing the line, about sticking to preordained limits and being circumspect about behaviour and responses. There is, of course, some logic in this diktat, however irritating it may be and however unnecessary. But there is a simple point that my friend may not have taken into account when setting the rule: maybe there would be no need for the rule at all. Also, a little smudging of the chalk line, albeit mentally drawn, can always move it from the position it was originally meant to be in. and, since it is a rule, it can always be bent, if not broken.

Which is a good and worthy thing to do in today’s world, when following the rules to the proverbial T can be not just boring, but considered a display of a lack of initiative and ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking. It happens very often in writing. Using a word out of its normal semantic framework, or changing its context to fit what you want to say rather than what it is normally supposed to say makes the story far more interesting. And there is a wonderful way in which words can be manipulated to “jump through hoops” – as I once told my fiction writing teacher in college – to mean one thing on the surface and another to those who have any intelligence. It’s a great way to be bitchy without sounding it!

There are, of course, obvious roles to break. Like traffic lights. And no-parking places. And one way streets. While I am fairly law-abiding where those are concerned, there have been moments when I peer furtively around to check on policemen and then zoom through the red light, down the wrong way to park just under a no-parking sign. My pet policeman in South Mumbai would aid and abet me when I was much younger and much less practiced at the game, even making sure that a rival didn’t get in before me, never mind that the car was closer to the space than mine was.

And then there are diet rules, which are perhaps the easiest to formulate the most difficult to keep to and the best to bend. Try keeping to the abysmal regimen of a high-fibre roti, boiled veggies and no chocolate and see how you suffer from everything from dizziness to an overactive colon to badtemperedness. And you will understand just how and why you wander over to the fridge after everyone else has gone to bed and can’t see you breaking the rules, dig into the leftover cheesy bake and that wonderfully dark chocolate and wreck whatever will power and calorie count you make have been determined to keep. And the next day, through the cloud of regret that you feel when you think about the inches you were supposed to be taking off your middle, you have a quiet sense of peace and satisfaction that only comes from doing something you should not have done.

Which comes in almost anything that you really want to do, and go out and do, rules or no rules. And that, my friend, is why the chalk line always moves!

Deep throat

(I know, I know, it is not quite the association one wants here, but it is descriptive, as you will soon see…)

For the past few days I have been under the weather and pretty low. Which is not unusual, since the weather has been cowed down by a strangely whimsical lack of control from the powers that would normally control it. Add to it paint dust and wood polish fumes and, voila! You have my favourite ailments in the whole world: cold, cough and fever. Having got rid of the first, for the most part – it is in the green gunk stage, but that would be so disgusting to write about that it would put off the few readers that I have – and banished the second to almost-normal degrees (ha ha!), I am now having a prolonged argument with the middle factor. I never get coughs (she says with valiant good humour, trying to speak through a paroxysm of hacking and wheezing, with a couple of gasps thrown in for good measure) but I do get the infrequent bronchial attack. I call it one of the few things that Delhi gave me. For which I am duly ungrateful.

So as a result, apart from the most unbecomingly ungraceful whooping that I occasionally am convulsed by, and the nasty dull ache in the chest that makes me wish I was dead, at least until the cough was completely gone, I have this wonderfully growly voice that is very unlike my usual dulcet tones (Do I hear a derisive “HA!” from those who know me well? Believe me, they are just envious.). I crackle into the telephone like I am trying to vie with the phone company in the who-makes-more-static stakes, and I occasionally break into a hilariously uncontrolled squeak just at the moment that I am aiming for a seriously intent tone. More amusingly (for listeners, not myself), my voice tends to get rather stuck somewhere on its way out of me, so I push to be audible; and right when I have the decibel right, it gets unstuck and whatever I am saying comes out in an embarrassingly high-phonic bellow.

