(Published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine yesterday)
Once upon a time a chair was something to sit on, a bed was meant for sleeping in and a table was best used during mealtime or as a work-surface. Today, furniture is often more a design statement than a merely functional element in home décor. This is a fairly typical feature in high-budget urban homes, or those that are well protected from the environment and, most importantly, have a team of people to care for the interiors. Catering to this need is a panoply of home stores and design studios in Mumbai and elsewhere. One such is the Pallate Design Studio in Mahalakshmi, South Mumbai, which recently featured its first showing of designer work by its creator and Head Designer, Shahid Datawala, and the young and enthusiastic Priyanka Gala.
Trained in Product Design at the Raffles Design International College, Mumbai, award-winner Gala started as a fashion and jewellery designer, but soon made the short transit to furniture. In her first collection, she shows off facets of her own personality, with a touch of feminine charm and practical functionality. Datawala, a man of many talents – among them photography and garment and jewellery design, classical music and “many other things” – uses dramatic blocks of colour and graphic shapes that, he says, are “inspired by anything I could see around me in my everyday life”.
Gala knows what any girl wants and gives it to her with characteristic élan. Walking into two of the ‘rooms’ designed by her is like coming home. One, done up entirely in black and white and an occasional pale taupe-grey, used various permutations of design and texture that is, strangely, not overwhelming in its starkness. The bed-head, with its mailbox-like shelving in a high-gloss finish is perfect for all the nuances in a feminine life, from chapstick and hand-cream to alarm clocks, books, telephone, medicines, mirror, tissues…”It’s my favourite colour combination,” Gala says, showing off the cushions, the spreads, the seats, even the screen. The same finish is used on many other pieces, from a dresser to a work-desk, closet doors and shelving units. Another space, also intimately sized, is more informal, obviously young and girly – with greens and pinks dominating, everything from the bangles on the dressing table to the wallpaper colour-coordinated for best effect. A larger space is a model living-dining area, with gilded ‘commas’ a recurring motif on chair-backs, drawer handles and couches. This is far more formal and masculine –“the colours used here are less feminine,” Gala acknowledges.
Datawala’s work is somehow darker, deeper, perhaps a reflection of his many experiences as a photographer. The pieces he has created for this show of his collections for the Pallate Design Studio need a much larger scale and space to be shown off. A brilliant red table base from his Atom collection has ‘branches’ that come off a central stem, “like an atomic structure, or DNA”, says Datawala. His Poached Egg table is an ominously clean white arc set with a yellow centre, with more pieces that match the same eggy theme – chairs, a sofa, a centre table. The Orange Peel sofa melds textures and curves to create segments of vivid orange, while the 69 set has the obvious lines of the numbers with a wicked sexual innuendo attached. And the clean white and chrome of the Arc ensemble balance nicely on bases that are neatly curved. These are all very high-maintenance pieces, Datawala agrees, and need big homes with substantial staff to make sure there are no scratches on the high-gloss laminate over wood and ply, he knows, trying to eliminate one such scar from the edge of his Poached Egg dining table.
In the crowd of familiar styles of furniture - be it Chippendale, Mackintosh, Dhrangadhra or a more mundane Durian – the work of some inventive and innovative designers tends to stand out. You just need to know where to find the excitement!
Monday, June 28, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Musical cares
(continued...)
I have been finding over the last couple of months that a number of people who say they like music, don’t. Not really, truly, at least. They enjoy one or maybe two styles, tolerate the rest as background noise and abjure the – in their opinions, whatever those may be – more esoteric. They will listen to the unfamiliar and the familiarly disliked for a brief while to please their loved ones or to be social or, sometimes, to show their accommodating large-heartedness, or even their willingness to be ‘in’, but not with any discernible attention and interest. There is an element of crocodile in their smiles, a soupcon of Punchinello in their nods, a sense of panic in their need to know the average playing length of the CD or tape or live rendition.
From this rather nastily snobbish point of view, Mumbai is more genuine than almost any other Indian city I know – personally or by hearsay. This, even though the man who manages my favourite music store in my home town (the aforementioned Mumbai) tells me that Chennai has a more adventurous audience and so a larger selection of genres like alternative, fusion, jazz, be-bop and rai. It may be because the South – as a people more than a geography – is more Brahmin, tolerant, accepting, even genuinely curious and therefore involved. Another explanation could be that with so much less of the bureaucracy and self-consciousness that plagues Delhi, minds outside the capital are more open to outside influences, more inviting to the myriad sounds of music, new and old.
My exposure to melody and phonic input has been both deliberate and subliminal over the many years of my life in various parts of the globe. From shaadi sangeets to traditional kutcheries, operas and rock concerts to chamber orchestras, commuter-train singers, tourist-bus antakshari teams, beggar minstrels and party crooners to meal-time entertainers, tapes, CDs and now the magic of MP3, I have survived the whole gamut and enjoyed most of it, even singing along occasionally in my best shower-stopping voice.
