It’s amazing how much Mumbai has changed, especially over the last few years. When I came back from college many years ago, I found that much of what was familiar to me by then was now available closer to home, often in the local markets. And it was wonderful to find everything from my favourite chewing gum to the brand of tissues I liked to take my makeup off. But what has been even better is the fabulous range of food that the city was so rapidly opening up to. From sushi to satay, burgers to banana splits, everything seemed to be available and popular.
This thought came from a taxi ride I took a few days ago. I was headed to a part of town that I had not been to for goodness knows how many years, riding there in a taxi because I remembered it as being crowded and dirty and cramped, certainly no place I would be happy taking my new (and rather large, I must admit) chariot to. The taxi was in decent shape, the driver drove decently, too. So I was not as hassled and frazzled as I am wont to be when I go anywhere in a black-and-yellow rattletrap and even managed to be a little kempt and properly presented once I got there. And on the way I noticed all manner of delight in the direction of food, from the small street stalls to the more interesting small eating places and bigger restaurants that catered to a rather more discerning clientele.
What really sparked my interest was a small falafel restaurant. Refreshing in its green and cream paintwork, it showed off its offerings on small boards stuck on the wall outside (or perhaps it was the window, I could not really tell. And it printed its menu alongside, with hummus, falafel, pita bread, salad, et al advertised for the interested to read before they made choices to go in or not. I was tempted to stop, but was in a hurry to get where I was going without being soaked in sweat and wanted to get back to work before it ran away from me towards a closely combated deadline.
It set me thinking. One of the most popular eating places close to where I work is a large American chain, the Hard Rock Café, which offers up huge helpings for a decent price – not everyday fare for either waistline or wallet, I have to say. Not too far away is a whole slew of Chinese restaurants, from tiny hole in the wall streetside eateries to more lush and plush spreads where the waiters wear funny hats and the table linen is so stiffly starched that the napkins slide right off any lap, however large. Then there is a sweet little café under the trees that varies between nouvelle and modern western food, combining jalapeno bagels with grilled salmon, couscous with baked vegetables and sinful chocolate cakes with low-calorie fruit tarts.
The turnover of restaurants in Mumbai is as quick as the service at fast food chains. A burger joint may persist, but a Thai food eatery is not likely to last as long, even if the cuisine is very like the Indian menu – lots of chillies, exotic flavour blending miraculously into each other and fresh veggies that retain their individual taste and texture. Lebanese food is making surprising inroads into the Mumbai stomach, with its again-familiar flavours of cumin, chilli, cinnamon and lemon, along with garlic and cilantro (or parsley, which is not a common part of our kitchen stocks). And there is more. Sushi and teppenyaki bars jostle for space with health drinks and bagel-wiches. Rustic Italian vies with traditional tapas. Mexican and Middle Eastern live happily side by side. And French co-exists with good old American.
What I am waiting for is more native African and perhaps Slavic cooking to hit the city’s food-line. Then it will be a truly global experience.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Speaking in tongues
D Ebenezer Sunder Singh speaks of energy and the super-man in his art
There is a darkness that prevails, punctuated by sparkling brightness that is, to put it mildly, startling. The work of D Ebenezer Sunder Singh in his latest show - called Thus Spake Zarathustra - at the Pundole Art Gallery is a study in contrasts, of flashes of ‘lightning out of the dark cloud’, shades of grey occasionally interrupted with vivid splashes of pink, orange, lime green and blue. His charcoal drawings have a depth, a mystery, almost frightening in the tortuous contortions of the human figures and fantastical in their scope of perception of a world that cannot be completely understood.
“In my work I have a physical and a metaphysical element,” Ebenezer explains, “like the figure of a man with babies around him, one lying on his hand, or a man falling with a fetus held in his splayed fingers.” The drawings, all in shades of black, “remain unlit. I don’t mean black as in darkness,” he says, “only a gradation from black to white – black needs to be worked to create the different shades,” the varying intensity. And he is working with a limited medium, “so it is not easy”.
But the works do not derive from a tortured soul, one suffused with darkness, he is quick to point out. When he paints in colour, “I use very bright hues. And my drawings, even in blacks, are very light related.” What he did was “to make this metaphysical thing work in light. And in this show, the light effects work very well in the sculpture – there are bright hues, with sequins and beads thrown all over.”
The idea of the super-man is strong in Ebenezer’s work. In fact, his inspiration comes from Nietzsche, whose book Thus Spake Zarathustra defines the concept in ‘I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is superman…as lightning out of the dark cloud.’ The artist believes that this definition could be used to describe his work, as “a contemplation of myself, my energy growth. Nietzsche said there is no god to help man; only super-man, or Zarathustra, can help man. The saviour can only be a super-man.” This ethos is captured in his Superman sculptures, where tiny gold-painted, bead-dotted elephants are held, one tumbling over the other, in huge black, sequin-splashed hands. “There is some sort of energy between my hands. I articulate it with these images. The elephant is a symbol of energy as well.”
