Happy 2007!

No, that is not a typo. It was a fairly happy 2007, until it started winding down. Then it hit a bit of a blip and, after a deep breath, started up again to end in a rush that sent me headlong into a hectic battle with deadlines, personal and professional, with what felt like revolving doors installed in my home, my work and my psyche. But all in all, it was fun, a whirlwind of life, love, longing and laughter. Some people dropped off my must-email list, others got erased from my mobile phone, a few did their own vanishing acts, leaving me rather bewildered and eventually vaguely amused, mostly because I am of the ilk to find vague amusement in almost anything, given the time and the space to do so. And a lot of people made their way into my must-call, must-email, must-meet and must-know-better lists, just because they seemed to know who they were, what they wanted and where they were going, which made them far more interesting than those with no clue and no interest in asking me to be part of the great adventure to find out.

At my age and stage in life, I am no longer interested in egos. If they exist, fine. I have mine, other people can have theirs, it’s all matter no mind for me. If they bring me some kind of stimulation, great; if not, great, too. There is a certain degree of intrigue, a special curiosity I have in getting to know people, especially those who add value to my life and who do not cause any untoward disturbance in my world – if they do, they soon make a less-than-graceful exit. For me, it is academic, for the most part; after all, the ‘best friend’ I had in college wandered off into her own horizon some years ago and I have never really been too wrapped up in knowing why she went or where she went to. It is the story of ships that pass, sometimes at night, most often during a special time in your life, that you remember with a slight nostalgia, once in a while a fondness, rarely rancour, at least not after the hurt has been washed away.

Time is just like that. It passes, no matter how much you want to stop it and keep it tucked away into your memory basket. Slowly, inevitably, you start to forget; details blur and faces tend to become softer, less real; words are forgotten and contexts reinterpreted. Meals you ate become better…or worse. Clothes you bought are always worth the effort and the money. That pair of shoes you did not buy is always the one that fit best in all your life. And the person you never kept in touch with is always the one you should have known better.

There are so many whom I ‘met’ this year that would be fun to know better – some in person, some over the phone, others on email. There is a girl who works with an international auction house, for one; we keep making plans to meet and never do, even if we work in the same city. There is a chef who lives and works in New York, who is said to be the Next Best Thing to stuffed parathas, but our contact is on email and sporadic, if that. There is a lady who works with an international content syndication service – we met briefly in the office and she had a wonderful smile; best of all, she remembered, even after just about four minutes, just what I wanted and has been indefatigably sending it to me since. And there is a fashion designer whose work I revel in, whose work I buy fanatically, who sounds like a woman with ideas that so match my own; we have occasional email contact, but I am one of her staunchest fans.

Maybe 2008 will be a year of more faces to match names, more conversations to match reputations. For me and for mine, I certainly hope that this will be a time of change for the better in every way – more love, more life, more laughter.

Listing madly

I am not sick on ships, but I am getting sick of what we are doing these days, even though we have not been doing it for that long. It’s always the story of what ever went around, coming around again. In other words, if you ever read the newspapers, you will know that it is THAT time of year, when everyone in town is bogged down with doing end-of-the-year special issues, with lists of what happened, where, how and when, with nice pictures attached, along with who died, who got married, who had babies and who won the elections. Which means that everyone is running hither and yon, sitting in on endless meetings replete with what really amounts to nothingness, and compiling reams of lists that will eventually, considering the space actually available in a newspaper, be whittled down to a sad minimum.

In the compilation, there is always a list of people who died during the year, with fingers crossed that no one of note dies in the span of a few hours between finishing production of the page and the paper seen on the stands and on doorsteps everywhere. It’s a mind-deadening process, with no lists saying the same thing. Dates may vary, or spellings of names, or even the facts about what the individual did to make him or her famous. And there will always be comparisons – someone is more important than someone else, or someone needs to be included, while someone else can be left out. And then comes the painful process of finding photographs to match names – many will not be available, or if they can be found, of a quality that cannot, under any circumstances, even if you smile sweetly at the processing team, be used.

Then comes the design of the paper. For the issue of the first day of the new year, there will always be a unique design, one that no one will agree on, just as they do not agree on anything else that goes into the pages. The head designer will want one look, the editors will demand something else and the actual page-makers will grumble about both, finding it difficult to fit the content into the layout…or the layout to the content. A mismatch inevitably results in flaring tempers, frayed nerves, raised voices and more resignations that would normally happen when the newspaper coasts along in its usual groove. There will be last minute changes, last minute orders and last minute additions and withdrawals, all causing even more stress and strife.