I remember one wonderful concert I went to when I was in college in New York. It was wonderful not just because of my escort – the best looking man on campus and just a dear friend, unfortunately – but because of the strange genre it was. Atonal, the show proclaimed. Instead of an orchestra or musicians or instruments or anything remotely familiarly musically related, there were two huge speakers on the stage, with spotlights focussed on them, the scene worthy of a full-blown opera setting. The synthetic sounds came squeaking, scraping, sonorous, sensual, sensitive, stirring over the superbly balanced acoustic system. I sat there, sometimes moved, other times uncomprehending, but always rapt, wholly absorbed in the strangeness of the experience.
A few years ago, I was taken to listen to chamber music at the India International Centre, Delhi. I had just arrived in the city after a hideously long and tiring journey by rail from Mumbai, and the train lag was hitting me very badly. The music – being mild and easy to absorb Mozart, Hadyn and Handel – was unchallenging to a sleep-deprived brain, and the movements of the internationally well-known string quartet slow, swinging and soporific. I started by enjoying the familiar sounds, then slowly drifted into a state of gently swaying inertia and, finally, to the unmitigated collective horror of my parents and hosts, sank inevitably back against the headrest of my seat and succumbed – mercifully silently - to the incessant demands of Morpheus. No amount of surreptitious shaking and prodding pulled me that evening from behind the walls of dreamland and I missed a musical treat…or so I was told for many years thereafter.
And now I am driven to the borderlines of insanity by that scourge on the phonic soundscape – the remix. It plays without any reason, sense or comprehensible logic in shopping malls, elevators, hotel foyers, weddings, parties, discotheques…even my car on occasion. It takes the familiar – usually Hindi film music of myriad time zones and genres - and makes it uncomfortably unfamiliar, a catchy beat and souped up instrumental improvisations combined with rap and rapid rhythmic variations to create a series of noises that do appeal in the short-term, but repel if heard more than once, unless well-flavoured – and often muffled – by the welcome musicality of traffic in a metropolis through an open window.
Music as she is heard - but is that the way it was meant to be?
I have been finding over the last couple of months that a number of people who say they like music, don’t. Not really, truly, at least. They enjoy one or maybe two styles, tolerate the rest as background noise and abjure the – in their opinions, whatever those may be – more esoteric. They will listen to the unfamiliar and the familiarly disliked for a brief while to please their loved ones or to be social or, sometimes, to show their accommodating large-heartedness, or even their willingness to be ‘in’, but not with any discernible attention and interest. There is an element of crocodile in their smiles, a soupcon of Punchinello in their nods, a sense of panic in their need to know the average playing length of the CD or tape or live rendition.
From this rather nastily snobbish point of view, Mumbai is more genuine than almost any other Indian city I know – personally or by hearsay. This, even though the man who manages my favourite music store in my home town (the aforementioned Mumbai) tells me that Chennai has a more adventurous audience and so a larger selection of genres like alternative, fusion, jazz, be-bop and rai. It may be because the South – as a people more than a geography – is more Brahmin, tolerant, accepting, even genuinely curious and therefore involved. Another explanation could be that with so much less of the bureaucracy and self-consciousness that plagues Delhi, minds outside the capital are more open to outside influences, more inviting to the myriad sounds of music, new and old.
My exposure to melody and phonic input has been both deliberate and subliminal over the many years of my life in various parts of the globe. From shaadi sangeets to traditional kutcheries, operas and rock concerts to chamber orchestras, commuter-train singers, tourist-bus antakshari teams, beggar minstrels and party crooners to meal-time entertainers, tapes, CDs and now the magic of MP3, I have survived the whole gamut and enjoyed most of it, even singing along occasionally in my best shower-stopping voice.
I remember one wonderful concert I went to when I was in college in New York. It was wonderful not just because of my escort – the best looking man on campus and just a dear friend, unfortunately – but because of the strange genre it was. Atonal, the show proclaimed. Instead of an orchestra or musicians or instruments or anything remotely familiarly musically related, there were two huge speakers on the stage, with spotlights focussed on them, the scene worthy of a full-blown opera setting. The synthetic sounds came squeaking, scraping, sonorous, sensual, sensitive, stirring over the superbly balanced acoustic system. I sat there, sometimes moved, other times uncomprehending, but always rapt, wholly absorbed in the strangeness of the experience.
A few years ago, I was taken to listen to chamber music at the India International Centre, Delhi. I had just arrived in the city after a hideously long and tiring journey by rail from Mumbai, and the train lag was hitting me very badly. The music – being mild and easy to absorb Mozart, Hadyn and Handel – was unchallenging to a sleep-deprived brain, and the movements of the internationally well-known string quartet slow, swinging and soporific. I started by enjoying the familiar sounds, then slowly drifted into a state of gently swaying inertia and, finally, to the unmitigated collective horror of my parents and hosts, sank inevitably back against the headrest of my seat and succumbed – mercifully silently - to the incessant demands of Morpheus. No amount of surreptitious shaking and prodding pulled me that evening from behind the walls of dreamland and I missed a musical treat…or so I was told for many years thereafter.
