A bowl of hot comfort

(Published in The Bengal Post, Sunday)

There comes a time in everyone’s life when comfort is all that the heart – and soul and stomach – desires. This may happen during a time of stress, when work, life or anything in-between swamps the psyche and results in irritability, edginess and a general very large grouch. As is often the case, food works well as a relaxant and mood-soother, calming the nerves and smoothing the spikes and ravines of the mind. While chocolate is indeed most useful in crises like these, it does contain caffeine and will activate as much as it will relax. Chemically speaking, the ideal food for this kind of high-stress situation is rich in carbohydrate, even better with some tryptophan in the form of yoghurt thrown in. From the culinary and gustatory points of view, what hits the spot perfectly is anything starchy, be it bread or pasta, rice or potatoes. Emotionally and maternally speaking, mashed potatoes, risotto, beaked beans, dahi-chawal (yoghurt and rice), french fries…the list goes on. But perhaps the easiest and most frequently cooked up in the average Indian kitchen is khichdi, a cure-all for body and soul, easy to make, easy to eat, easy to digest and easiest of all to make interesting.

The rice and lentil dish, in its simplest form, is fairly ubiquitous, found in variations all over the world. It is traditionally considered ayurvedic comfort food, advised by the most modern doctors for an upset stomach, used often as an infant’s first solid intake, and relished by most when eaten piping hot from a large bowl while watching the rain come down outside, drenching the unwary and denying the sun a chance to cheer things up. It is eaten in its myriad permutations as a light meal in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as by the native Americans and is believed to have been the basis for the Raj breakfast staple, kedgeree. But it all began a long time ago, when a dish of rice and pulses cooked together to an unctuous softness was described in Sanskrit as khicca, from which the modern-day khichdi or khichri is derived. It became very popular with the Mughal courtiers, especially with Emperor Jehangir, it is said – in fact, the famous Ain-i-Akbari, written by Akbar’s vizier in the 16th century, has seven different versions of the dish that was first written about by Afanasiy Nikitin, a Russian who travelled through India in the 15th century.

Khichdi – though perhaps not called that – is a favourite in different parts of the world. For breakfast, khansamas in the days of the Raj served up rice cooked soft with fish and eggs, while in China congee with pickled vegetables and dried shrimp served the same purpose. The American Indians stewed red (pinto) beans and rice with a little animal protein, while in Cuba rice is blended with black beans and slowly simmered for a long time. In India, the Bengalis like kichuri on rainy days or for special feasts, while in Tamil Nadu there is an entire celebration focussed on the dish, called Pongal, where the sweet and savoury versions share a banana leaf. It is a must-have in a Gujarati thali and the Maharashtrian fishing communities spice it up with a few prawns.

From the very bland and stomach-soothing dal-khichdi of the north to the rich gourmet fare it becomes in the South, to the heavy meal it serves in Bengal to the light yet spicy fare in the West, khichdi is indeed universal. But it is essentially a culinary base palette to which colour and flavour can be added. Emperor Jehangir liked it with lots of ghee, dried fruits and nuts; more modern folk like it less rich and fatty, to be eaten with Gujarati kadi or Tamilian morkozhambu (yoghurt based gravy), fritters or pakoras - from beguni (eggplant) to alur (potato) – papads, chips and pickles, in the company of vegetable preparations like undhiyo (Gujarat) or alu ka bharta (Bihar), or meat/fish like prawn patia (Parsi) or beef fry (Kerala), with a spoon, fork or, delightfully mushily, with fingers scooping each soft, fragrant bite up to the mouth…

Khichdi has no fixed recipe or proportions, though the finicky cook may cavil at that statement. It is a very personal food. It can be cooked in a pressure cooker, though the long slow stewing method produces the best results, on a kitchen hob or outdoors over a campfire. Usually made with rice and lentils, it can also include cracked wheat, barley, amaranth and other grains – though a wild rice experiment did not yield results that were too favourable, be warned! Most often, pulses such as moong, tur (arhar), masoor and sometimes chana dal is added to rice that cooks into fat, full, melting morsels, the whole being almost amorphous and delightfully gooey. Nuts and the occasional raisin add interest, while vegetables make it all more nutritious and wholesome – any sabji leftover in the fridge can work, and fresh-cut beans, carrots, onions, pumpkin, spinach, cauliflower and more can provide a tasty note. A touch of spice is also desirable, from garlic and ginger, to cardamom, cloves, cracked pepper, star anise and even a few strands of saffron for a luxe touch. Of course, a finishing spoonful of ghee stirred in is a must, calories be damned!

There is no better companion to have while watching the raindrops falling on other people’s heads on a wet day.


Recipes:

PONGAL
Rice 1 Cup
Moong Dal ½ to 1/4 Cup
Spices – whole cardamom, cloves, cinnamon – 6-8 pieces each
Cashew for garnish
Ghee 2 Tbsp
Water 6 Cups or more
Salt to taste

Method
Wash rice and dal together and drain.
Heat 1 tbsp ghee.
Gently fry the spices.
Add the rice/dal and fry till the ghee coats the mixture.
Add water and salt. Cover and cook, adding more water if required.
When rice and dal are cooked to the required softness, garnish with cashews fried in 1 tbsp ghee.
Cracked pepper and soft-cooked vegetables are a good addition. Pongal is most delicious eaten with morkozhambu (kadi made with ground coconut and buttermilk/yoghurt with chunks of white pumpkin), South Indian papad (unspiced), mango pickle and/or a spicy vegetable curry.



Kedgeree (an Anglo Indian recipe)
1 1/2 cups Basmati rice
3 cups water
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp black mustard seed
1 tsp cumin seed
3 cloves garlic minced
1″ knob of ginger grated
1 medium onion minced
1 chili minced
1 tbsp garam masala
2 tsp turmeric
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock
2 tbsp cream
50 gms smoked fish
Salt to taste
3 soft boiled eggs peeled and chopped
Coriander leaves and pomegranate seeds for garnish
Wash rice with cold water and put into a heavy bottomed pot with the water to simmer until all the water is absorbed. Turn the heat off.
Heat the oil and crackle the mustard and cumin seeds.
Add the garlic and ginger and fry until soft.
Add onions, chili, garam masala and turmeric and fry gently.
Add the stock and simmer for five minutes.
Turn down the heat and add cream, stirring all the while.
Add fish and salt to taste and stir for a couple of minutes.
Add the cooked rice and two chopped eggs and stir well.
Serve piping hot decorated with chopped coriander leaves, pomegranate seeds and boiled egg pieces. Eat with poppadoms and mango pickle.

Bon appetite!