And when the paper is printed, something will go wrong, almost like the flaw that is added to a perfect carpet to avert the evil eye. There will be a caption that kills off someone who is very much alive, a headline that actually belongs to another story and a spelling that is innovative, to put it mildly. When the paper is reviewed, all its flaws will be noticed and noted, even as those who are responsible cower under desks and behind doors or at home to avoid the wrath. And the positives are given a passing note of praise, one that settles as lightly as a flitting moth on the tip of a warm lightbulb as it goes hunting for dinner.

Just as all the frenzy reaches its peak, it’s over. The newsroom calms down and the entire team learns to live with any of the changes that may be permanent, dealing with each in a generally phlegmatic manner. It is the nature of the whimsical beast, after all!

Christmas time

Today is Christmas. It used to be my favourite time of year, when I was surrounded by people who were happy, there was lots of good food, lots of nice presents – though some eluded any description of ‘useful’, a few being far from identifiable – and lots of nice and progressively more silly jokes as the day wore on and the party got happier. Now that I am all grown up, Christmas does not seem to have its former charm, being reduced to just another day when I have to be at work doing the usual dreary bits and pieces that I have to. But there is still a lot of fun and laughter involved, starting with the vendors selling ridiculously bejewelled Santa hats at the traffic lights and ending, in a manner of speaking, with the clouds of brandy that waft through our house as the Christmas pudding steams merrily in its bain marie.

But through all the cheer and not-so-cheerful times is a sort of kind of maybe belief in that jolly old fat-man called Santa Claus. For me, as a child, he lived inside my chest and you could hear him go thump-thump-thump if you listened carefully. That, Father always told me, was Santa working in his toy factory; it had nothing to do with cardiac muscles pumping blood through the body or anything as mundane as that concept. It was all deeply spiritual in a childish kind of way, speaking to my very young mind from the perspective of having someone you could believe in who always knew whether you were naughty or…well…not so bad.

Even today, at my advanced age and stage of life, Santa Claus holds a special charm for me. He still beats his syncopated rhythm in my chest and has been known to skip a beat when I see something that calls long and loud for my instant devotion – like a fabulous pair of diamond chandelier earrings or Pierce Brosnan running down the street after a suspected criminal in a particularly butt-worshipping episode of Remington Steele. And he gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling when he comes in the astonishingly excellent guise of Father, glasses, Small Cat appendage and all, to give me a Christmas present I never expected, be it a new brand of soap or a gold necklace.

Now, for me, Christmas is not only about Santa Claus, but more about the memories that made me happy. In my small way of celebrating, I try to create new memories that I hope make the people I care about even happier, be it the smell of spice and brandy permeating the apartment or the hug that wakes everyone up in the morning. There will be cake, there will be laughter and there will be some sadness that people who should be there to celebrate with us are not, but most of all there will be a huge bag full of love and goodies that will last a long long time.

Changes again

Change is good, or so I am told. They also say soup is good food, which I have to agree with. but right now, right here, there is no connection between the two, not that I can immediately think up, that is. Of course, I am not sure I am able to think any more today, it having been a long day in a series of long days in a very long week, even though it is only halfway through the week that is halfway through a very long month that is at the end of what seems to be an astonishingly short year. That apart, when I was writing a blog on nothing in particular, it seemed like I needed to get some focus into it, so I decided to write on food, which is a favourite subject of mine, but now that it has focus, I find so much else that I want to talk about. And since a blog is essentially self-indulgent and for the soul of the person writing it, I think I can do what I want to do. If occasionally I do focus on food, or people or books or travel, or whatever, so be it. Right?

In short, this space is changed as of today. I go back to rambling. And happily so.

This morning I was at an art show, one that was – the captions said – a tribute to one of my favourite artists, especially in his avatar as a sculptor. Romanian Constantin Brancusi, whose work captured my very young and raw imagination when I first saw his Sleeping Muse at the Metropolitan Museum in New York when I was a child, was on par, in my childish mind, with people like Alexander Calder and Henry Moore, more since I saw them all during that time in my life rather than any artistic connection they may have had. It helped, of course, that my mother once said that I had a vague resemblance to Mlle Pogany, whose big-eyed pony-tailed head was captured in so many ways by Brancusi. So when I read about this exhibit, I had to be there.