And now I am driven to the borderlines of insanity by that scourge on the phonic soundscape – the remix. It plays without any reason, sense or comprehensible logic in shopping malls, elevators, hotel foyers, weddings, parties, discotheques…even my car on occasion. It takes the familiar – usually Hindi film music of myriad time zones and genres - and makes it uncomfortably unfamiliar, a catchy beat and souped up instrumental improvisations combined with rap and rapid rhythmic variations to create a series of noises that do appeal in the short-term, but repel if heard more than once, unless well-flavoured – and often muffled – by the welcome musicality of traffic in a metropolis through an open window.
Music as she is heard - but is that the way it was meant to be?
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Quality control
(More from Delhi...)
I was taught when I was very young that there were two Qs I had to mind, and mind more than any Ps I ever met in my life. They were weirdly spelled, but since I soon found that much of English and any other language I knew was, too, I got used to it. The words – dinned into my hard little head by parents, teachers and assorted other shapers of my then-tender psyche – also had meanings deeper than I first understood; these meanings, and the understanding thereof, have been clarified, magnified and ramified manifold over the years I have been conscious of them.
And the aforementioned words: quality and its kissing second-cousin, quantity. The way it was explained to me was that quality was the 'what kind' part, whereas quantity meant the 'how much' of whatever the object of discussion was. And the two concepts clashed happily and unhappily over the years, as I gradually discovered when to prefer what and why. Slowly, sometimes painfully, I learned that however impressive the short term benefits or gains of quantity, the long-term effects and satisfactions of quality always won out.
It started when I was very young. My parents would help me explore the contents of my piggy bank and try and show me which round metallic object was what. And then they would offer me one of these, or even a flimsy piece of paper, in exchange for a whole lot of those bits. Anyone with any sort of logic would object – how could one ‘thing’ substitute for so many? It didn’t take long, however, for me to understand that the one thing by itself could get me a lot more chocolate than the many things had the power to. It was the first in a series of object lessons that taught me about the circumstance that makes my own life possible: money.
Then came the story of clothes. I was a downy working girl at the time, fresh out of college and back in the country, gainfully – or so my employers optimistically believed – employed. I made friends, some for lunch, others for shopping, a few for that strange, hormonally-linked phenomenon known as female bonding. The shopping ones again showed me the distinction between my two favourite Qs. We would all head for that Mumbaite’s mecca, Mangaldas Market, the place where fabric fiends find Nemesis grinning fondly at them over bales of cloth. They would scramble for the “Lettest, sister! Good price!” stuff, while I stood fastidiously, snootily, isolatedly by and gazed longingly at the soft, rich gleam of silks and the rough nubbiness of hand-woven textiles. We spent about the same amount of money, but I got just one smallish package while they strode triumphantly out with bundles to gloat over. I still have the outfit made with that purchase; my friends have had many new wardrobes since.
Then, one day, I moved to Delhi, far away from my own territory and cohorts. I saw a whole new version of the quality-quantity divide in the lifestyles and habits of the locals. There was the nouveau riche blowsiness of the average Punjabi peacock – in clothes, in food, in decibel level, in décor, in weddings – in complete contrast to the quiet, Brahmin elegance of an occasional Mylapore moorhen I was used to. I was rather startled, sometimes even shocked, in my finicky, elitist Mumbai-bred manner, at the excess they could achieve. But how they went about it was endearing – they were enthusiastically absorbed, childlike in their pursuits, convinced in every way that what they were doing was THE thing, hep, happening, sophisticated, classy and, most of all, what everyone else (even the moorhens) would enjoy as much and as passionately.
They ate with verve, huge meaty helpings surfeited with spices and floating with fats. They drank - indiscriminately, unimaginatively, immaturely – inexplicably preferring the high of lots of cheap whisky (the general choice) to the savour of measured Single Malts. They sang bonhomously loud and heartily, their voices raised sometimes tunefully in chorus to refrains from old film music or new bhangra concoctions. They dressed in all the glitter of the Times Square tree or the night-time displays from Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar, with sequins and zari, velvets and satins, pseudo labels and seventies-style safari suits. They made a lot of noise, attracted a lot of attention and had a lot of naive, unconcerned fun.
And they made me long – though very briefly - for a simpler attitude, one that would temporarily discard that old dinned-in notion of quality versus quantity and find the naive joy of a peacock dancing in the warm, friendly rain.
I was taught when I was very young that there were two Qs I had to mind, and mind more than any Ps I ever met in my life. They were weirdly spelled, but since I soon found that much of English and any other language I knew was, too, I got used to it. The words – dinned into my hard little head by parents, teachers and assorted other shapers of my then-tender psyche – also had meanings deeper than I first understood; these meanings, and the understanding thereof, have been clarified, magnified and ramified manifold over the years I have been conscious of them.
And the aforementioned words: quality and its kissing second-cousin, quantity. The way it was explained to me was that quality was the 'what kind' part, whereas quantity meant the 'how much' of whatever the object of discussion was. And the two concepts clashed happily and unhappily over the years, as I gradually discovered when to prefer what and why. Slowly, sometimes painfully, I learned that however impressive the short term benefits or gains of quantity, the long-term effects and satisfactions of quality always won out.