Dayanita Singh interview

(Published in the Hindu Sunday Magazine, August 22, 2010)

Life is a series of stories that could be broken down into a sequence of images that run fast enough to seem like a continuous spiral of activity without the punctuations of blank spaces. Each of these images can be captured, memorized, by the mind and often is, only the finest details blurred over by time, age and eyes that may not be quick enough to fix them for eternity. And what the eye can see, the camera can freeze, too, each photograph keeping a log of what happened, where, when and how. A really ‘good’ photographer can also steal a little bit of the feeling, the emotion, the soul of that particular moment in time – in fact, in many cultures, a photograph is dreaded, sometimes even forbidden, since it is believed to take away a tiny slice of the soul, perhaps even the life, of the subject being photographed. But for the viewer, a photographic image tells a story, or a bit of one, leaving the rest for the imagination to conjure up and embellish.

In telling that story, photography, once considered to be merely a way of capturing a moment, be it as a family portrait of a facet of breaking news, gradually became an art form – a creative story-telling, fiction perhaps – or a means of documentation – a biography or a record of a life and its living. “You can call it art, documentation, literature, whatever you like,” says Dayanita Singh, well known photographer whose work illuminates and illustrates a new (eponymous) book from Penguin Studio. “It’s my work. It’s what I do.” Supporting her form of story-telling is writing that comes from the minds of Aveek Sen and Sunil Khilnani and, as a set of emails, Mona Anand.

She was once someone who thought that “Photography was one of the most irritating things to have around childhood.” Singh has said that “I had no interest in becoming a photographer.” It meant, more than anything else, that she had to sit still while her mother, Nony Singh, took pictures…and more pictures, “every departure was delayed by her picture making”. Some of the images her mother captured are included in the volume, in the section called Sent a Letter. “If I could write, I would not be a photographer,” Singh says, as she tells wordlessly of an “inner universe”, as the introduction poetically describes it, through her work.

And even as she tells stories looking through the eye of her camera, Khilnani and Sen have their own tales about what she is trying to convey. In the photographic essay called In I Am As I Am, a vision of Benares through the lives of young girls in the Anandamayi ashram, there is a tangible awareness of the tacit acceptance of the children’s way of life, the austerity, the simplicity, the peace, the gentleness that they learn to know and understand and the way they “…gaze - in wonder, confusion and horror – at all there is on view”, as Khilnani relevantly puts it – he is speaking of tourists reactions to the city, but he could be speaking of the girls themselves, their eyes wide and absorbing as they look out from their sheltered haven. The writing focuses on the city and its photographic potential, the way it has been portrayed by various people in writing and images.

Sen’s treatise on Ladies of Calcutta speaks of the “mad party” that was held at the gallery in Stephen Court when the show opened in January 2008. There were “friends and friends of friends who had opened their homes and lives to this woman with a Hasselblad from another city”. And Singh had a unique thank you gift for her visitors and subjects – each was allowed to take home the photograph she had made of them, leaving behind just four unclaimed. The images tell more stories than their subjects would perhaps have imagined. The unsaid says more than that which is spoken of, conveying mood, relationships and affections in that one snap in time. And there is history in each frame – culture, tradition and age, as reflected in the way the woman pose, the clothes they wear and how they are worn, the furniture, even the pictures on the walls. Each has a special story; its meaning and interpretation left to the viewer.

Singh herself is blunt about herself – “I would say that picture making is about a quarter of my work,” she says, “it is much more about the sifting, editing, weeding out, sequencing, thinking about the form, and what you want to create out of these images.” For her, “Photography has finally become what it is has set out to be – a universal language. It’s not in the photographs, not in itself, but about the text you put into a book, what kind of writing you connect your work with.” The same passion that emanates from her photographs comes through her voice and her words, as she explains how photography is so much more than just seeing the world through a lens and then showing that world what it looks like. “I am very interested in how far one can push photography and the overlap it has with literature. The kind of photography I am interested in needs to look to the other forms now – to cinema, to literature, to music, to create something more.”

This inspiration comes from interacting with her friends - writers, photographers – and from reading: “I read a lot of (Italo) Calvino, who is most important for any photographer to read,” an unconventional choice for a tribe that usually focuses on (Susan) Sontag et al. “It opens up a Pandora’s box. My advice to young photographers is always to read, read and read more.” Singh believes that “It is not about the picture making, but about the form that makes it. It cannot be all that you do in your life, I think. It is about bringing something else into your work, from travel, reading and conversations, reading being absolute number 1 – no way around it!” It is sustenance for her, since “Literature certainly informs and shapes the thought that I put into my work.” Photographs thus become facets of a larger story. When you look through Singh’s Dream Villa set, for instance, “could they evoke a certain story, a certain symphony? Think of these as clues to a story in Michael Ondaatje’s style of editing, with no fixed beginning and no definite end.”

And this is how she wants to work, what she wants her work seen as. “If we can have texts that somewhere go into how one creates – that would be quite a big step. This book has made a big shift in the world of books, in the kind of text it has. The writers are not talking just about the photographer, they are not concerned with just photography; they are interested in the arts, in literature, in music.” With the book, Singh aimed to try and start to “push the limits on what has been written on photography – it would be worth it. These are some of the most important texts to read if you are interested in the medium. In this book I think I have laid the foundations for some kind of a change. It is not just about photographs, it is about the text.” That text was selected by Singh herself, as “an extension of my work. While it is a way of thanking people in my life that have shaped me, all the different experiences that form who we are become the sources that become whatever we are trying to create. If we could have a book that deals with the sources of what we create, that is what makes sense.”

An elephant in the bedroom

(Published in TOI-Crest, August 21, 2010)

They are often big (ref: Jitish Kallat), sometimes transient (ref: Anish Kapoor) and occasionally need a context (ref: Nalini Malani). But today installations in art are part of the modes of creative expression that artists use. They can be fascinating, as with Vivan Sundaram’s disintegrating shoe-sole cots, amusing yet pointed, as with Shilpa Chavan’s lady of the dustpans, or deeply moving and strangely comforting, as in Reena Saini Kallat’s warm ‘red room’. Whatever their form and however they may say what they are trying to say, who takes these works home when their day is done?

Answers come from various sources. The much-vaunted sculpture The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own by Bharti Kher, the figure of a life-sized dying female elephant covered with bindis that delineate contour and, somehow, magically, emotion, has just sold at the Sotheby’s auction for a triumphant £993,250 / $1,493,947, the highest price for the artist and a record for work by a female Indian contemporary artist at auction. “It wasn’t meant to be a gold bar in a vault,” Kher has said, though the price may have bought a few of those!