I was not impressed. There were very few pieces on show, which was fine, since they could all be studied and savoured at leisure. It was mainly paintings, the rough lines and occasional dash of vivid colour that the artist did. There was one small marble carving that was suggestive of the beauteous Mlle Pogany. And there were others that had a certain mystery, an intriguing quality that made me want to look at them from various angles, walking around each to find a new facet with every blink. There was even one small yet delicately suggestive sculpture that had me wishing for a bigger bag or a more voluminous outfit into which I could sneak it and flee the gallery, to set it on the glass dining table at home and have a happy gloat. But, being rather law abiding and not equipped for larceny on any scale, I just sighed and left.

The show, as you may have guessed, was not of original Brancusi work. But it was the efforts of a group of young Romanian artists who were paying their tribute to the great artist, especially to his ‘Indian’ experience. This put the works into the right perspective, with one fairly large hanging piece in what seemed to be deeply scored wood that was planned to be placed in a shrine, reflected in and spatially cradled by a pool of water. Did it work? For me, only after I read the accompanying note, I must confess.

There was no one else at the show, perhaps since it was too early in the morning for the average art-seeker to be out and about, or because there was no social event involved, or because it was a rather esoteric artist being honoured in a rather esoteric exhibition. Whatever the case, it is a pleasure to see the memories of an extremely interesting childhood come home…to my home.

Rites of passage

For some odd reason, one of the most vivid memories I have of that numbing time after my mother died two years ago is the lunch we had to host for friends, neighbours and assorted others after the last ritual that we had to perform as surviving family was done. I, as newly-anointed and very reluctant ‘lady of the house’, was carefully instructed by the priest to include various foods in the meal. Wisely, Father and I chose to have it catered by specialists in the business, who took over. All we had to do was provide an occasional serving dish and then, as hosts, play our appropriate roles. But the team who came in with the food was superbly organised, dealing with all our kitchen idiosyncracies and the non-traditional nature of our lifestyle with élan, dismissing my worries about not having enough ladles and too few stainless steel tumblers with a sympathetic – and rather pitying, I felt, even through that stress of having too many people I did not know in our house – smile and a reassuring word in a Tamil patois that went right over my bewildered head.

But the feast – since it was that – was a vast and varied one. I saw it repeated a few months later at my uncle’s home, when the ceremonies for my aunt who had just died were done with. in our house, it was served up on banana leaves, on the floor, as traditional as Mother would have liked it to be. It started with a sweet, which I still find strange. To me, death was about sorrow, about that lack of feeling that mercifully snuffs out a lot of the horror involved, about a certain robotic regimen that takes over when your mind goes on to auto-pilot. So a sweet dish, a pudding, something that is all about enjoyment and pleasure, seems incongruous, to say the least. But then perhaps it is the logic that we Indians do so well – it’s over, start living life again on a new note, a clean note, a sweet note. I still cannot accept it, but I can start understanding that way of thought.

At our house, we had paal payasam, rice pudding Indian style. It is essentially thickened milk, often overly sweetened, with rice cooked in it so that the rice swells and becomes rich with milk and sweetness and the whole mess is thick and almost biteable. I make it quite often, usually fairly successfully, adding a dash of exotic interest with ground nutmeg, cardamom and cashewnuts and raisins gently fried in homemade ghee. Mother would add saffron, giving the payasam a golden glow, so I do too. And there was always that very jumpy nut that would leap right out of the long-handled cast-iron ladle that we use even now to fry the small morsels in just before adding them, redolent and crunchy, to the payasam - anything that spills, house rules mandate, is up for grabs, first by the youngest in the family, which generally means me. We like it, as does Small Cat, who licks the tiny drops I offer her off my finger and sometimes sits there on the dining table waiting for more.

The green scene

It doesn’t taste of much, but has a lovely fresh flavour that speaks of new grass, spring foliage and bright sunny days spent half asleep in a hammock under a shady tree. It is about energy and rejuvenation, even as it tells the story of peace, serenity and ease. Green tea is a story of contradictions…and of good health. It is a tried and trusted route that the Orientals – particularly the Chinese and Japanese – have taken for generations to maintain healthy skin, hair and digestive systems.