It started when I was very young. My parents would help me explore the contents of my piggy bank and try and show me which round metallic object was what. And then they would offer me one of these, or even a flimsy piece of paper, in exchange for a whole lot of those bits. Anyone with any sort of logic would object – how could one ‘thing’ substitute for so many? It didn’t take long, however, for me to understand that the one thing by itself could get me a lot more chocolate than the many things had the power to. It was the first in a series of object lessons that taught me about the circumstance that makes my own life possible: money.
Then came the story of clothes. I was a downy working girl at the time, fresh out of college and back in the country, gainfully – or so my employers optimistically believed – employed. I made friends, some for lunch, others for shopping, a few for that strange, hormonally-linked phenomenon known as female bonding. The shopping ones again showed me the distinction between my two favourite Qs. We would all head for that Mumbaite’s mecca, Mangaldas Market, the place where fabric fiends find Nemesis grinning fondly at them over bales of cloth. They would scramble for the “Lettest, sister! Good price!” stuff, while I stood fastidiously, snootily, isolatedly by and gazed longingly at the soft, rich gleam of silks and the rough nubbiness of hand-woven textiles. We spent about the same amount of money, but I got just one smallish package while they strode triumphantly out with bundles to gloat over. I still have the outfit made with that purchase; my friends have had many new wardrobes since.
Then, one day, I moved to Delhi, far away from my own territory and cohorts. I saw a whole new version of the quality-quantity divide in the lifestyles and habits of the locals. There was the nouveau riche blowsiness of the average Punjabi peacock – in clothes, in food, in decibel level, in décor, in weddings – in complete contrast to the quiet, Brahmin elegance of an occasional Mylapore moorhen I was used to. I was rather startled, sometimes even shocked, in my finicky, elitist Mumbai-bred manner, at the excess they could achieve. But how they went about it was endearing – they were enthusiastically absorbed, childlike in their pursuits, convinced in every way that what they were doing was THE thing, hep, happening, sophisticated, classy and, most of all, what everyone else (even the moorhens) would enjoy as much and as passionately.
They ate with verve, huge meaty helpings surfeited with spices and floating with fats. They drank - indiscriminately, unimaginatively, immaturely – inexplicably preferring the high of lots of cheap whisky (the general choice) to the savour of measured Single Malts. They sang bonhomously loud and heartily, their voices raised sometimes tunefully in chorus to refrains from old film music or new bhangra concoctions. They dressed in all the glitter of the Times Square tree or the night-time displays from Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar, with sequins and zari, velvets and satins, pseudo labels and seventies-style safari suits. They made a lot of noise, attracted a lot of attention and had a lot of naive, unconcerned fun.
And they made me long – though very briefly - for a simpler attitude, one that would temporarily discard that old dinned-in notion of quality versus quantity and find the naive joy of a peacock dancing in the warm, friendly rain.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Munchies and more
(More from the Delhi files...)
'Tis the party season in Delhi. Beautifully warm, sunny days yield to chilly evenings, and outdoor dos are the norm, for the most part. Sigris and heaters light up the nights as hosts conduct their shivering guests on to the terrace, where they all huddle together with hands outstretched over the glowing coals. An occasional burst of teasing breezes induce delicate shudders as chilly fingers of air creep up trouser legs, sari petticoats and sleeves with a touch of arbitrary, casual sadism. And the soul gets gently chilled in tandem with the body, as the necessity for food for thought fades even as the need to feed the stomach burgeons.
The stomach is indeed fed, with bits and bites. In Mumbai, party crunchies would depend on the sort of occasion it is. Very often, I have feasted variedly on potato chips, banana chips, tapioca chips, carrot chips, karela chips, yam chips, prawn chips, corn chips, tortilla chips and a chip on a shoulder or two. Chivda of various flavours jostles with papads and pretzels, while prettily configured veggies clamour for attention from dips laden with dahi, paneer, fresh herbs and hoarded spices. Trays wander past, laden with canapés (pronounced in myriad ways)-everything from neat rounds of bread to saltines topped with cheeses, goopily-mayonnaised salads and curried vegetables. An occasional roll in appropriately cocktail bite-size may make its presence known, in the company of small chunks of fruit.
And the guests partake, some making dinner out of minor offerings. Punctuating gulps of assorted beverages and bursts of conversation is the crunch, chew and munch of passing edibles served up, masticated and swallowed. Polite requests for recipes intersperse doses of gossip about friends and enemies alike, with sidelong comments on fashion, foibles and frivolities that are the norm in parties. Everyone knows someone and pick-up lines are as frequent as ecstatic greetings of buddies not seen for at least two hours, air kisses exchanged, the air redolent of the onion on the chole, the garlic in the dip and the mustard with the proscuitto.
In Delhi, however, there is a distinct culinary difference. I have never met so many self-conscious eaters of a fare that tends to be standard across the capital's evenings out. As I have stood on cold terraces or windswept lawns, my hands creeping steadily closer to the warmth of sparking embers, I have dodged melancholy men in grubby uniforms insistently offering me a series of morsels of strange colour and odour. This is where I met the kebab, now ubiquitous in my social experience. It came sliced into mouth-filling pieces, small coin-shaped rounds or wrapped in cold, hard rotis, with a red sauce - was it ketchup, barbeque, salsa or something else that I didn't want to identify? - to slop it with. It lay inertly in paraffin-warmed metal containers, held on a tray in the company of crepey paper napkins with which to wipe off the oil and masala. It varied in colour from deep burnt-amber to pale grey-green, and incorporated dizzying quantities of spices, some incendiary, some dulling, some just plain inappropriate. And its composite contents spread across the animal kingdom, from fish to fowl to other fauna of unquestioned provenance.