Heads are a refrain in the sculptures on show. And tongues are a prominent feature of each, as is seen in Tongues, an installation of 15 lime-green heads, each with a tongue of a different colour sticking out of its mouth. According to Ebenezer, “The tongue is a sensory code, and the head is a connotation, of speaking in tongues. The work, my thought, is about words, communication, and sensual and sense-related communication at that.” In Sky, that tongue is elongated, just a hairsbreadth away from touching the ceiling. The images are “intense”, and the artist is “trying to bring their reasons for existing to the fore as subtle symbols”. In Hair Grows, he speaks of a “contemplation of life and death, of dead cells growing. It is a sort of very fundamental question in life – life goes on and hair keeps growing, even as you cut it, even after death. It is an intense question on life.”
The sequins and beads are indeed novel, though Ebenezer says that “I have been using sequins for a while now, even on my canvases – as I paint, I throw them on top, paint over them, and then throw on more. This time I am using them on sculpture and the sculptures come out of my drawings.” For him, it is all about the “contrast between my dark drawings and the sculptures that are very bright and light.” The sequins catch the light and create more scintillations that add more depth to the darkness of the hands, the heads, the charcoal drawings.
All the figures that he creates are male. “It’s because I am male, so I show the male body,” Ebenezer explains. “I view the world through myself, I understand the world through my understanding of myself, my world, my education, my own being and energy.” In his work, “there is more of Ebenezer there in the idea of the person I draw or sculpt. My interpretation is with reference to myself.” This post-modern philosophy, essentially one of deconstruction, implies that “all interpretations are valid. You cannot make someone understand something from his point of view, but only from your own.”
And in that interpretation, Ebenezer makes his point. As a man, looking for super-man.
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Pundole Art Gallery, till May 31
Dead wrong
It’s been a rather nasty month all over the world. Personally, it has been painful, not just physically, but spiritually as well. Reading about and watching children dead, ill or suffering in any way is always sapping. Most recently is the murder of a 14-year-old in Delhi. All the police theories have been debunked and now, even as I write this, her father has been arrested for her killing – a matter of honour, investigators say. It must be terrible to have to face the fact that you have killed your own child; it must be even more horrible to have to hide it, even for a moment, leave alone many days.
Not too long ago, there was mass murder in Jaipur, perhaps the best known destination in India for tourists. Seven bombs blasted into the peace of the Pink City, killing more innocent people than could be counted – children, women, young men, old people…no one who was in any way deserving of such a violent death. The investigators are slowly unravelling all the tangled webs that have been woven around terrorist activity in this country. That the bad guys would plot, plan, shop, then walk in, plant the bombs and leave, all without any qualms or shiverings of conscience is frightening.
Then nature played its own part. The earth shook in China, houses and public buildings came tumbling down. And lives tumbled, crumbled, shattered into death and dust. Most of the dead were young, some of them just starting school. Instead of a great adventure that is life, they were sent to a world that no one knows about. It was not the dying that mattered as much as the fear, I believe. Those last few moments before they were killed must have been about the most frightening they have ever faced in their tiny lives. And those who lived will always remember the horror of being almost-dead, of waiting until they were brought back into the light.
But with all this, there have been small joys that have delighted the world too. David Cook (I rooted for him) won American Idol, beating favourite David Archuleta, the boy-child with a wonderful voice. One of the main roads in the city that I drive in to work and back home on has been concretised, becoming a smooth, safe, seamless path that is a pleasure to coast over. And all is more or less well in my small world and that of the people around me who matter. Touch wood.
Does it all balance out? In a tiny, selfish, almost callous way, it does. Tragedy is usually someone else’s to cry about. That we all are moved and battered by it is the cost of being a good human being with that conscience I spoke about earlier. That it matters to me and you and so many others that a young woman, one who has not yet started her life, has been murdered is a matter of being a decent person. That it matters to us all that so many people died in an earthquake in a part of the world that most of us will not ever visit is also part of being human. And the fact that we will remember with horror how bombs planted on bicycles splashed red blood on pink stucco makes us people with heart.
Not too long ago, there was mass murder in Jaipur, perhaps the best known destination in India for tourists. Seven bombs blasted into the peace of the Pink City, killing more innocent people than could be counted – children, women, young men, old people…no one who was in any way deserving of such a violent death. The investigators are slowly unravelling all the tangled webs that have been woven around terrorist activity in this country. That the bad guys would plot, plan, shop, then walk in, plant the bombs and leave, all without any qualms or shiverings of conscience is frightening.
Then nature played its own part. The earth shook in China, houses and public buildings came tumbling down. And lives tumbled, crumbled, shattered into death and dust. Most of the dead were young, some of them just starting school. Instead of a great adventure that is life, they were sent to a world that no one knows about. It was not the dying that mattered as much as the fear, I believe. Those last few moments before they were killed must have been about the most frightening they have ever faced in their tiny lives. And those who lived will always remember the horror of being almost-dead, of waiting until they were brought back into the light.