So I decided to take a bit of a spot poll and see what other people thought of my voice, since I could not judge it for myself. Being rather biased, of course, and firmly believing that I was sounding as sexy as Satan’s female equivalent in a pair of wicked red spike heels, I knew that the opinions would be positive. But life is full of surprises. My boss, startlingly me with his non-irascibility and actually being astonishingly cheerful about life in general, the office and my spectral appearance after a morning out in the sun, gave me an avuncular lecture – mercifully severely edited down to minimalistic proportions – about how if I didn’t rest the chest, I would be debilitated. After confirming that he did know what the big words meant, I glowered at him and walked back to my own desk. Then I spoke to a buddy in Delhi, more to thank him for a parcel he had sent Small Cat than to show off my voice, and asked whether I sounded husky and dark-chocolate-ish. Go home and stay in bed until you are all better, he said, a certain disgust in my obstreperousness lacing his normally fond tones.

Ok, so I was getting nothing I wanted with this lot. So I got on the phone to a friend that I knew would be nicer. “You been ill?” she demanded to know with my first hello. I gave up. I asked Father, with the fabulously coaxing note that only a daughter can use to get what she wants. He said, “I told you to stay home, you sound awful.” So I retreated into my head and replayed the scene where I had laryngitis a few years ago and had asked my mother whether I sounded sexy and wonderful; she successfully dampened me with “You sound sick.”

I felt like Mick Jagger; no satisfaction to be had anywhere. I think I will talk to Small Cat instead. At least she only bites.

Excuses, excuses

Ok, so between friends visiting from out of town and leaving at the most inconveniently short notice, too much work for an over-taxed brain, residue from house painting and polishing and a stress level that is reaching beyond personal management levels, my buddy the virus is back. Which means that I get a break from this blog. Sigh. And to think that this is the route by which I make friends and influence people and talk about what matters most to me!

Oh, well, so that is life as she is wrote. And she will not write for a few days, not until her head is stuck firmly back on her neck. After she finds it, of course!

A woman thing

Some of my favourite heroines are from days long gone, but their attitudes and beliefs are so incredibly today that you almost expect them to be standing on the front mat when the doorbell rings. Which could be the reason that I prefer books with a strong and sassy women as lead player, be she a lover, a fighter, a doer or a detective.

One such that my mother introduced me to is Flora Poste, star of Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. In spite of the mud, in spite of Big Business the bull, in spite of the Starkadders and, most of all, in spite of the lack of baths, Flora is undaunted. She goes about the process of managing her relatives’ lives with ruthless efficiency, marshalling them into marriage, new careers, psychotherapy and much affection for her, even with her meddling and domineering ways. All using only her admittedly devious mind, her organisational strategies and her infinite and self-admired charm. And, at the end of it all, she was quite willing and ready to sit back and let her man take her home…with her conniving it all, of course. She was perhaps the first heroine of a book that I ‘met’ that had chutzpah – in fact, she probably embodied the word for me.

It took a long time for anyone else who lived between pages to match Flore Poste. Most heroines of novels today, even the most liberated and feisty, tend to wilt rather when they finally meet the man of their (pah!) ‘dreams’. Like Barbara Cartland’s girls, they swoon, at least mentally and emotionally, and become doormats who would do almost anything for a hormone fix. If they wouldn’t, then they moped and whined when they had to cope alone or, at the very least, without the man who made them tingle.

Perhaps Christine Vole from Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution came close. She didn’t whine and whinge, she did not wait for things to happen, but made them happen, and she certainly did not expect the men in her life, whether her husband or Sir Wilfred Robarts, the lawyer defending him, to do much for her. She was magnificent in Christie’s words, and as regal and contemptuous in the unforgettable role by Marlene Dietrich. While Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier’s heroine) was cold, calculating and self-serving, Christine had a class that transcended all notions of women with power. For me, at least.

Also an Agatha Christie creation, Miss Jane Marple embodied all that is strong and resilient in women. While physically getting frailer as she gets older (naturally), she used her old-lady charm, her amazing mind and her observations of the world around her to make sure that criminals got what they deserved. And she did it with much dignity and old-world sobriety, making her methods and her manner not just believable, but likeable, too.