As a change came the vegetarian avatars of this cocktail food - paneer squares, capsicum strips, potato croquettes and, in one horrific accident, broccoli in a batter coating. It all floated past on the same sort of containers as the carnivorous equivalents, to a considerably less enthusiastic acceptance. Accompanists included fragile toothpicks, implements to pierce and lift the edible morsels to the mouth; the problem was then what to do with the little skewers thereafter - I did notice modes of disposal such as furtively sticking them under chair cushions, dropping them discreetly into potted plants and, in one particular instance (which caused me to go into firmly quelled paroxysms of delighted giggles), the jacket pocket of a passing gentleman (for the record and the edification of suspicious friends, that was not my doing).
And then, one bright winter late-night, I met the spring roll, cocktail style. It was at a party to celebrate the launch of a glossy book. The tome was vivid, the rolls pale brown; the volume unfurled its bright pages at the flick of a thumb, the food curled cringing on a warmer tray; the book needed a whole lap to hold it in, the munchie mandated two fingers, delicately positioned. Both were devoured, eagerly, avidly, greedily. Food for the soul and more for the tummy, all right!
'Tis the party season in Delhi. Beautifully warm, sunny days yield to chilly evenings, and outdoor dos are the norm, for the most part. Sigris and heaters light up the nights as hosts conduct their shivering guests on to the terrace, where they all huddle together with hands outstretched over the glowing coals. An occasional burst of teasing breezes induce delicate shudders as chilly fingers of air creep up trouser legs, sari petticoats and sleeves with a touch of arbitrary, casual sadism. And the soul gets gently chilled in tandem with the body, as the necessity for food for thought fades even as the need to feed the stomach burgeons.
The stomach is indeed fed, with bits and bites. In Mumbai, party crunchies would depend on the sort of occasion it is. Very often, I have feasted variedly on potato chips, banana chips, tapioca chips, carrot chips, karela chips, yam chips, prawn chips, corn chips, tortilla chips and a chip on a shoulder or two. Chivda of various flavours jostles with papads and pretzels, while prettily configured veggies clamour for attention from dips laden with dahi, paneer, fresh herbs and hoarded spices. Trays wander past, laden with canapés (pronounced in myriad ways)-everything from neat rounds of bread to saltines topped with cheeses, goopily-mayonnaised salads and curried vegetables. An occasional roll in appropriately cocktail bite-size may make its presence known, in the company of small chunks of fruit.
And the guests partake, some making dinner out of minor offerings. Punctuating gulps of assorted beverages and bursts of conversation is the crunch, chew and munch of passing edibles served up, masticated and swallowed. Polite requests for recipes intersperse doses of gossip about friends and enemies alike, with sidelong comments on fashion, foibles and frivolities that are the norm in parties. Everyone knows someone and pick-up lines are as frequent as ecstatic greetings of buddies not seen for at least two hours, air kisses exchanged, the air redolent of the onion on the chole, the garlic in the dip and the mustard with the proscuitto.
In Delhi, however, there is a distinct culinary difference. I have never met so many self-conscious eaters of a fare that tends to be standard across the capital's evenings out. As I have stood on cold terraces or windswept lawns, my hands creeping steadily closer to the warmth of sparking embers, I have dodged melancholy men in grubby uniforms insistently offering me a series of morsels of strange colour and odour. This is where I met the kebab, now ubiquitous in my social experience. It came sliced into mouth-filling pieces, small coin-shaped rounds or wrapped in cold, hard rotis, with a red sauce - was it ketchup, barbeque, salsa or something else that I didn't want to identify? - to slop it with. It lay inertly in paraffin-warmed metal containers, held on a tray in the company of crepey paper napkins with which to wipe off the oil and masala. It varied in colour from deep burnt-amber to pale grey-green, and incorporated dizzying quantities of spices, some incendiary, some dulling, some just plain inappropriate. And its composite contents spread across the animal kingdom, from fish to fowl to other fauna of unquestioned provenance.
As a change came the vegetarian avatars of this cocktail food - paneer squares, capsicum strips, potato croquettes and, in one horrific accident, broccoli in a batter coating. It all floated past on the same sort of containers as the carnivorous equivalents, to a considerably less enthusiastic acceptance. Accompanists included fragile toothpicks, implements to pierce and lift the edible morsels to the mouth; the problem was then what to do with the little skewers thereafter - I did notice modes of disposal such as furtively sticking them under chair cushions, dropping them discreetly into potted plants and, in one particular instance (which caused me to go into firmly quelled paroxysms of delighted giggles), the jacket pocket of a passing gentleman (for the record and the edification of suspicious friends, that was not my doing).