The difficulty with buying installation art is that, by definition, it is site-specific, three-dimensional and designed to transform the perception of a space and the emotions of the viewer. As Sundaram has said in the context of his installation Twelve Bed Ward, part of his show Trash, which used garbage to make various salient points, “Private galleries today agree to build whole rooms and walls to create the desired environment.” Putting together his works to tell the story he wanted was “about a content relationship, the space available in each location”. It could be permanent, as with large sculptural pieces, or temporary, as with heaps of coloured powder or an audio-video loop. Installations may be good investments, but they need to be bought with a certain caution: Is there space enough to install it to best effect? When installed, does it still say what the artist wanted to say when it was created?

As art expert Ashish Balram Nagpal says, “Earlier it was only museums that bought installations, but now collectors too are buying them across the globe. If the work has to be put up in a gallery, then it may need explanation.” Siddharth Grover of Mumbai’s Sans Tache gallery believes that “It all depends on the quality of the work and how open one is to buying such work.” For super-creative fashion-maven and artist Chavan’s work, “it’s mostly been galleries and collectives” doing the buying. “I like my work to speak through its title, but it’s not always easy to have your installation self-explanatory, as there are so many elements juxtaposed,” as with her piece for the Bose Krishnamachari-curated show, A Woman’s Work is Never Done, which had a mannequin adorned with dust pans, mosquito netting, kitchen implements and attitude.

Do these works have an expiry date? Like Chavan, Grover does not think so. He says, “Fine art does not and technically should not expire; art, culture and heritage are to be passed down generations. One could have spent a good chunk of money to purchase a work, and it is the duty of an artisan to ensure longevity in his/her work.” Nagpal has a more practical view: “It depends on the installation. If it is made of durable material then, yes, it can last, but normally it is not! Once it is sold, it normally is the collector who has to look after it; however, if the artist is dedicated to his passion and is not merely making money then, yes, he will be available to rectify damages if needed.”

It is likely then, that to suit the market – a consciousness any artist will perforce have today – works are created with the logical end in mind: sale. Nagpal, with the cynicism of someone who has weathered a storm or two in the business, says, “There is rarely a work of art that is created without sale or sponsorship in mind.” Chavan’s ethos is rather less pragmatic. According to her, “I find that if I get practical, I stop being creative. It’s stagnating. Whether it’s the fashion or the art pieces I do, practicality has always been way too far out! I create with what comes to mind, irrespective of practicality and dimensions and raw materials.”

Grover, as gallerist, is more cautious. “An artist who explores his creativity without any preconceived notions on the artworks practicality/sale ability is definitely letting his creativity out to the fullest without stubbing any feelings or emotions that may arise at that time towards the work, and is a truly genuine artist who ends up ‘creating’. Those are the ones who do rare work!” Apart from the viewer’s own interpretation of what the work is about, “The thoughts of an artist paragraphed alongside a work does give the viewer/buyer an added insight.”

Creativity is the hallmark of Jitish Kallat’s work, though praticality plays no role. His pieces are enormous, to put it mildly, his latest at Pilane being a record 100 feet, stretching over the undulating landscape and asking, ‘When Will You Be Happy?’ - “It had to be subtly audible in the landscape which demanded the scale in response to the context.” When he made Public Notice II, a resin-bone transcript of Mahatma Gandhi’s speech, “The only practical thing I thought about was arrangements for storage. If I was practical about it, it would be just 7 foot long!” That work was acquired by the Charles Saatchi Gallery (private collection). For those without that space to keep and show art, size does indeed matter. Nagpal explains that “A smaller work always finds buyers more easily, given the size of homes we live in these days.”

Much installation art today uses audio-video segments. These, says Nagpal, are “sold to collectors just like any other work of art. It does, however, involve a lot of paperwork regarding the exclusive ownership of the work, to avoid duplication.” Grover agrees and adds that “The AV would be on a signed DVD mentioning the editions. And if the work has any special hardware that the artist has improvised or tweaked which the buyer would not have, then it would sell along with the apparatus.”

Perhaps superseding all these aspects is the artist’s own temperament. Chavan tries to make sure her pieces are sold “as intact or having their own balances. If there is an option of setting it up or displaying it in various ways, it is discussed as an option with the curator when the piece is submitted.” Since fashion is almost always an undercurrent, if not a direct inspiration, “often my works get mounted on mannequins and then transferred on to a wall or off the ceiling post the show.” Grover is insistent that “The work must be shown in its correct format at a gallery and at a buyer’s premises once it is sold. The level of difficulty will vary with the nature of the installation and where it is being placed. This really would matter most to the artist and the gallery and I’m certain they would go out of their way to ensure the setting is right!”

It is not just the setting in a gallery that matters, but also the environment in the space that a buyer selects for a work. Ashwini Kakkar, a passionate art collector, has concentrated on modern and contemporary Indian art dating from 1880 to the present, but is leery of buying installations, “a pity”, he feels, since without including it, “a whole significant and major style of art today is passed over”. This avoidance does not stem from preference, but from experience. Some years ago he bought a piece by a young artist from Goa that combined various materials, including fibreglass and stone, but found that “the problem was that it – and others of this kind – was very difficult to maintain. It not only accumulated dust, but “when you try and clean it, a small piece can easily come off! I had a really difficult time with it. It was very appealing, fascinating, very nicely and elegantly done, sort of everyman’s story that looked outstanding. I had never bought one before, so I thought I would try this.” Kakkar explains that “Unless it is really rugged and built in a manner that will prevent erosion or damage, I would be a bit shy of buying any more installations.” Technology, too, is not for him, as “if the video stops working, or there is something wrong with the technology used, or the physical features, how do you get it fixed? The artist part you may really like and can deal with, but the rest is scary! Sunil Padwal had a fantastic work in a major show about 20 months ago, but it had hundreds of little pieces, so it would have needed greater maintenance. So there are practical issues with installations. Clearly sculptures have an edge, especially if they are made of rugged material.”

A very funny man

(Published in Hindu Sunday Magazine, August 15)

He doesn’t look like a funny man, but he has an infectious chortle and that mad gleam in the eye that reveals a mind looking for a joke. And as he tells one, Don Ward’s face lights up with childlike glee, willing you, as listener, to laugh. Like the incident at the toilet in the Victoria Terminus, Mumbai’s landmark railway station; “I have a fascination for toilets all around the world,” he says, “and a great passion for architecture.” Or the startlingly short taxi ride from his hotel and the ‘attractions’ – of the female kind – that the taxi driver offered him. His favourite, considering the number of times it has been reported, is punctuated by appropriate jerks and bounces as he tells how a cabman said that the British had left India 25 years too early, before they had finished the roads.