There are so many women in fiction who can be considered Flora Poste-ish. But they exist today and tend to be macho rather than feminine, scheming rather than gently conniving and blatant rather than just certain of what they want and how they will get it. I have not yet given up looking. Maybe that’s why I buy so many books!

Film and foible

I met a friend for lunch today. He is a filmmaker, with ad films, short films and even a music video to his credit. We did not spend too long together, but I enjoyed the time – it was perhaps the first real conversation I have had with someone apart from my father, my friend Nina and my unusually cheerful boss in a time that has been too long. Over pasta and a sandwich, we talked about a lot of things, none in any great detail, sort of a catching up and introduction that has been a long time in the happening. And there will be more, when we have the leisure and the inclination, I know.

But one of the things we did talk about was movies, albeit – like everything else – in very brief. This meeting happened just after I had finished writing an editorial on the latest on Manoj Night Shyamalan, the director who made the unabashedly fabulous Sixth Sense and the not-bad Unbreakable. Since then, the brilliance that everyone had learned to expect from him seemed to have faded. ‘Night’ had become lost in the daylight, with no real sense, sixth or otherwise, of where he was going, cinematically speaking. His films were not bad as productions – The Village, which spooked me after the first ten minutes so that I never watched the rest, and Lady in the Water, which sounded so bad that I never made any attempt to see any of it – but they didn’t quite do the trick. Not in the way that Sixth Sense did, at least.

So why Shyamalan now? The news is out that his Lady in the Water has been nominated for four Razzies. Which couldn’t be worse for a man who made a film that made it to the Oscars a few years ago. Of course, a lot of people who are well known, from Ron Howard to Sharon Stone to Nicholas Cage to Jessica Simpson are on the list as well. Which makes for distinguished company. And, at some level, the Razzies are taken seriously – since they happen the day before the Oscars, those who win know well that they need to get their cinematic act together and get to work to do better, regain their form.

Why don’t we have Razzies in Bollywood? For such duds as the new Umrao Jaan, the recently released Salaam-e-Ishq, the fabulously dreadful Bhaagam Bhag…there are so many that I can’t even remember them. Watching Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham for the millionth time (only for Kajol’s Chandni Chowk part, I swear), hastily clicking past Kabhi Alvida…, looking for anything apart from Jaaneman – life is not easy for someone who has fun watching Hindi movies but refuses to waste time on anything dire, dreary or difficult to understand. A Razzie or four (as poor Shyamalan may just go home with) could possibly change the trend of making terrible movies into one of making decent, even watchable films.

Or maybe not, who knows. We need to ask Karan Johar, Nikhil Advani, Pridarsan and their ilk to find out!

Feline foibles

Small Cat is a big girl now, or she would have us believe. We, on the other hand, know how much of a baby she still is at all of seven months old, as she scampers through the house leaving a trail of small white footprints and chirping in varying tones all along her route, announcing her sudden arrivals and even more precipitate departures. And we are reminded of it as she leaps out from inside her favourite hiding places to ambush us as we walk past, skids over the polished marble floors in pursuit of an imagined bug or falls asleep in mid-hop when we tease her with a piece of string. And when she is hungry, she bites; when she is tired, she droops into her basket; when she wants attention, she lies on her back with her head craning in whichever direction we may be. A cuddle is always wanted, but she needs to be caught first, her astonishingly loud meows telling us that she is lurking behind the bedroom door, sneaking under the sofa or hiding under the flap of her cardboard carton.