And then, one bright winter late-night, I met the spring roll, cocktail style. It was at a party to celebrate the launch of a glossy book. The tome was vivid, the rolls pale brown; the volume unfurled its bright pages at the flick of a thumb, the food curled cringing on a warmer tray; the book needed a whole lap to hold it in, the munchie mandated two fingers, delicately positioned. Both were devoured, eagerly, avidly, greedily. Food for the soul and more for the tummy, all right!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wedding boos
(I found a collection of columns I wrote a very long time ago when I lived in Delhi, in what now seems like almost another life. But they seemed fun, with the much-vaunted Mumbai-Delhi rivalry in existence even now, so I thought why not....!)
It has been a hectic week. The kind when you grab a little sleep whenever possible, be it during the night - where sleep traditionally belongs - or at moments in the daytime, in the car (though better not while you yourself are driving), at your keyboard at work, in the loo...wherever you have a moment of personal peace to let those active synapses shut off for a brief while. One rather unexpected place I have found nap-in-worthy is a traffic jam. And those I have had close encounters with over the past few days.
'Tis evidently wedding season in the glorious city of Delhi, and an integral part of the nuptial celebrations is a traffic jam. Guests and relatives alike, all dressed to kill - or die, considering the arbitrary manner of their wanderings in busy vehicular lanes of passage - teem outside garishly be-lit and bedecked venues, mill myriadly along the pavements and clog streets in a casually proprietorial way that lovers have with their accustomed beloveds. This tends, for reasons unfathomed by the cloggers, to make traffic slow and then gradually grind to a noisy, indignant, impatient halt outside pandals, temples and reception grounds. Dialogue does little to sort out the problem, coloured as it inevitably is with a certain non-bonhomous mindset.
The underlying problem seems to be that of the occasion itself, more than the people populating it. A couple of days ago, en route to a dinner party in a neighbouring state, I became entangled in just that sort of situation - a wedding-induced traffic jam. Bejewelled, bedecked and be-sworn-at invitees straggled across what was supposed to be the main state thoroughfare, meandering around stalled cars, sauntering past growling container trucks, stopping to chat in front of testy taxis and irate auto-rickshaws. Have wedding, have reception, goes the mandated sequence; and have reception have guests, is the logical consequence. And, obviously, have guests for reception, have traffic snarls.
So, having chosen the culprit as the cause - the marriage celebration itself - the ifs, buts and byways needs perforce to be examined. One major factor in the mess that causes a rise in vehicular and/or driver choler is the degree of downmarketness involved, the vulgarity, the non-u-ness, the overall glitz and glitter of the celebration and its ramifications. Be it elephants or horses, rose-spotted Contessas or spangled stretch limos, mill-owners or mill-workers, the idea is almost always to make a noise, the louder the better, keeping up with the Joneses be damned and out-done beyond the neighbouring housing society. And, the greater the blockade on the roads around the axial point of the whole, the better! Class, after all, involves subtlety, silence, and a let's-not-attract-attention-or-annoy-the-tax-department elegance. And good traffic management, too.
I encountered a wedding reception of the first kind recently. Guests were greeted at the gate of the hostess' house by two rather disgruntled pachyderms, both shuffling restively from foot to foot, unhappy with not just their trappings of flowers but with the ethnic dancers whirling and bellowing untunefully to greet invitees. Bright lights lit up the chaos, and cross klaxons and chagrined chauffeurs added to the vernacular cacophony. Inside the house - with an interior décor as jarring as the general decibel level - hordes of unwashed banjaras sat in groups, some displaying their presumably musical talents, others their costumes, still others their bad teeth.
Traffic within was as bad as that without. People gathered in groups, each getting in the way of the adjacent one, every little clique expressing vacuity at high volume. Jewels glittered like the high beams of visitor's vehicles, teeth gleamed with equal intensity. Turbans towered, reminiscent of the red lights spinning atop the governmental cars that stopped at the gate to disgorge their passengers. Fashion bewildered, from mal-fitting zari-strewn red gowns swathed in tinselly gauze to dull gold lame saris worn with the panache of badly draped curtains, from allegedly gypsy-style skirts to form-fitting black satin somethings that defied description. Waiters wove unsteadily and sleepily through the crowd, their offerings cold, pallid and pooling on trays held beseechingly out to anyone who would accept. And, at every turn, sycophants cooed and sighed sweet nothings, presenting their fondly imagined best profiles towards the flashbulbs of the gossip press.
Somewhere in the mess, the blushing bride and - one could assume - her bashful bridegroom lurked, like earthworms that creep unscathed through the neon blurs of speeding cars on a winter night. All the while, outside, the traffic blared and bulldozed hopefully, in futile anticipation of a time where it would pass in peace.
It has been a hectic week. The kind when you grab a little sleep whenever possible, be it during the night - where sleep traditionally belongs - or at moments in the daytime, in the car (though better not while you yourself are driving), at your keyboard at work, in the loo...wherever you have a moment of personal peace to let those active synapses shut off for a brief while. One rather unexpected place I have found nap-in-worthy is a traffic jam. And those I have had close encounters with over the past few days.