Today the scientific basis for green tea’s virtues are better understood. Studies are being carried out to establish the link between the beverage and decreased incidence of cancer, heart disease and degeneration of tissues – particularly in the skin. It is used as a beauty aid, to prevent body odour and slow the appearance of signs of ageing; in fact, it has been found to be 20 times more effective than Vitamin E in this aspect! And the leaves are being experimented with by master chefs the world over to produce gourmet creations that tickle the palate and the brain alike.

Green tea is, in essence, the same as black tea, but has leaves that are steamed instead of being fermented, thus preserving the polyphenols or antioxidant compounds that do most of the magic. These chemical molecules are responsible for ‘mopping up’ free radicals in the body – which are what cause skin damage due to sunlight, age, pollution and various other factors. But green tea is an acquired taste, especially for a nation that thrives on ‘cutting chai’, black tea boiled vigorously with milk and sugar to a thick, rich consistency and a tannin-heavy tang. To make green tea, a few leaves are steeped in just-boiled water to a pale green colour and drunk hot; the residual leaves can be chewed as a mouth freshener! When iced, the tea is an ideal facial spritzer and eye soother, when used hot, a fabulous antiseptic, and warm, as a foot wash.

All the rage in restaurants today is green tea ice cream, a delicately coloured and flavoured sorbet-like dessert that refreshes the mouth and soothes a calorie-assaulted digestion. It is simple to make – in its most basic form, maccha (powdered green tea leaves used in the Japanese tea ceremony) is mixed in with vanilla ice cream. Well steeped green is a delicious addition to a cheese dip, added drop by drop until the prefect consistency is obtained. A subtle flavour results, that leaves guests guessing!

Street side

Wandering around Mumbai with my friend was an exhausting process and we had to be fed and watered (in a manner of speaking) at fairly regular intervals, otherwise Father had to deal with and mediate between two very crabby and teary women. To save his nerves – and mine, long term – we made an unspoken pact to see that food and drink were carefully fitted into our often-hectic and not particularly aimless days, as we tramped through markets, negotiated escalators and found our way to whatever we wanted to see and buy without too many accidents or emotional crises.

But in all the wanderings and tantrums, we also found some interesting things to eat. And I, as hostess and partner in many unnameable crimes, was determined to give my friend the entire gamut of culinary experiences, from the street to the many-starred hotel restaurant. So one afternoon, with not much to do since it had been declared a rest day and I had work to do for the newspaper I was supposed to be on vacation from, we went streetwards. It was not, to be honest, a truly down and dirty time. We had certain constraints of iffy tummies and foreigner-hygiene-myths that had to be fostered, so I chose the sanitised version of what we had already seen plenty of while walking through Kalbadevi and parts beyond. I chose to take my friend and Father to the Kailash Parbat counter at the Food Court in the mall. It was, all in all, rather like the curate’s egg: good in parts.

We started with paani-puri, the stuff of which manna is made, friends of mine who love the snack swear. I reserve judgement, though I really like the contrast of textures and flavours – the crisp puri with the softer sprout-veg filling, the brown sweet-sour, thick tamarind-based sauce and the more watery olive green spicy-mirchi paani which is where the dish gets its name from. It all came neatly arranged on a tray – a small plate of perforated and stuffed puris, a small bowl of tamarind sauce and a plastic glass of the paani. Father and friend followed my instructions and we slurped, with varying degrees of messiness and varying opinions registering on our faces and, through the liquids sloshing in our mouths, bubbles of speech.

The second round was mixed. I chose the safe option that my tummy would be soothed by. My friend opted for a bit of adventure. And Father ventured into completely unexplored territory. I had a sev dahi batata puri. Friend took on ragda pattice, with extra spice. And Father was terribly brave and picked on dal-batti-churma, as it was spelled. Mine was little ‘bowls’ of once-crisp puri, filled with sprouts and fragments of boiled potato, layered with whipped dahi and topped with spicy green chutney, sweet-sour tamarind chutney and a handful of crunchy sev. Like I said, it was safe, non-spicy and not too heavy. Friend chowed down on what Father calls my ‘college favourite’, since I had eaten a small bite of the stuff when I was in college and trying to make friends (once I stopped bothering with that part, my stomach was far happier). It was a couple of heart-shaped potato-rich patties, hiding slivers of green chilli, carrots and peas, doused in a sloppy gravy with chickpeas, or chana. On top of this was ladled very spicy green chutney and some brown tamarind chutney.