But with all this, there have been small joys that have delighted the world too. David Cook (I rooted for him) won American Idol, beating favourite David Archuleta, the boy-child with a wonderful voice. One of the main roads in the city that I drive in to work and back home on has been concretised, becoming a smooth, safe, seamless path that is a pleasure to coast over. And all is more or less well in my small world and that of the people around me who matter. Touch wood.
Does it all balance out? In a tiny, selfish, almost callous way, it does. Tragedy is usually someone else’s to cry about. That we all are moved and battered by it is the cost of being a good human being with that conscience I spoke about earlier. That it matters to me and you and so many others that a young woman, one who has not yet started her life, has been murdered is a matter of being a decent person. That it matters to us all that so many people died in an earthquake in a part of the world that most of us will not ever visit is also part of being human. And the fact that we will remember with horror how bombs planted on bicycles splashed red blood on pink stucco makes us people with heart.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Out and about
I was out doing various chores this morning, hopping from bookstore to grocery store to…well, you get the idea. It was fun, even though my leg was not entertained, and I enjoyed the experience thoroughly, in spite of my toe objecting rather noisily by the end of the time that we were out.
I started at a speciality bookstore, from where Father had asked for a couple of the tomes he needed for his work. Once I found it, I stepped very cautiously down the stairs (since my record with steps is not exactly brilliant) and beamed sweatily at the two gentleman sitting at the counter. One of them looked dour, while the other smiled as fondly back at me. The dour one seemed to be having some difficulty in operating the computer that he was battling with, and barely looked up to see what I wanted. The other one, younger and less furrowed of brow, bustled around and fluttered from shelf to shelf explaining what was where to me, who mutely handed over a list and waited, smile still firmly in place, for more to happen.
It was the minion who actually knew where the books I wanted were. He sprang purposefully up the stairs into a tiny gallery-like space and ferreted out multiple volumes. At first, I though optimistically that they were very kindly giving me a choice – some books tend to get rather battered over time and I like the pristine sort and always demand it. But, no, the first on the list had two volumes, each fairly substantial. The second was rather more alarming. Nicely bound in faux leather and lettered in gold, it had five volumes, making up in weight what it may have lacked in size. I demanded help in transporting the load to the car and it was promised. The dour gentleman fought a veritable war with his computer trying to do the billing for my books, while I stood there still gently a-sweat and trying not to let that aforementioned smile slip.
And, as always, I had to confuse the issue a little. While I waited, patiently, my eyes settled on a book that looked interesting. It was a single volume, but a large one, matching the others in cumulative size and weight. I demanded it and scanned through. It seemed like something I wanted to be curious about, so I asked the price. It was, in fact, rather cheaper than some of the books that I have been buying lately, so I took it. The dour man went back to his struggle with keyboard, mouse and monitor, while I counted out a scant sheaf of crisp notes. And then, farewells said, the dour man still not smiling, minion, books and I proceeded in a dignified procession out to the car.
But there was no car there. And I had more errands to run. So, the books transferred to my slowly-stretching arms, I went into a grocery store that purportedly had cheese. Good cheese, not the plastic processed kind. I checked in my parcels and walked in. There was indeed cheese, some interesting kinds, too. I nibbled a tiny fragment for taste and chose what I wanted, the weight I wanted. And, while the chappie efficiently sliced and weighed, I wandered about looking at what else was on offer. There was plenty, from my all-time favourite soft fudge chocolate chunk cookies to pasta of a sort that I had seen in speciality stores in New York. I looked, I sighed and I went past.
It is not that I do not have the wherewithal or the taste to take home what I wanted. But it seemed a waste at a time when there was more to do and bother about than just the food I sometimes had dreams about. I needed the time and the leisure to cook that same stuff of dreams and savour it. Some day, that time will also come….
I started at a speciality bookstore, from where Father had asked for a couple of the tomes he needed for his work. Once I found it, I stepped very cautiously down the stairs (since my record with steps is not exactly brilliant) and beamed sweatily at the two gentleman sitting at the counter. One of them looked dour, while the other smiled as fondly back at me. The dour one seemed to be having some difficulty in operating the computer that he was battling with, and barely looked up to see what I wanted. The other one, younger and less furrowed of brow, bustled around and fluttered from shelf to shelf explaining what was where to me, who mutely handed over a list and waited, smile still firmly in place, for more to happen.
It was the minion who actually knew where the books I wanted were. He sprang purposefully up the stairs into a tiny gallery-like space and ferreted out multiple volumes. At first, I though optimistically that they were very kindly giving me a choice – some books tend to get rather battered over time and I like the pristine sort and always demand it. But, no, the first on the list had two volumes, each fairly substantial. The second was rather more alarming. Nicely bound in faux leather and lettered in gold, it had five volumes, making up in weight what it may have lacked in size. I demanded help in transporting the load to the car and it was promised. The dour gentleman fought a veritable war with his computer trying to do the billing for my books, while I stood there still gently a-sweat and trying not to let that aforementioned smile slip.