Ward has been bumping his way along Mumbai’s crowded streets for a while now, as he goes about setting up the newest branch of his Comedy Store, India’s first ever venue for stand-up comedy. He is the producer and CEO of the company and is often called The Don, or The Godfather of Comedy. But the only bullets fired here are verbal ones that hit target with a crack of laughter and leave the audience gasping with giggles. He beams proudly as he describes the spanking new place: “It covers three floors (at a new high-end mall) and seats 300, with little sockets for your drink at each seat. There’s a bar outside and a tapas bar – Indian people like a little tapas with a drink…” and he darts into another funny story.

But it isn’t easy to tell a joke. After all, humour is so subjective. But, as Ward explains, “You have to have a funny bone. Whoever your god is sent you down to this earth saying, ‘Ok, you can have the ability to make people laugh’. It’s as simple as that – a great gift and just wonderful if you are born with it.” And using it in the right way is what matters. “You either cultivate it or you don’t. You either keep it as something to amuse people with at the office, or go on to bigger and better things, and expose your talent to the stage, television and film, which some of my team have done.” And at the base of it all, “The spoken word is all you need to make someone feel good.”

Something funny often has a story behind it that needs explanation. But, Ward makes clear, there is a difference between that and truly funny. “Insider jokes will only happen within a small group of like-minded people. Observational jokes, on the other hand, need to be on the level that you would see at the Comedy Store. The guys (in his team) absorb things quickly; their brain starts clicking and they will review and report it. And when it is reported in a way that is looking at the funny side of whatever life presents itself as, that makes us laugh at ourselves.” That, Ward believes, “is true funny humour, as opposed to a joke about your mother-in-law or the colour of someone’s skin.”

Over the years, the concept of funny has changed. “When I started the Comedy Store 30 years ago, mother-in-law jokes were all the rage,” Ward remembers. But Mumbai is a new market, so far unexplored. “This is the exciting thing for me. With no disrespect to India or Mumbai, it’s like stepping back 30 years, even though business-wise India has overtaken most of the world! It’s like déjà vu for me,” says Ward. “I think comedy will take a similar route to what happened in the UK - the stars who emerged in those early days made mistakes and corrected them and gradually crawled up the window pane as they gained the experience to become very good stand-up comedians.”

But in the rah-rahs lauding India and Mumbai, there is a scathing indictment of things locally humorous…or not. According to Ward, “The comedy here is juvenile, for a 9 or 10 year-old. It needs to come in at a much higher level, not just the custard pie-in-the-face kind of thing. That was how it was in London 30 years ago, when the big names in comedy did structured jokes, mother-in-law jokes, sexist jokes, racist jokes and so on.” Those are no-nos today. “That is what I set the platform up for with the Comedy Store – non sexist, non-racist humour. I told my team to lay off the religion, leave the Buddha alone, leave the sacred cows alone - even though there are no ‘sacred cows’ in the UK”, he chuckles. “The Comedy Store in the UK was the only place you could go to and hear bad things about the government (especially Margaret Thatcher) and laugh about it. It would be nice to take the government here apart, but we have to know more about it first!”

His choice of Mumbai was serendipity. “Everybody was looking to the north of England, so I thought I would look East, which was India. I looked at Delhi but didn’t feel it there - I didn’t appreciate the way they treated people and I found the class distinction hard to deal with. So I decided to look at Mumbai – you just FEEL it here! It’s like Manchester, with all sorts of people, fun, family, the excitement of the movie industry, business sense, entrepreneurial spirit – I couldn’t find anything wrong with the city, and the people are fantastic: if you have a bicycle, you have a business; if you don’t have a bicycle, you have a head!”

The language will not be a problem, Ward insists. “We will have a mix of English and Hinglish, eventually all Hindi. I intend to bring in six or eight boys and girls, to be hosts who speak the local language and can invite guests and steer along the evening. One night a week will be for locals, with an international compere. The rest of the week we will have poetry, music, comedy, etc.” There will be six shows of international comedy, and then some local talent. And who knows, “there could be a diamond in the crowd – the next big star who will eventually make it to the big time!”

The British are back, to glean the harvest of the legacy they left India so many years ago: “a great international trading language and a sense of humour”.

Talk time

(Published in TOI, Sunday, August 15)

There is a lot to be said for the mobile phone. Even though it can be annoying to be woken up by the shrill trill of the cellphone or disturbed in a meeting by the intrusive ‘bing’ of an incoming text, it is admittedly a necessary evil, a device that has become not just ubiquitous for many, but a vital appendage for some. And today, when the status of the oh-so-popular Blackberry is at crisis point, it may become essential for a little urgent shopping at the local mobile phone store.

While those who know but would rather not spend covet the really high-end phones from a respectable distance and merely gasp at the price tags attached to the Vertu (when introduced to this country in 2004, Vertu Signature from Rs3.71 lakh, Vertu Ascent Rs2.42 lakh, price now on request) or the somewhat more affordable Bang and Olufsen, a company known for space-age sleek design concepts (Serenata Rs65,000 plus in 2007), or even the Motorola Aura (Rs1.1 lakh), some – movie stars, designers, businesspeople, the occasional politican - do indeed indulge, quietly, discretely. Most people aim for praticality, choosing a phone that is useful, easily toted about and not irreplaceable, except for sentimental reasons. And today, since there are so many models available, with so many varied options and applications, the phone can be changed at whim, though buy-back by the dealer is not guaranteed, since technology runs forward faster than fashion.

Once touted as the best cellphone brand available in India, Nokia has had a turbulent time, with other names speeding ahead on the sales track. Many years ago, when the concept of a mobile phone was just making its first forays into India, a mid-range Nokia 1600, shaped somewhat like a concrete brick and weighing about that much, would sell at about Rs35,000, the first year of judicious use included. At the time, both incoming and outgoing calls were expensive. Soon, by the time the smaller, lighter and higher-tech phones made their presence felt and prices came down to more affordable levels of below Rs10,000. People could choose what they wanted to do with their sets, depending on whether they wanted to listen to music, take photographs, play games, download email or, even just make a call. Today, it is rare to find someone without a mobile – in fact, it is a rare individual who avoids owning one!