Father’s was rather more exotic. He got a couple of baked roasted-flour balls that had been soaked in ghee, a heap of white rice, two leaf-bowls of tremendously spicy dal and a spoonful of sweet crumbs – sugared and crumbled baked balls of flour redolent with ghee. You need the ghee to survive the spice, Father remarked with a certain moroseness that comes from seared insides. We headed straight to the ice cream when we were done eating. We all needed to be cooled off.

Eating the burn

It’s been a while since I actually wrote something for this space. And that has a very good reason – a very close and dear friend was visiting from the United States and we had a lot to do in very little time. Apart from doing a good gossip every now and then and catching up with various crimes that we had perpetrated against people we knew and often didn’t, we needed to wander about a city I knew better than when she came here last and she had a craving to re-see. It was a fun albeit exhausting time and I was not happy to see her off at the Departures terminal at the international airport, even as I was glad to get my sense of routine and rest back from where it had vanished to for the time I was off from work and on a completely arbitrary though happy non-schedule. In all the chatter and giggle and the occasional tear, we did a great deal of eating. In fact, I am now on a fairly strict regimen of culinary austerity, just so that I can get back into my various jeans without busting through another zipper.

Perhaps one of the more memorable meals we had was a Gujarati thali in the heart of the traditional stronghold that is called Kalbadevi. We had been walking a while, going from market to car and car to market (different markets, though the same car each time) and we were hot, a little sweaty, tired and vaguely crabby from sheer lack of sugar and water, the two aspects that keep the self fuelled and ticking over. We had been in the presence of great quantities of food, from fruit and nuts to less easily eaten raw vegetables and a certain amount of canned, processed and otherwise difficult-to-access stuff. We had walked at a fast clip past small eateries and smaller street stalls, rapidly navigated around people chewing all sorts of snacks and briefly watched a vendor making sandwiches that I had on good authority to be absolutely delicious. And, in perfect syncopation with the beat of the small bells around a rather undernourished dancing monkey’s neck, our tummies had rumbled a demand to be filled with whatever was fresh, clean and preferably flavourful.

I had somewhere that could supply that in mind. It is a nicely swabbed and friendly-staffed restaurant in the heart of Kalbadevi called Surti and, like the name says, specialises in the cuisine of Gujarat. In fact, whenever I am there, which is about once in five years or so, I suddenly acquire a store of the Gujarati language that I never knew I possessed – it comes back to me from some long-buried primeval storehouse where all sounds are acceptable and can be produced by the vocal apparatus with much felicity. The best part of this was that the waiters could even understand what I said and didn’t merely stand by and smile avuncularly as I battled with the various phonemes I fondly imagined I could master.

We were ushered ceremoniously upstairs to the ‘Family Room/AC only’ and seated at a newly cleaned table. The two young men next to us goggled fascinatedly at my friend, whose marmalade hair glowed in the fluorescent light. The maitre d’ ambled to us and demanded to know what we wanted and raised a lethargic eyebrow as we asked for three thalis. They soon arrived. They were enormous. But we soldiered on and finished with a respectable emptiness of our steel plates but a deplorable fullness of our tummies. There were hugely puffy puris to start with and steaming khichdi to end with. In between came a series of katoris filled with vegetables – gently sprouted beans, spicy potatoes, cabbage with well-hidden chillies to assault the mouth, dal with a kind of dumpling and peanuts, dal with nothing except tadka, sprouted black-eyed beans, kadi, dahi, shrikhand and goodness knows what else I may have shoved into my groaning stomach and forgotten about. The meal was rich with ghee and masala, and we relished it even with the spice levels, our ears sweating gently as we ate a bite of this and a nibble of that, ending with a cool glass of water and that last lick of sweet-sour shrikhand.

My friend loved it. Father and I burned inside and out, but admitted that it was a pretty good lunch, with lots of vegetables and flavour, all sliding down smoothly in spite of the unwonted degree of heat that went with each bite. All in all an experience to savour for us all, and a nice afternoon to write home about.

Blood, sweat and cheers

(As always, I tend to impress myself with my own writing. This was a totally food-unrelated encounter, but the artist I had to interview was great fun. Here's how it went...)