But in all this, she still does not really have a name. Some time ago we did decide that officially she would be Cindy Clawford, but we have never called her that. A friend of ours does, asking every time she phones how ‘Cindy’ is. Another friend calls Small Cat ‘Red’, since I once wrote in this blog that my favourite colour was red and even our pet was a shade of that hue. But for some reason, neither Father nor I have a name for her that she can identify, though she does respond to the tone and the fact that we invariably have a treat for her to either eat or play with – a pigeon feather, a biscuit, a handful of wheat grass…

For me, Small Cat is, more often than not, ‘Punkin’. She is like my favourite gourd, the deep orange pumpkin, round and sweet and delicious. She also gets called ‘Nanu’, which in Gujarati means ‘small one’, which suits her well – she is, after all, small and doll-like. Occasionally, she is given the moniker of ‘Fatty’, especially when she is just waking up from a long nap, her face round, her bottom fluffy and stout, her eyes circular and curious. We talk to her in a strange mixture of Tamil and a little English, with the meaning in the voice rather that in the words. But we do not call her by any name.

Which is starting to bother me. The cat I once had and adored had a name that he answered to, running in from the garden or jumping on to the dining table when he was asked to. This little girl is starting to respond when I or my father calls her in Tamil…though that could be more a response to the dish of food that we are setting out or one of her toys that we are holding. But what name she is to be familiarly known by is still a mystery. Suggestions, of course, for a name for Small Cat are always welcome.

A rose between the teeth

It is an awkward situation or, at least, potentially so. A friend of mine is in town – he lives in another city – and we plan to meet. We have spoken for hours in the time we have known each other and look forward – mutually, I hope – to the time we will spend chatting in person over lunch, catching up on our lives and times and books that we read and want to. But there is one little problem that I worry about, if I think about it. I have no real picture of him, except as tall, long-limbed, black clad and bearded whom I met for all of about 30 seconds on a day when deadlines breathed heavily down my keyboard. Which picture could describe a lot of people in Mumbai in general and the community of communicators that forms a large part of my professional life.

And because of the profession that I have chosen – or that chose me – I have done a lot of that; meeting strangers, I mean. Many have been people in the news, so what they looked like was a fairly easy issue to deal with. At times, I have had to guess wildly, or else depend on a mediator to do the introductions, which has worked well, most of the time. More recently, it has become easier, especially over the last ten years or so, since the time mobile phones became standard issue in this country. Today, I rarely even meet some of the people I need to work with, since all dialogue is conducted over the telephone, email and online chat. But that is a different story.

Journalism is not a boring business and meeting people has always been fun for me. Perhaps one of my first lessons in judging whether someone was worth meeting or not came with the photographs they carried of their work – the really good images always merited a large spread, a smaller one, more substance and less visual. Many of these people come to you instead of you having to go to them, which makes it all a breeze, because you do the interview, ruthlessly shepherd the guest out, turn back to hammer out the story in a shorter space of time than it takes to meet whoever the subject is, and then get on to bigger and better things like going out to eat chocolate cake, shopping for shoes or heading home for dinner.

One of the few times recently I had to meet someone I did not know was a few weeks ago. I had no clue what the gentleman looked like and had only a voice over the telephone to identify him by. I did have a tiny panic attack, since I am remarkably inept at the introduce-yourself-to-a-stranger bit, but then I remembered the marvellousness of the cellphone. We were to meet in a bookstore, which made it rather more comfortable, since there was something to do before the rendezvous actually happened. Of course, with typical enthusiasm, I did smile beamingly at a couple of men - who were not my ‘date’ and so understandably rather startled by my cheeriness – but managed to recover my sang froid quickly enough to pretend I was laughing at something I was reading. The meeting did eventually take place without my embarrassing myself too much, and it made for fairly decent reading.

But nothing in my life happens in singles. Right after this little work-related get-together I had another man to liaise with, in the same bookstore. Him I had never seen either, just spoken to over the phone as I drove home. And it was even more important that he get a good impression of me, since it could mean a new job that would be more fun than what I do now. In my characteristically irreverent style – which he fortunately seemed to approve of – I asked if I should hold a rose between my teeth for identification, but he reassured me that a phone call would do the trick. And it did.

Now whether I should use the same strategy for my friend from out of town or no, I am not sure. But if things go as they tend to in all the rest of my life, we will manage to find each other fairly easily…and then have much to remember and giggle about for as long as we are friends.