Now there is a new model and a new brand available almost every day, at new prices and new capabilities. From the much-advertised Apple I-Phone (3G 32gb, approx Rs45,000) and the LG BL40 (Rs35,000) to the designer-label Samsung by Georgio Armani (Rs38,000) and Motorola’s gold Motorazr2 V8 (Rs27,440), the more expensive handsets have tech mod-cons and cosmetic bells and whistles attached. And then there are the totally preiswert models, from the Samsung E1081 (Rs1400) to the Micromax X215 (Rs2000) and the Sony Ericsson J132 (Rs1700). Once you know what you want the phone to do for you, and how much you want to spend on it, all you need to do is walk down to the nearest store and take your pick. And start talking…

Fishy tales

(Published in the Bengal Post Sunday section, August 8)

Think of fish in India and your mind zeroes in on the cuisine of Bengal, where all foods piscine have been elevated to a veritable art form. Even as the Bengalis delicately pick their practiced way through the maze of tiny bones to unearth intensely aromatic flesh in the experience that is the prized hilsa, or ilish maach now in season, they screw up their discerning noses at an offering from the sea, insisting that the marine life is not ‘sweet enough’. Only river fish for them, they declare, as they throng the markets early in the morning to take home the freshest catch of the day, carefully chosen and neatly cleaned and filleted, after exchanging banter, the occasional insult and a recipe or two with the fishmonger, the neighbour and the local rickshaw-wallah. At this time of year, when eateries big and small announce the arrival of the hilsa with food festivals to celebrate it, there is a collective smacking of lips, a meticulous and astonishingly skilful sorting of bone from meat in the mouth and a sonorous and satisfied burp signalling the end of a feast well-deserved and better relished.

Fish is indeed a treasure in a nation that is primarily vegetarian. It is not only a rich fund of nourishment in its fat, protein and omega-3 amino acid content, but also a storehouse of tradition, culture, customs and, interestingly, art. Fish motifs are used in painting, weaving, carving and metal casting, seen in mythology mainly as an avatar of Vishnu and used as an analogy for the beauty of the female eye. Medically speaking, small live fish are used in an annual camp in Andhra Pradesh to push a cure for asthma down a believer’s throat – there is no proof that this method works, but faith goes a long way along the path to good health. In some ancient cultures, catching a fish could win a young man a bride, rather like the story of Arjuna shooting a fish in the eye at Draupadi’s swayamwar. And in a number of coastal communities, fish is not just a dietary staple, but also a steady source of income, in both the local and international market.

The way fish is eaten and the kind of fish eaten varies with region, just as the methods of cooking it do. In Bengal and Assam, as well as in other regions where the sea is a distant fact, river fish is preferred, while in Maharashtra and Goa, the sea is the piscatorial larder. Dried fish – such as mackerel, prawns or Bombay Duck – is a favourite on the western coast, and dried shellfish is often ground into a base for gravies in South India. Along the Ratnagiri shoreline and in cities like Mumbai, the flat, meaty and gently-flavoured pomfret is prized, the white variety more than the black, and can sometimes command prices that could finance a small business! Goa is home to some of the best seafood in the country, with recipes that bring out the best in any fish – from the spicy green Xacuti to the fiery Rechado to the preserves – prawn and chicken pickle being hot (literally!) favourites. The Parsis have created the Prawn Patia, a spicy preserve ideally eaten with dal and rice, and the fried dried Bombay Duck, crunchy, salty and incredibly fishy.

But at this time of year, when the seas are whipped up into a frenzy by the southwest monsoon, no fisherman on the west coast will take his boat out. He will stay on land to mend his nets, refit his boat and organise his home, waiting for the rains to finish their job, for the fish to end spawning season and the waters to be calm enough that he can go out to sea again. And that is when the celebrations begin. With Narali Purnima, or the Coconut Festival, the Goddess of the Sea is propitiated with sweet fresh coconut water, milky coconut flesh, ghee lamps and flowers, and her permission taken for fishing to begin once again.

It may be believed that fish needs a mild, neutral environment for its true taste to be savoured. But in India, be it in Bengal or in Kerala, Maharashtra or Goa, spice is indeed a way of life. Chillies and often coconut are part of almost any recipe, especially in Kerala. The delicate Pearlspot or Karimeen is perfect in a moilee, or cooked in a broth rich with coconut milk, curry leaves, chillies, ginger and salt. Moplah (Kerala Muslim) cuisine has a recipe for prawn biryani that cooks the shellfish with chillies, ginger, poppy seeds, coconut milk and lime juice. In Goa too, coconut rules, often replacing cow or buffalo milk in any recipe, adding a distinctively Indian note to many seafood preparations that have strong Portuguese roots and are baked, stuffed and grilled or pies. Through all this, the intrinsic flavour of the fish is the hero, always clean and distinct, no matter how much camouflage may be put in, from chillies and pepper to tamarind and ginger. But the contrast between the fish-based cuisine of Bengal and that of Goa and the west coast in general is distinct: river-based species give way to ocean life like mullet, mackerel, sardine, skate, shark and prawn.

One of the most ubiquitous of fish dishes is the curry, made in almost the same way across the country. A thick or thin gravy, redolent with spices, forms the base. This may be made with ground coconut or with tomatoes, but will contain the chillies that give it its characteristic red-orange hue, so easily identified as one of the colours of India itself, hot, spicy and oh-so-addictive. In this long-simmered and rich sauce is dropped prawns, lobster, crab, or any of a long list of fish, and allowed to steep rather than stew. The result: a fragrant, delicious meal when eaten with hot, fresh rice and a puffy poppadom. Bon appetit!

A walk through the park

(Published in Hindu Sunday Magazine today)

She sits across the table at the Press Club in Mumbai, in an obviously familiar environment, eyes sparkling, her being concentrated into the surprisingly small space she occupies – she has a big voice, big eyes, big presence, but is a tiny woman. Anjali Joseph had a busy trip to Mumbai, her time filled with interviews, a launch, a reading and those eternal questions, answered over and over again and quoted verbatim in endless write-ups. She commutes between London, where she lives, studies for a PhD and writes, and Pune, where her parents are based, wondering whether the ratio of time she spends in each country should not be skewed somewhat differently. The recent flurry of attention comes from her first novel, Saraswati Park, the story of a letter writer who sits outside the General Post Office in Mumbai (or ‘Bombay’, as she calls it) and dreams of a life he believes cannot be his. And what is her life all about? Who is Anjali Joseph? “God, this is like my crisis every morning before the second cup of coffee!” she laughs.

Born in Bombay, as it was then, to a Malayalee father and a Bengali-Gujarati mother, and with an older brother, Joseph moved with her family to the UK when she was just seven years old. She studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge, taught French in London and English at the Sorbonne in Paris and has worked as a journalist in Mumbai. Along the way, she did a stint as an accountant, thinking that if she trained to be a chartered accountant, she could “get a proper job and write part time or something, but I have always been very bad with numbers, so it was basically a torment. I was going through a really desperate patch at the time! When I left Cambridge, I needed to have the confidence that yes, I could be a writer; I always wanted to write but I felt I needed some life experience.” Adding to that experience she sought was a job as a secretary, another at a small Asian newspaper in London for a while.