You hear about Jitesh Kallat more than you actually see his work in Mumbai. Reports come in from Milan, Shanghai and London about the success of his showings and the prices his works command. Reviews are fabulously laudatory and everyone, but everyone, speaks raves about his latest…or his last piece. But showings in his home city of Mumbai are rare and works hardly ever debut here. As Kallat says pragmatically, “It’s tough to make this the debut place. Galleries in Mumbai have a quick turnaround – 21 day exhibitions.” The explanation is simple: “The scale of my work is humungous. I need a 200-feet space to house the 200-feet 365 Lives, for instance. I couldn’t do this on short notice.” In fact, the galleries had eight days of installing time for the current show.

The piece 365 Lives is on display in Sweatopia, Kallat’s new show. “It’s a humungous project – the sculpture of a huge car, life-size, will sit bang in the middle of the 365 photographs. It weighs almost a ton.” And there is a large Eruda, the sculpture of a boy holding books, about 14-15 feet high and “super heavy. The logistics are really beyond normal exhibition requirements. Which is why through the last two years, I have not been able to show the key pieces in my work.” He always knew it would happen, though.

Almost all of Kallat’s works are enormous. “The scale has always been integral to my work,” he maintains, even though he has created ‘smaller’ pieces that were “just about 22-24 feet”. Anger at the Speed of Fright was a mere 50 feet long. “There are some works that rely on scale to generate meaning” - 365 Lives, as you walk into it, seems like colour swatches, some seemingly repetitive, in some way seductive; the colours and images come rushing at the viewer. As Kallat explains, “It’s only when you walk past that it all slowly changes tenor. You start feeling that there is something of a law, something tragic. Then you realise that these are dented vehicles, nothing too tragic. Then you keep going through the piece and realise that somewhere along the way these actually evoke bodily wounds, dents, scars, rust marks…and then it changes meaning. Something cold and inanimate becomes a chronicle of the city’s heartbeat.”

Some years ago, artists in Mumbai complained that a lack of space was what stifled creativity and expression through sculpture. Kallat’s works would cover the area of a decently-sized apartment, and “Coping with lack of space in the city is tough,” he agrees. But “When you make these works, you don’t know what you’re going to do with them. A piece I am currently showing in Milan (Public Notice II) goes to over 200 feet”, where 4,500 bones shaped like alphabets spell out the speech that Gandhi delivered before he embarked on the non-cooperation movement. “The sheer realisation of it is not easy, but if you really want to do it, you do it,” Kallat says matter of factly. As for making smaller pieces, “One can create summaries, but then you never have a novel. You never have epics, you will have episodes. Certain works need the scale, if the meaning, the concept, the work, has to envelop you. One can compromise – the simplest way if to back out. But if you really want to realise it at the point at which it defines itself” – Autosaurus Tripos, for instance, an autorickshaw made of ‘bones’, had to be life-sized – “from the obvious, it becomes a curious object for which a meaning cannot be defined. That happens only at the scale at which it is done. Smaller, it becomes a model, a toy.”

The self was once the crux of Kallat’s practice, especially between 1992 and1999. “It started changing form gradually,” he says. In Artist Making a Local Call (2005), a panoramic view with multiple exposures, “envelops my core concerns, the whole idea of the human struggle, interspersed with small soft calamities which are in our lives everyday. The picture has several layers of meaning and you can enter from various places.” It will be set against a curved wall, with Autosaurus placed in front of it.

Kallat is often said to be an ‘intellectual’, his work deep with meaning and sometimes incomprehensible to the average critic and viewer. He feels, “‘Intellectual’ is a burdened word, loaded with things that you do not want associated with your work immediately. But that does not make it a non-cerebral effort.” He works hard, thinks hard and puts his understanding of himself and the situation into his work. “I have to unearth the sources of my practice, constantly build an analytical understanding of my own work, which is separate from the process of making the work itself.” And, along the way, it becomes a great adventure, where “the object gets empowered from your understanding of the world at multiple levels.”

The names of his show is, in itself, unusual. Kallat coined the word “by collapsing sweat with utopia, sweat being the constant toil, the idea of survival, aspirations of hope.” Each work speaks at various levels, for which an onlooker needs time and space and an open mind, a freedom that Kallat relishes. “You are allowed to miss things; there is no reason to believe that we can all always soak in everything a work holds. Many years ago Gieve Patel said something like, ‘If you understand the work, great; but if you misunderstand it, even better!’ Somewhere within it there is the fact that the moment you miss something, you have seen something else and added a layer of meaning that I could not have offered.”