'Tis evidently wedding season in the glorious city of Delhi, and an integral part of the nuptial celebrations is a traffic jam. Guests and relatives alike, all dressed to kill - or die, considering the arbitrary manner of their wanderings in busy vehicular lanes of passage - teem outside garishly be-lit and bedecked venues, mill myriadly along the pavements and clog streets in a casually proprietorial way that lovers have with their accustomed beloveds. This tends, for reasons unfathomed by the cloggers, to make traffic slow and then gradually grind to a noisy, indignant, impatient halt outside pandals, temples and reception grounds. Dialogue does little to sort out the problem, coloured as it inevitably is with a certain non-bonhomous mindset.
The underlying problem seems to be that of the occasion itself, more than the people populating it. A couple of days ago, en route to a dinner party in a neighbouring state, I became entangled in just that sort of situation - a wedding-induced traffic jam. Bejewelled, bedecked and be-sworn-at invitees straggled across what was supposed to be the main state thoroughfare, meandering around stalled cars, sauntering past growling container trucks, stopping to chat in front of testy taxis and irate auto-rickshaws. Have wedding, have reception, goes the mandated sequence; and have reception have guests, is the logical consequence. And, obviously, have guests for reception, have traffic snarls.
So, having chosen the culprit as the cause - the marriage celebration itself - the ifs, buts and byways needs perforce to be examined. One major factor in the mess that causes a rise in vehicular and/or driver choler is the degree of downmarketness involved, the vulgarity, the non-u-ness, the overall glitz and glitter of the celebration and its ramifications. Be it elephants or horses, rose-spotted Contessas or spangled stretch limos, mill-owners or mill-workers, the idea is almost always to make a noise, the louder the better, keeping up with the Joneses be damned and out-done beyond the neighbouring housing society. And, the greater the blockade on the roads around the axial point of the whole, the better! Class, after all, involves subtlety, silence, and a let's-not-attract-attention-or-annoy-the-tax-department elegance. And good traffic management, too.
I encountered a wedding reception of the first kind recently. Guests were greeted at the gate of the hostess' house by two rather disgruntled pachyderms, both shuffling restively from foot to foot, unhappy with not just their trappings of flowers but with the ethnic dancers whirling and bellowing untunefully to greet invitees. Bright lights lit up the chaos, and cross klaxons and chagrined chauffeurs added to the vernacular cacophony. Inside the house - with an interior décor as jarring as the general decibel level - hordes of unwashed banjaras sat in groups, some displaying their presumably musical talents, others their costumes, still others their bad teeth.
Traffic within was as bad as that without. People gathered in groups, each getting in the way of the adjacent one, every little clique expressing vacuity at high volume. Jewels glittered like the high beams of visitor's vehicles, teeth gleamed with equal intensity. Turbans towered, reminiscent of the red lights spinning atop the governmental cars that stopped at the gate to disgorge their passengers. Fashion bewildered, from mal-fitting zari-strewn red gowns swathed in tinselly gauze to dull gold lame saris worn with the panache of badly draped curtains, from allegedly gypsy-style skirts to form-fitting black satin somethings that defied description. Waiters wove unsteadily and sleepily through the crowd, their offerings cold, pallid and pooling on trays held beseechingly out to anyone who would accept. And, at every turn, sycophants cooed and sighed sweet nothings, presenting their fondly imagined best profiles towards the flashbulbs of the gossip press.
Somewhere in the mess, the blushing bride and - one could assume - her bashful bridegroom lurked, like earthworms that creep unscathed through the neon blurs of speeding cars on a winter night. All the while, outside, the traffic blared and bulldozed hopefully, in futile anticipation of a time where it would pass in peace.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Book reviews
(TOI-Crest, this morning)
TALKING ABOUT JANE AUSTEN IN BAGHDAD by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit
Some years ago my friend Asra Nomani and I did an email exchange across the border. She was on sabbatical from The World Street Journal and exploring family ties in Pakistan then and I was with the Times of India’s Internet division in Delhi. We wrote about life, how people were responding to the then-resurgent Afghan conflict, the aftermath of the Kargil War, the Hindu-Muslim divide and everything else, from parties to food to social mores. This correspondence was published by a newspaper in the United States and earned us lipstick money. It also gave us and our readers a chance to learn more about being women in rapidly changing situations in two very different cultures, with all their political, social and moral variations.
Something of this kind, only a lot more so, happened more recently between Bee Rowlatt in London and May Witwit in Baghdad, as documented in the frequently moving and occasionally tedious Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. Bee, mother of three young girls and wife of a busy and peripatetic television journalist, worked at the BBC World Service Radio. She called May at random, as journalists often need to do for that all-important ‘quote’, and found an intelligent, articulate, highly qualified woman who quickly became more than a contact. The teacher of English literature at Baghdad University was soon a friend and, over the course of emails, text messages and a rare phone call or two, was close enough to be a sister.