And, as always, I had to confuse the issue a little. While I waited, patiently, my eyes settled on a book that looked interesting. It was a single volume, but a large one, matching the others in cumulative size and weight. I demanded it and scanned through. It seemed like something I wanted to be curious about, so I asked the price. It was, in fact, rather cheaper than some of the books that I have been buying lately, so I took it. The dour man went back to his struggle with keyboard, mouse and monitor, while I counted out a scant sheaf of crisp notes. And then, farewells said, the dour man still not smiling, minion, books and I proceeded in a dignified procession out to the car.
But there was no car there. And I had more errands to run. So, the books transferred to my slowly-stretching arms, I went into a grocery store that purportedly had cheese. Good cheese, not the plastic processed kind. I checked in my parcels and walked in. There was indeed cheese, some interesting kinds, too. I nibbled a tiny fragment for taste and chose what I wanted, the weight I wanted. And, while the chappie efficiently sliced and weighed, I wandered about looking at what else was on offer. There was plenty, from my all-time favourite soft fudge chocolate chunk cookies to pasta of a sort that I had seen in speciality stores in New York. I looked, I sighed and I went past.
It is not that I do not have the wherewithal or the taste to take home what I wanted. But it seemed a waste at a time when there was more to do and bother about than just the food I sometimes had dreams about. I needed the time and the leisure to cook that same stuff of dreams and savour it. Some day, that time will also come….
Monday, May 12, 2008
Shoe fly!
It’s been a hard two week for me. First I fell up the stairs, which was not half as bad as the consequences, to be frank. Yes, I got to stay home for a week, during which I slept a lot and cried some – with exhaustion, frustration, stress, pain and sheer relief that I could stop for a while and try and figure out what I was doing. That was the good part. The bad part was rather more serious, from my point of view. I could not drive – that wonderful new car has been driven by Father, by the driver and by, of course, the chappie who delivered it to us at the showroom. But NOT by me. Well…if I have to be honest, I did drive it from the shop to the temple and back again, but that does not count as real driving, you know. I could not go running around to do all the chores I had set myself for when I had time off, from buying new carpets and curtains to chasing spiders with my trusty arachno-broom, sorting out the lofts, rearranging the linen closet, trying on the most impractical shoes at the store and making cookies that combined the flavours of cheese and chocolate without ruining either (perhaps not, but it sounds interesting)….
Some years ago, I was confined in a cast after surgery. It was rather more fun then, since the fibreglass did the supporting and I could run about as much as was physically possible without fearing any further damage. At the time, the cast had to be changed weekly and I got the most exotic colours, from pale cream to emerald green to bilious yellow to sapphire blue and dashing fuschia pink. In all that I had a mobile fashion statement and, astonishingly, shorts to match. It was a handicap to outdo any. And I could dream happily of a time when I would shed the rigid casing and be able to get back on my sharp heels – albeit after a period of learning how to walk properly again, of course. This time, I am rather irritable about the whole thing. It is not spectacular, not as much so as the time of the cast, but it is painful and, in a way, limiting. I am various colours along one limb, my toe is still somewhat reminiscent of a, over-done cocktail sausage and I feel a lot more self-pitying than I am normally wont to do.
The jeans are back on after two weeks of wearing loose and flappy salwars. They are restrictive and hurt rather, pressing too hard on the bruises that still need TLC, but they are back in the forefront (hehehe) of my style saga. What is going to take longer is the heels. One-inchers today are already making their unsuitability felt. My toe is singing an A-sharp of reproach. My ankle is not very happy with me. And my knee is protesting rather violently at being confined thusly.
No pain, no gain is a phrase my physiotherapist loved to throw at me – if I could have thrown something back at him, I would have with great pleasure, especially if that was something that was hard and could cause very painful damage. It is a mantra in the world of style, where shoes that are beautiful are generally semaphores of great anguish. Nothing showed this off more than a pair of very pretty and funky kitten heels I bought in New York one rainy afternoon. They were Jellies, clear red plastic, peep-holed and pert. They fit beautifully in the shop, tried on when my feet had been walking for a few hours, which is the best time to get a realistic idea of what is a good fit, I had been advised. And I wore them often. But never without suffering untold agonies. They bit where I never imagined shoes to be able to bite. They left deep welts in tender portions of my foot, making it almost impossible to slide into any other kind of footwear without squeaking in various notes in pain for days afterwards. And when they finally had to be confined to that nowhere land where shoes go when you throw them away post-many years of suffering, I did truly miss them, though not the blisters I earned every time I wore them.
Vanity, thy name is me. And even though I wince at every step in these fragile sandals I am wearing right now, I think of how nicely they complement the jeans that I should not yet be wearing.
Some years ago, I was confined in a cast after surgery. It was rather more fun then, since the fibreglass did the supporting and I could run about as much as was physically possible without fearing any further damage. At the time, the cast had to be changed weekly and I got the most exotic colours, from pale cream to emerald green to bilious yellow to sapphire blue and dashing fuschia pink. In all that I had a mobile fashion statement and, astonishingly, shorts to match. It was a handicap to outdo any. And I could dream happily of a time when I would shed the rigid casing and be able to get back on my sharp heels – albeit after a period of learning how to walk properly again, of course. This time, I am rather irritable about the whole thing. It is not spectacular, not as much so as the time of the cast, but it is painful and, in a way, limiting. I am various colours along one limb, my toe is still somewhat reminiscent of a, over-done cocktail sausage and I feel a lot more self-pitying than I am normally wont to do.