Joseph’s parents moved back to India when she was about 19. “I would come and visit for holidays, but I never really spent much time in India for my education or anything else, so I don’t really have that sense of what it means to be an Indian here,” she says. Somewhere along the line, life turned on to the path of authorhood. It began with journalism. “I came to India for a holiday and travelled around South India and met a lot of people who were like me – Israelis, people from the US, all kind of mirroring myself to me, feeling ‘I don’t know what I want to do, what to do with my life’.” Reality bit and “after a week or two of that I found myself wanting a job, so I wrote these letters to lots of people. I did not know where I wanted to be – maybe Mumbai, but then I thought this city was too expensive.” But a job she liked decided things and she became a feature writer with a national publication. “Fate had intervened and said “Bombay!” Within two weeks after initiating the whole process, I remember sitting sleepily on the bus in the late morning thinking I would see London if I looked out, and I would actually see Bombay.” Three years later, Joseph “decided it was time to finally get to work – my 30th birthday was approaching and it was time for me to actually write that novel. I did a course in creative writing in England and started writing. I came back to Bombay and worked at a magazine for a year, as commissioning editor. I had a great time. It was quite literary.”

Saraswati Park is “my revisiting of the Mumbai that I grew up in,” Joseph explains, “the world of my parents and grandparents, bookish and intellectual, the people you see around you on the street, the awareness of the various different kinds of people…There is a very middle class bookish Bombay and that’s not something that I see reflected in what is usually written – what I found was more Bollywood and such, which was not what I knew. So I supposed in a way this is my attempt to find a fictional base for my Bombay, which I think still exists.”

Her main character, Mohan Karekar, is a would-be writer, a man who fills the margins of the books he buys so regularly with thoughts, ideas, inspirations. A man who cannot – or perhaps does not - find the courage to create with those ideas and write more, maybe enough to make a book. According to Joseph, “The block in his head is something that a lot of people actually feel – that your own life is not the stuff of literature, since literature is somehow special, with a linear plot line and a meaning and everything that is interconnected in a way that can be perceived in a work of art. In daily life things are not so clear. Maybe it is the thought that ‘I am a small man in a big city and what do I matter anyway?’ People find it difficult, I think.”

And how much of her is there in the book, since the setting is familiar territory, the people are real and she has actually spent a little time with the letter writers of Mumbai. Joseph smiles, saying, “There are many places that I have been. There are a lot of emotions I have felt at some time or the other in very different circumstances that I have used in the book. In terms of actual life experience, I have not been through most of the things these characters have been through. I think they are all real people, even though I know they are not.” And these are the folk, like any one of us, who live in Saraswati Park.

A sari state

(Published in Bengal Post, today)

A strip of cloth (sati in Sanskrit) is now considered a classic. Seen as a drape perhaps for the first time on the well-known figure of a priest from the Indus Valley Civilisation (2800-1800 BC), the sari – though it was not called that at the time - has been described in song, dance and literature for centuries. Even the way it should be used is documented - the garment should ideally be worn in a way that exposes the navel, since that is considered to be the source of life and creative power. In the 1st-6th century AD, the fishtail dhoti wrap was popular, as is seen in sculpture from the Gandhara school of art, worn without a blouse or bodice. Gradually, more familiar standards of modesty prevailed and the traditional Keralan mundu, a sarong with a shawl thrown over the shoulders, was modernised to become the sari-blouse combination popular today. Each community in this country - and those in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma and elsewhere - has its own idiosyncratic way of draping the sari. And the choli, or bodice-blouse, has a story of its own, evolving from an enveloping symbol of caste and virtue to a minimalistic garment of today that shows off every toned curve of a woman’s upper body.

While the placement of the pleats and the flow of the pallu may vary with style and tradition, the sari, in whatever form, wraps around the hips and is flung over one shoulder or tucked around the bosom. A number of creative minds have come up with variations on the classic theme, with everything from zip-up saris to those worn over churidars or skinny jeans making waves on the runway, though very little noise off it. As style icon, writer and sari designer/connoisseur Shobhaa De avers, “The sari is a classic - you cannot 'improve ' it on any level. It is the world's only truly perfect garment - faultless!” But everything can be made ‘new’ and ‘improved’, though “The ‘newness’ comes from how creatively you wear an old sari - your attitude and accessories.”

Designer Tarana Masand believes that “The versatility of a sari is what makes it a classic garment.” It is the “drape, style and fabric used that are constantly evolving, but there is no doubt that this wardrobe staple is here to stay.” Bela Shangvi, who has been working with reviving classics like the Paithani and Ashavali says that “The sari is so neutral that it takes on the personality of the wearer. If the person is large, it covers up, and can add bulk to a small person. It is such a graceful garment, as long as it is worn the way it is supposed to be worn and with the body language to match.”

For designer Payal Singhal, “It is actually the only true and uniquely Indian ensemble – even a churidar kurta could be a derivative of a western silhouette. I don’t think it would ever go out of style – it’s as much a staple in a South Asian wardrobe as a pair of jeans in a western one!” Nikasha Tawadey agrees, “Nothing identifies a women as being Indian so strongly as the sari, which has evolved from a complex physical, historical and cultural environment that differs from region to region, community to community.”

Style today demands a great deal of mobility and convenience. As a result, women often prefer western fashion or simpler Indian chic, leaving their saris for more formal occasions. Many of these will be inherited from grandmothers, exquisite creations rarely found today. Most designers concur that more contemporary silhouettes can be devised not by tearing up the sari and re-purposing it, but “by making new blouses to suit current trends, or perhaps adding unexpected accessories like belts or brooches” Masand suggests. Singhal works with the client on such assignments, and “we either use innovative and beautiful blouses, contrast embroideries, etc., or we can actually redo the fabrics, use the border on another piece of fabric.” Tawadey prefers to “keep in mind the inherent soul of a traditional sari at all times”, even as she agrees that “styling could be the key and the blouse could have interesting variations; or the sari could also be worn at ankle length a la Sabyasachi Mukherjee”. This last is a staple for a Bharata Natyam dancer, who has the garment hitched up enough to allow rapid footwork to be clearly seen by an audience.

In spite of its seemingly rigid form, the sari has its own ebb and flow in the fashion firmament. As De explains, “Sari trends go through phases - silk, jute, chiffon, net, cotton and so on, but the real trend has to do with the blouses\cholis, and their innovative cuts and styles, or with embellishments and embroideries.” Singhal works on her designs – “different fabrics within five and a half yards, stitched saris, bunch pallus, tassels, half saris, different drapes - from the cut to the drape to the embellishment to the treatment of fabric, you can do a zillion things with the classic,” she enthuses. “The trend now is pastels, airy fabrics like chiffons georgettes and nets, with crystal embellishments and heavier blouses.” Tawadey sees that “traditional weaves, handloom weaves, as well as khadi seem to be making a huge comeback.” For Masand, whatever the current preferences may be, “one must keep in mind that a sari personifies the attitude of the wearer and should not rely solely on trends.”