May wrote to Bee about the anguish of being a modern woman in Baghdad. She and her much younger husband, Ali, came from opposite sides of a religious chasm – she was a Shia and he, a Sunni – that divided their families, society and the country. Her emails show not only the horror of Baghdad during and after the arrest and execution of Saddam Hussein, but the daily see-saw of violence and uneasy peace that she lived with. Touched by this, and genuinely horrified, Bee starts trying to find ways to get May and Ali out of their devastated land to a much safer life in England. Meanwhile, she sends money, gifts, reassurance and love through her sources to Baghdad, getting small packages and reams of electronic text in return. The mails are often interrupted by power failures and deprivation in Iraq and holidays and mundane chores in England, but they are expressive, often anguished and always full of emotion. The collaborative effort to help May and Ali escape frequently trips over bureaucracy and finances and does the one-step-forward-two-steps-back routine more often than not, but, after many hitches and halts, it all works out.
This is a must-read for anyone who cannot understand what ordinary people go through during a war. There is time to get haircuts and dream of new shoes, but it is never as simple as walking down to the nearest shopping centre and choosing a style. In a state of conflict, there are bullets to dodge, hatred to face and death to deal with at every turn, as May describes to Bee. It would have been interesting to read the emails unedited, with all the errors made typing in text through tears and anger, but the occasional spelling mistake and multiple exclamation marks do some of that job. The photograph at the end, reached after compulsive reading of page after page, of the two women locked in a hug, had me pushing back tears and that strange lump in the throat…
THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF THE 40s by Rupa Gulab
The novel begins with an insider joke – about a woman walking out of her newspaper job for a restaurant review that told it like it was rather than like the puff piece the management would have liked. Then the plot wanders about through a series of too many almost-predictable events all at once – domestic violence, Page 3 wannabes, infidelity with steamy sms exchanges, a maid doing well for herself with her memsahib’s help, suspicion, anger, tears, potentially fatal illness and more. Perhaps the best part of the admittedly well written and occasionally truly funny story is the dead mother-in-law who still lives with Mantra and her husband Vir. Readable, yes, but just once.
TALKING ABOUT JANE AUSTEN IN BAGHDAD by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit
Some years ago my friend Asra Nomani and I did an email exchange across the border. She was on sabbatical from The World Street Journal and exploring family ties in Pakistan then and I was with the Times of India’s Internet division in Delhi. We wrote about life, how people were responding to the then-resurgent Afghan conflict, the aftermath of the Kargil War, the Hindu-Muslim divide and everything else, from parties to food to social mores. This correspondence was published by a newspaper in the United States and earned us lipstick money. It also gave us and our readers a chance to learn more about being women in rapidly changing situations in two very different cultures, with all their political, social and moral variations.
Something of this kind, only a lot more so, happened more recently between Bee Rowlatt in London and May Witwit in Baghdad, as documented in the frequently moving and occasionally tedious Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. Bee, mother of three young girls and wife of a busy and peripatetic television journalist, worked at the BBC World Service Radio. She called May at random, as journalists often need to do for that all-important ‘quote’, and found an intelligent, articulate, highly qualified woman who quickly became more than a contact. The teacher of English literature at Baghdad University was soon a friend and, over the course of emails, text messages and a rare phone call or two, was close enough to be a sister.
May wrote to Bee about the anguish of being a modern woman in Baghdad. She and her much younger husband, Ali, came from opposite sides of a religious chasm – she was a Shia and he, a Sunni – that divided their families, society and the country. Her emails show not only the horror of Baghdad during and after the arrest and execution of Saddam Hussein, but the daily see-saw of violence and uneasy peace that she lived with. Touched by this, and genuinely horrified, Bee starts trying to find ways to get May and Ali out of their devastated land to a much safer life in England. Meanwhile, she sends money, gifts, reassurance and love through her sources to Baghdad, getting small packages and reams of electronic text in return. The mails are often interrupted by power failures and deprivation in Iraq and holidays and mundane chores in England, but they are expressive, often anguished and always full of emotion. The collaborative effort to help May and Ali escape frequently trips over bureaucracy and finances and does the one-step-forward-two-steps-back routine more often than not, but, after many hitches and halts, it all works out.
This is a must-read for anyone who cannot understand what ordinary people go through during a war. There is time to get haircuts and dream of new shoes, but it is never as simple as walking down to the nearest shopping centre and choosing a style. In a state of conflict, there are bullets to dodge, hatred to face and death to deal with at every turn, as May describes to Bee. It would have been interesting to read the emails unedited, with all the errors made typing in text through tears and anger, but the occasional spelling mistake and multiple exclamation marks do some of that job. The photograph at the end, reached after compulsive reading of page after page, of the two women locked in a hug, had me pushing back tears and that strange lump in the throat…
THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF THE 40s by Rupa Gulab
The novel begins with an insider joke – about a woman walking out of her newspaper job for a restaurant review that told it like it was rather than like the puff piece the management would have liked. Then the plot wanders about through a series of too many almost-predictable events all at once – domestic violence, Page 3 wannabes, infidelity with steamy sms exchanges, a maid doing well for herself with her memsahib’s help, suspicion, anger, tears, potentially fatal illness and more. Perhaps the best part of the admittedly well written and occasionally truly funny story is the dead mother-in-law who still lives with Mantra and her husband Vir. Readable, yes, but just once.
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