The jeans are back on after two weeks of wearing loose and flappy salwars. They are restrictive and hurt rather, pressing too hard on the bruises that still need TLC, but they are back in the forefront (hehehe) of my style saga. What is going to take longer is the heels. One-inchers today are already making their unsuitability felt. My toe is singing an A-sharp of reproach. My ankle is not very happy with me. And my knee is protesting rather violently at being confined thusly.
No pain, no gain is a phrase my physiotherapist loved to throw at me – if I could have thrown something back at him, I would have with great pleasure, especially if that was something that was hard and could cause very painful damage. It is a mantra in the world of style, where shoes that are beautiful are generally semaphores of great anguish. Nothing showed this off more than a pair of very pretty and funky kitten heels I bought in New York one rainy afternoon. They were Jellies, clear red plastic, peep-holed and pert. They fit beautifully in the shop, tried on when my feet had been walking for a few hours, which is the best time to get a realistic idea of what is a good fit, I had been advised. And I wore them often. But never without suffering untold agonies. They bit where I never imagined shoes to be able to bite. They left deep welts in tender portions of my foot, making it almost impossible to slide into any other kind of footwear without squeaking in various notes in pain for days afterwards. And when they finally had to be confined to that nowhere land where shoes go when you throw them away post-many years of suffering, I did truly miss them, though not the blisters I earned every time I wore them.
Vanity, thy name is me. And even though I wince at every step in these fragile sandals I am wearing right now, I think of how nicely they complement the jeans that I should not yet be wearing.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Sweeping clean
It’s funny how the same joke seems as funny the millionth time around as it does the first. One of father’s favourites is about brooms – and it never fails to make me giggle. Whenever I am seen wandering about the house with a broom (either on my never-ending quest for brushing out spiderwebs or sweeping cat litter out of my bathroom where Small Cat has her…umm…facilities), he will ask me with a tiny smile lighting up his eyes, “You going somewhere?”. And when I mumble irritably about needing new brooms, he will say with a delightful solemnity, “You just got a new car!”.
Sigh.
Keeping a house clean, even a decent-sized apartment, is not easy. The process starts when I wake up and ends only when I lie down at night, sometimes hopping out of bed again because I have forgotten to make sure there is detergent in the washing machine or I need to be sure that the towel on the spare bathroom door has not fallen off its hook. It is almost borderline obsessive compulsive, though my doctor assures me that I am just the compulsive allergic-personality type who stresses if something is not just-so and comes out in a rash if I do not do something about making it that way. Whatever the case, these days I make sure that things are basically just-so and let the rest go until another day when I am more in the mood to be persnickety about it all.
So, as I was saying, the cleaning thing – it starts early. I roll out of bed and wander blearily around dealing with everything from making green tea for myself to – for some reason I can only ascribe to that aforementioned borderline…- pushing the sugar container back on the shelf to line up with the other boxes. From then on, it is a matter of keeping one ear on our rather temperamental and admittedly ageing washing machine, making sure that everything is in place for the maid when she storms into the house to start her job by throwing dishes in and out of the sink – it’s called ‘washing up’, though I would do it myself in a rather more gentle and silent manner, but each to her own – and getting myself ready to head out to work.
Of course, both Father and Small Cat have their contributions to make that are greatly appreciated. Father has his set of self-designated chores, while Small Cat takes her morning task of singing high opera to wake me up very seriously indeed. She also helps clean house by pushing all the feathers that she plays with under the carpets and keeps a stern eye on the maid as she blows through the bedrooms with her broom and swabbing cloth and bucket. And I trot dutifully behind, switching off lights, switching on fans and switching direction as the maid does an occasional unexpected turnaround to redo a spot she thinks I have just left a nasty footprint on.
Then comes the dusting. It is a job that has been traditionally assigned to me, as daughter of the house and youngest member of the family, and I have always hated it, never mind that it was made mine to make sure that I understood the value of the pocket-money I ‘earned’ by doing it. Now I pay the maid to do it, with the money that I earn by working at my job in the newspaper! As long as it helps me/us keep the house clean and gets the essentials done without too much damage to self or property, it cannot hurt, right?
And just for the record, this morning I went broom shopping. In the new car.
Sigh.
Keeping a house clean, even a decent-sized apartment, is not easy. The process starts when I wake up and ends only when I lie down at night, sometimes hopping out of bed again because I have forgotten to make sure there is detergent in the washing machine or I need to be sure that the towel on the spare bathroom door has not fallen off its hook. It is almost borderline obsessive compulsive, though my doctor assures me that I am just the compulsive allergic-personality type who stresses if something is not just-so and comes out in a rash if I do not do something about making it that way. Whatever the case, these days I make sure that things are basically just-so and let the rest go until another day when I am more in the mood to be persnickety about it all.