In Shangvi’s life, the sari is a governing passion. As she explains, “One needs to understand the balance of a sari and the personality of the wearer. The feel, the fall, the balance – when you wear a sari, if it is not woven the way it should be, it does not fall into place well. Choosing a sari is not just about what you like, but also the occasion, your personality, the colour, lighting…so many parameters that contribute to you and it looking good. And, of course, the wearer should know how to drape it well – see how good Rekha (the actress) looks in her heavy saris!” Tawadey believes that “once worn, it can never be substituted for anything else”.

Often seen by the modern young woman as ‘traditional’ and ‘stuffy’, the sari is still making its impact in the career world. It has an elegance that can never be duplicated by a skirt or a pair of trousers, imparting an air or quiet, understated authority to the wearer. Shangvi feels that it communicates a “sense of organisation, authority, professionalism – but it does depend on what sector you work in”, since the sari is essentially a very feminine garment. Singhal is in accord with the caveat, agreeing that “it is slightly cumbersome, needs some maintenance, though in the right fabric with the right drape, it works”. Masand believes that “Traditional woven saris make for good corporate fashion if draped properly and worn with confidence.” Tawadey is firm: “Personally, I think there is perhaps nothing that makes as strong a style statement as a sari worn with pride!” A statement echoed by De, who insists that “The sari is the ultimate power garment - I can't think of a better statement!”

Murder mystery

(In Crest, yesterday)

HIGH LOW IN-BETWEEN, by Imraan Coovadia

“Nafisa knew that Arif had murdered himself, and murdered her along with him…Nafisa was struck, at that moment, by the thought that her life had just begun.” According to Coovadia, this book came out of a previously written short story, one about the last day of a dying Pakistani aristocrat in Boston. He is said to have used the woman as a model for Nafisa, and taken incidents from here, there and everywhere, perhaps high, low and in-between, borrowing, inventing, reflecting and characterising. The challenge, according to him, was to make “the inner life of his characters real”.

That, perhaps, has been successful, as the people that wander in and out of the various happenings in Coovadia’s latest novel are almost frighteningly true-to-life, with all the vagueness, abstraction and self-absorption that anyone may have. It reads slowly, heavily, almost soporifically, but in that leisure there is so much going on, inside and outside each character, especially the main protagonist, Nafisa, that a reader has to stop, take a deep breath and then decide whether to continue reading or take a break and watch a comedy show on television just to ease the sensory assault of evocative words forming pictures on each page.

The story is set in Durban and focuses on the life of middle-class Indian Botswana-born Nafisa, a doctor, wife of Arif, a professor, mother of Shakeer, a photographer who wanders around the world on assignments. As the house is being cleaned for Arif’s retirement party not too long after the professor’s kidney transplant, his wife finds him dead, an apparent suicide. But it proves to be murder, and as the local authorities try and find the killer, Nafisa’s life begins slowly to unravel…or perhaps sort itself out. This is where the reality of the South Africa of the time becomes almost another strong character – there is HIV/AIDS that is making a loud noise not just from the point of view of an epidemic disease, but also as a political tool by Mbeki and others who rule. There is the matter of illegal organ transplants – and the reader knows that Arif’s death is somehow connected to that, long before it is written – even more illegal money transfer, race issues, class distinctions and problems of local security.

And there is Nafisa herself, seemingly bewildered as she goes about her duties at the hospital, trying to deal with sudden death, family matters and a troubled mind, all made increasingly complicated by Estella, the sexually very active maid who will not be tested for HIV, Nawaz, a brother who deals in secondhand clothing and is deeply religious, Jadwat, well-meaning and supportive but a would-be suitor and Govin Mackey, who operated on Arif. So when real disaster strikes, she does not pay it much heed – a needle that contained bodily fluids from a dying AIDS victim pierces Nafisa’s hand during a difficult procedure.
In all this personal tribulation, the nation too is troubled. South Africa transforming from a divided society to one that is less white-dominated forms the backdrop of the novel. And raises that one all-important question: Are Nafisa and her ilk relevant any longer in that environment? The novel contains history, social commentary, relationships, angst, humour – albeit of the rather dark kind – good guys and bad guys and much more than can be absorbed in one reading. And, of course, there is the murder to be solved…

Shilpa Chavan: Using her head

(The Hindu, July 18, 2010)

Life is all about serendipity for some people. For Shilpa Chavan, discovery is almost a way of life. She walks the line – occasionally a wall – between art and fashion with a knowledge that what she does, creatively speaking, cannot be classified as either. Her choice of career was not a logically considered decision, but she knew that she would do something creative, for pleasure rather than merely for money. Now in her mid-30s, Chavan was “brought up in a normal middle class Maharashtrian family” where her mother “would make something even from old, dried-up flowers”. Every school assignment “became an art and craft project, so helped us remember what we did better,” Chavan says. Her father was the disciplinarian, natural for him as a member of the police force.

Growing up, she designed her own clothes “when there was not that much exposure to what we could do apart from the basic course of fashion. I wanted to do architecture, but my father said it wasn’t something a girl should do, and commercial art wasn’t popular then.” So she indulged in a little scam, one that lasted about two months. Chavan started studying fashion at one college and a more conventional programme at another; “then my parents found out, so I had to finish my graduation and then apply again for a fashion course after three very long years”, she recalls. But she knew that she “wanted to create more than just clothes.’

Chavan managed to make a mark doing just that – for her graduate presentation, she produced headpieces that earned her the enthusiastic approval of her professor, and the award for Most Innovative Collection. From there, carried along by the whimsies of destiny, she went on to assisting Hemant Trevedi, designer, mentor and perhaps one of the best known all-rounders in the Indian fashion world. In fact, he gave her the name she is known by: Litle Shilpa – “Soon everybody was using it so I chose it for my label.”

She created headpieces for the leather show in Chennai and, with that, “I realized what I wanted to do: headpieces.” Trevedi suggested she study millinery – “That was when I understood that such a concept existed!” - in London. But money was a problem, until “suddenly Channel V stuff happened and a new position called ‘a stylist’ came about”, as Chavan puts it. With television, glamour magazine shoots and other freelance assignments, she was able to take on a 15-day summer school course in London. It was not enough. “I am very anal about what I learn,” Chavan explains. “I believe that to break the rules, you need to have very strong rules.” After another stint freelancing in Mumbai, this time for a year, she earned herself the Charles Wallace scholarship and went back to London for a six-month programme.