So, as I was saying, the cleaning thing – it starts early. I roll out of bed and wander blearily around dealing with everything from making green tea for myself to – for some reason I can only ascribe to that aforementioned borderline…- pushing the sugar container back on the shelf to line up with the other boxes. From then on, it is a matter of keeping one ear on our rather temperamental and admittedly ageing washing machine, making sure that everything is in place for the maid when she storms into the house to start her job by throwing dishes in and out of the sink – it’s called ‘washing up’, though I would do it myself in a rather more gentle and silent manner, but each to her own – and getting myself ready to head out to work.
Of course, both Father and Small Cat have their contributions to make that are greatly appreciated. Father has his set of self-designated chores, while Small Cat takes her morning task of singing high opera to wake me up very seriously indeed. She also helps clean house by pushing all the feathers that she plays with under the carpets and keeps a stern eye on the maid as she blows through the bedrooms with her broom and swabbing cloth and bucket. And I trot dutifully behind, switching off lights, switching on fans and switching direction as the maid does an occasional unexpected turnaround to redo a spot she thinks I have just left a nasty footprint on.
Then comes the dusting. It is a job that has been traditionally assigned to me, as daughter of the house and youngest member of the family, and I have always hated it, never mind that it was made mine to make sure that I understood the value of the pocket-money I ‘earned’ by doing it. Now I pay the maid to do it, with the money that I earn by working at my job in the newspaper! As long as it helps me/us keep the house clean and gets the essentials done without too much damage to self or property, it cannot hurt, right?
And just for the record, this morning I went broom shopping. In the new car.
Sweeping clean
It’s funny how the same joke seems as funny the millionth time around as it does the first. One of father’s favourites is about brooms – and it never fails to make me giggle. Whenever I am seen wandering about the house with a broom (either on my never-ending quest for brushing out spiderwebs or sweeping cat litter out of my bathroom where Small Cat has her…umm…facilities), he will ask me with a tiny smile lighting up his eyes, “You going somewhere?”. And when I mumble irritably about needing new brooms, he will say with a delightful solemnity, “You just got a new car!”.
Sigh.
Keeping a house clean, even a decent-sized apartment, is not easy. The process starts when I wake up and ends only when I lie down at night, sometimes hopping out of bed again because I have forgotten to make sure there is detergent in the washing machine or I need to be sure that the towel on the spare bathroom door has not fallen off its hook. It is almost borderline obsessive compulsive, though my doctor assures me that I am just the compulsive allergic-personality type who stresses if something is not just-so and comes out in a rash if I do not do something about making it that way. Whatever the case, these days I make sure that things are basically just-so and let the rest go until another day when I am more in the mood to be persnickety about it all.
So, as I was saying, the cleaning thing – it starts early. I roll out of bed and wander blearily around dealing with everything from making green tea for myself to – for some reason I can only ascribe to that aforementioned borderline…- pushing the sugar container back on the shelf to line up with the other boxes. From then on, it is a matter of keeping one ear on our rather temperamental and admittedly ageing washing machine, making sure that everything is in place for the maid when she storms into the house to start her job by throwing dishes in and out of the sink – it’s called ‘washing up’, though I would do it myself in a rather more gentle and silent manner, but each to her own – and getting myself ready to head out to work.
Of course, both Father and Small Cat have their contributions to make that are greatly appreciated. Father has his set of self-designated chores, while Small Cat takes her morning task of singing high opera to wake me up very seriously indeed. She also helps clean house by pushing all the feathers that she plays with under the carpets and keeps a stern eye on the maid as she blows through the bedrooms with her broom and swabbing cloth and bucket. And I trot dutifully behind, switching off lights, switching on fans and switching direction as the maid does an occasional unexpected turnaround to redo a spot she thinks I have just left a nasty footprint on.
Then comes the dusting. It is a job that has been traditionally assigned to me, as daughter of the house and youngest member of the family, and I have always hated it, never mind that it was made mine to make sure that I understood the value of the pocket-money I ‘earned’ by doing it. Now I pay the maid to do it, with the money that I earn by working at my job in the newspaper! As long as it helps me/us keep the house clean and gets the essentials done without too much damage to self or property, it cannot hurt, right?
And just for the record, this morning I went broom shopping. In the new car.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Taking a cab
After a very long time, this morning I had to take a cab to work, because my idiot driver did not turn up when he was supposed to and was completely non-contactable. A cab was found and I hopped – still rather one-legged – into it, and directed the driver where I needed to be taken to. And then I sat back and faded into my own mind, vaguely resentful that I should have a perfectly good car but be unable to go anywhere in it. When we were almost at my destination, the cab driver suddenly decided to get chatty. And what he said showed me just how much I did not know about my own city and its familiar, well-known black and yellow taxis.
He called them ‘kaali-peeli’, which is only logical, since they are black (kaali) and yellow (peeli). But it took me a moment to figure that one out, since in Mumbaiyya Hindi, khaali-peeli, said with a little more spit and less polish, is a way of saying that something is unnecessary, be it an argument or a rule of any kind. These are, in a way, a dying breed, the driver explained, a car that will soon be defunct on the streets of this city. Because, as an old and discontinued model of Fiat, spare parts are not available any longer; in fact, if repairs need to be made, they are done by cannibalising parts from older vehicles that have long passed their use-by date. The factory has been shut down, the company has moved out of the country and the land it once owned has been sold, the man said with a touch of regretful nostalgia.
Today the kaali-peeli is fast being overtaken by more comfortable, faster and efficient taxis. There are mint-green cabs and golden-yellow cabs and even violet cabs meant only for women, driven only by women. And most of these are the call-on-demand kind, which come to your door when you phone for them and convey you to your destination in air-conditioned comfort. At a price, of course. As my taxi man elaborated, these are good, these are nice to sit in, these are fancy, but these are not always available. They need to be called; they are not allowed to park at street corners (neither are the kaali-peelis, to be absolutely correct) or at taxi stands and they need special permits to ply the usual routes.
My cab driver had ambitions. He had enough saved, he said, to buy a new car. And he knew exactly which one he wanted. The problem was that he had a taxi permit for the ordinary kaali-peeli kind of cab, not for an air-conditioned ‘Cool Cab’, as it is known here. But almost all new cars came with a built-in air-conditioning system that disallowed it from being an ordinary black-and-yellow taxi. Which meant that either he had to spend more time than he wanted to explaining to prospective customers that a ride in his cab would cost the same as in any other kaali-peeli, or else he would be restricted to being a Cool Cab, which he did not want since that would be more expensive to run, cost his customers more and reduce his client base. It all made good business sense.
Taking a cab is no longer a matter of getting from one place to another for me. I have become spoiled by the luxury of having my own car to transport me from hither to yon, putting me in the self-indulgent position of not needing to find my way from anywhere to anywhere else at the mercy of strangers. I do not need to dig in my purse for change, nor do I have to search for a taxi that looks as respectable as its driver. But on days like today, I feel battered, bruised and bent by circumstance…and a set of stairs that just invited me to fall up them.
He called them ‘kaali-peeli’, which is only logical, since they are black (kaali) and yellow (peeli). But it took me a moment to figure that one out, since in Mumbaiyya Hindi, khaali-peeli, said with a little more spit and less polish, is a way of saying that something is unnecessary, be it an argument or a rule of any kind. These are, in a way, a dying breed, the driver explained, a car that will soon be defunct on the streets of this city. Because, as an old and discontinued model of Fiat, spare parts are not available any longer; in fact, if repairs need to be made, they are done by cannibalising parts from older vehicles that have long passed their use-by date. The factory has been shut down, the company has moved out of the country and the land it once owned has been sold, the man said with a touch of regretful nostalgia.
Today the kaali-peeli is fast being overtaken by more comfortable, faster and efficient taxis. There are mint-green cabs and golden-yellow cabs and even violet cabs meant only for women, driven only by women. And most of these are the call-on-demand kind, which come to your door when you phone for them and convey you to your destination in air-conditioned comfort. At a price, of course. As my taxi man elaborated, these are good, these are nice to sit in, these are fancy, but these are not always available. They need to be called; they are not allowed to park at street corners (neither are the kaali-peelis, to be absolutely correct) or at taxi stands and they need special permits to ply the usual routes.
My cab driver had ambitions. He had enough saved, he said, to buy a new car. And he knew exactly which one he wanted. The problem was that he had a taxi permit for the ordinary kaali-peeli kind of cab, not for an air-conditioned ‘Cool Cab’, as it is known here. But almost all new cars came with a built-in air-conditioning system that disallowed it from being an ordinary black-and-yellow taxi. Which meant that either he had to spend more time than he wanted to explaining to prospective customers that a ride in his cab would cost the same as in any other kaali-peeli, or else he would be restricted to being a Cool Cab, which he did not want since that would be more expensive to run, cost his customers more and reduce his client base. It all made good business sense.
Taking a cab is no longer a matter of getting from one place to another for me. I have become spoiled by the luxury of having my own car to transport me from hither to yon, putting me in the self-indulgent position of not needing to find my way from anywhere to anywhere else at the mercy of strangers. I do not need to dig in my purse for change, nor do I have to search for a taxi that looks as respectable as its driver. But on days like today, I feel battered, bruised and bent by circumstance…and a set of stairs that just invited me to fall up them.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Home and away
It’s good to be home for a while. But it is not good to be stuck at home, with lots of places to go but no feet to go there. Well, I do have both feet, it’s just that one is nicely tinted in various shades of blue and black, with two and a half toes that look like sausages that are on the point of bursting, but not as burnt as they seemed to be yesterday. The ankle is still more swollen than is my usual self, and the knee and shin are…well…interestingly hued, to put it mildly. It hurts to walk faster than a casually nonchalant limp and if I stand or even sit too long with my foot down, it tells me I am being negligent and nasty in a very loud and strident voice.
So, with this, and with feeling rather sorry for myself, no matter how much I tell myself however sternly that I am not that kind of person, I have been wandering vaguely around the apartment occasionally coochie-cooing with Small Cat, annoying Father and, in sheer self-defence, sleeping a lot more than I normally do. I have read a lot more of the newspapers and books and magazines scattered about and am looking with some degree of desperation at the vast array of bookshelves that line the study walls for more that is readable when lying down or at least with one leg up higher than is easy to balance when sitting. And the mood is more than wontedly sensitive – pain, annoyance at my own amazing grace, fear at the thought that perhaps more damage was caused than is known and irritation that results from cabin fever are starting to set it with a vengeance. So every now and then I indulge in a bout of self-pitying sniffling, pairing it with a bawl to Small Cat and a wail at poor Father.
I did want a vacation. But a VACATION, not a break from the dreary routine at work where I sit drearily at home wondering what to do with myself. I could have done myself proud at the beauty salon (he he he – me??), or started my long-promised exercise routine or even just done meandering walks to deal with that annoying new bulge in various parts of me, but…sigh. When I actually get to take a break, I find myself doing almost literally just that – suspected break, proven not-break, then enforced break, if you know what I mean.
What do I normally do when I take time off? I am not sure, actually, since it has been a while since I have taken time off to do it. The last time I was on a break, my friend was here from the US and we careened madly about town “getting stuff done”. I still need a holiday to recover from that one, I think. Before that, I was at home for about ten days, trying to get over a spell of the dizzies, as you may have read in a previous blog (if you ever read a previous blog, that is). And before that…oh, yes, before that I did actually take a real break, wandering off to see buddy in Delhi, eating a lot and meeting old friends with the pleasure that only a genuine holiday can bring.
Holidays are a rare species these days, in most people’s lives. Father has not been on a holiday in forever, I think, the last time perhaps when he came to visit me in Delhi during the time I was temporarily based there. Small Cat, of course, has a busy day every day, as has been the norm in her fairly short almost-two-year life so far, what with singing lessons at the crack of dawn, then breakfast, then a mad chase after Father or me or a feather, then dodging the maid as she cleans the house, then a snack, then – the most vital element that she must deal with through the day – a nap, then more chase, then more food, occasional potty breaks and water-bowl visits…oh, the work never stops!
There are those who know how to take holidays. Some people fly off to Morocco or the Maldives, others drive into the mountains or go skiing, a few even luxuriate in a spa or a meditation centre. And one day, this family will understand what a break is really all about, refrain from self-damage of any kind, and actually take time off to do absolutely nothing that could possibly be defined as ‘work’.
So, with this, and with feeling rather sorry for myself, no matter how much I tell myself however sternly that I am not that kind of person, I have been wandering vaguely around the apartment occasionally coochie-cooing with Small Cat, annoying Father and, in sheer self-defence, sleeping a lot more than I normally do. I have read a lot more of the newspapers and books and magazines scattered about and am looking with some degree of desperation at the vast array of bookshelves that line the study walls for more that is readable when lying down or at least with one leg up higher than is easy to balance when sitting. And the mood is more than wontedly sensitive – pain, annoyance at my own amazing grace, fear at the thought that perhaps more damage was caused than is known and irritation that results from cabin fever are starting to set it with a vengeance. So every now and then I indulge in a bout of self-pitying sniffling, pairing it with a bawl to Small Cat and a wail at poor Father.
I did want a vacation. But a VACATION, not a break from the dreary routine at work where I sit drearily at home wondering what to do with myself. I could have done myself proud at the beauty salon (he he he – me??), or started my long-promised exercise routine or even just done meandering walks to deal with that annoying new bulge in various parts of me, but…sigh. When I actually get to take a break, I find myself doing almost literally just that – suspected break, proven not-break, then enforced break, if you know what I mean.
What do I normally do when I take time off? I am not sure, actually, since it has been a while since I have taken time off to do it. The last time I was on a break, my friend was here from the US and we careened madly about town “getting stuff done”. I still need a holiday to recover from that one, I think. Before that, I was at home for about ten days, trying to get over a spell of the dizzies, as you may have read in a previous blog (if you ever read a previous blog, that is). And before that…oh, yes, before that I did actually take a real break, wandering off to see buddy in Delhi, eating a lot and meeting old friends with the pleasure that only a genuine holiday can bring.
Holidays are a rare species these days, in most people’s lives. Father has not been on a holiday in forever, I think, the last time perhaps when he came to visit me in Delhi during the time I was temporarily based there. Small Cat, of course, has a busy day every day, as has been the norm in her fairly short almost-two-year life so far, what with singing lessons at the crack of dawn, then breakfast, then a mad chase after Father or me or a feather, then dodging the maid as she cleans the house, then a snack, then – the most vital element that she must deal with through the day – a nap, then more chase, then more food, occasional potty breaks and water-bowl visits…oh, the work never stops!
There are those who know how to take holidays. Some people fly off to Morocco or the Maldives, others drive into the mountains or go skiing, a few even luxuriate in a spa or a meditation centre. And one day, this family will understand what a break is really all about, refrain from self-damage of any kind, and actually take time off to do absolutely nothing that could possibly be defined as ‘work’.
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