At around that time, the fashion wave swept India. Fashion Week grew from a Delhi-based event to Mumbai, and Chavan spread her wings a little wider. But “I still felt I needed more.” Serendipity took over. Just two days before the end of a London holiday she called star milliner Philip Treacy’s office to apply for an internship. She met the designer and his team on a Friday, a day before she was to leave for India, and was asked to start work on Monday. “I worked with Treacy, doing stuff hands-on, learning about the international market, doing more sales and retail pieces.” That experience gave her the push she needed to graduate from stylist to headpiece and accessory designer. “I found I had enough for a whole collection. I used these as samples, went back to London, got lots of feedback, and signed up with Blow PR, who suggested more press work.” It had all started happening for the middle-class girl from Mumbai.

From fashion to art was a baby step. “I started doing installation work some time ago. My husband is a graphic designer; his company was part of an India festival. The curator of the show saw my work there and gave me a space to do whatever I wanted - an installation.” Then, another happy ‘accident’: Sheikh Majed Al-Sabah, owner of Villa Moda in Kuwait, had bought some of Chavan’s work for his store; but “when he saw what I sent him, he wanted it for his art gallery!”

Her Work Is Never Done, the show curated by Krishnamachari Bose earlier this year at his Mumbai gallery, BMB, happened like that too. The name itself struck a resonant chord in Chavan’s creative synapses and she put together a mannequin that embodied for her, she says, and for those who saw it, exactly that – the endless routine that a woman lives, every day, without relief. The figure is composed of all those bits and pieces that make up the life of the average urban woman today – from dustpans to rubber-slipper straps, mosquito netting, plastic baby dolls, tea strainers and more. The head of the mannequin has gear wheels turning. Chavan said then, “She multitasks, making babies, working in the house; her brain is always functioning. And with all this, she holds a mirror - she is always thinking of being beautiful” – art with a story told in a quirky, funny yet meaningful way.

According to Chavan, “When I do fashion shows, it is art. When I do art, it is more like fashion. I am in an in-between phase. I like combining old and new and creating something completely new. And I love colour!” Even as she works in the modern urban environment of Mumbai, London and parts beyond, “I am very drawn to my local roots and inspired by local art and craft, culture and colour.” Though her own designs may not always be lucrative or even saleable, “My styling money supports what I want to do. And now my family agrees that it is a good thing; they are really proud of me. My husband is my critic, he completely understands my work,” she knows. “People still feel that I need to tone it down to get orders. But I am not going to change; I do not believe in it.”

As destiny takes her along the journey she is on, the turns have worked for Chavan. As she marvels, “I haven’t planned I wanted to do anything, it just happened!”

People watching

(More from Delhi, a long time ago...)

There is a lot in life that is a dead bore - some parties, some places, some books, some movies, et al, et al, et al. What never fails to interest me is people, even if they themselves are the kinds of bores that crash into the consciousness and make their extremely boring presences felt, grammar and good manners notwithstanding. And, over the past months that I have been away from my home, Mumbai, in the capital milieu that is Delhi, I have come across a number of extremely watchable characters. Not all have been aesthetic experiences, not even of the jolie laide variety, but all have been essentially memorable. The irony, for me, is that I find that I am being watched as much as I watch, probably being dissected as ruthlessly as I dissect and perhaps even being written about as nastily as I am writing now.

But, first, a clue about how it works. I walk into a party, which is inevitably crowded with anyone who is anyone, wants to be, is thought of as being or looks like they should be. There are lots of people standing around, talking animatedly, smiling, nodding, holding glasses containing liquids of assorted origins, reaching out for the ubiquitous munchie offered by morosely wandering waiters, seeming to be absorbed in each other and the event itself. And then you look carefully, walk close by a group, watch the most chatty of people with more than cursory attention, and you find a strange phenomenon happening: No one is really involved with any of the people they are with! There is a self-conscious preening, a furtive looking over the shoulder, an eagle eye or three out for a increasedly satisfying audience, a search for an ear more attentive, more influential, more amenable, more 'in', more useful, perhaps? At an event of sorts - a concert, an exhibition, a book launch, whatever - the behaviour is the same, though constrained in volume and movement by the need to be seated…or at least to be photographed somewhat flatteringly for the gossip press!

As much fun as seeing this happen is to watch people as individuals. At a recent do, I stood by, gazing fascinatedly at a scarlet-clad woman talking loudly, forty to the proverbial dozen, laughing raucously, gulping vampire-like from a glass of red wine. She had a face like a lizard, laterally flattened, with a wide mouth stretching across the expanse from one ear to the other, protuberant, slanted eyes flashing around seeking prey. My eyes widened as I saw her eat - her tongue came out, curled around the passing morsel, pulling it rapidly through parted, darkly red lips into her mouth. I must have looked somewhat odd, because I suddenly caught the attention of a festively turbaned gentleman standing just beyond - he smiled at me benignly, like a tolerant psychiatrist taking notes on a certifiable patient.

A few weeks ago, I was at a performance of classical Indian dance, by a close friend of mine. Which meant that I was not just a member of the audience, but a useful part of the home team, checking for sound balance and viewer reactions, apart from helping with vaguely meandering guests and the recalcitrant unseated. I watched one man - obviously a tourist, judging by the clothing, pedestrian sandals, camera and huge backpack he toted - hop seats through the auditorium, looking for the best vantage view. He tripped over distinguished feet, stepped on the toes of the Honourable Chief Guest, outpaced the pursuing ushers and eventually found a roost in the chair next to mine. "Great stuff!" he said loudly, enthusiastically, cheerfully, every time the dancer made an entrance, a pause or an exit. He clapped with verve, usually at all the most inappropriate moments, until I finally glowered at him and said "Stop!", firmly and decisively. After that, he leaned over every now and then and whispered, at full volume, "Now?" and took his cues from my nods or glares. I watched him as I would a child, with a certain maternal acceptance, a softness induced by his obvious ignorance. And he watched me for help, with a trust I found most touching of all.

This weekend, I do another round of the social interaction thing, all my masks firmly in place and my powers of observation at par. It should give me some more insight into the complex animal that is human. And maybe I will learn, along the way, to know myself.

A shoe in

(The Sunday Times of India, July 4, 2010)
There is a deep, almost visceral connection between women and shoes. Every day, every outfit, almost every step brings a different need in footwear. And the age-old MCP jokes about the number of pairs of shoes, sandals, heels et al that any woman has in her closet are justified; they hold some credence for most of the sex. Style, after all, is the bon mot, and must make a statement. But when it comes to those three months of the year when the taps above (and no, not in the upstairs neighbours’ bathrooms) run ceaselessly on and no one can tell when the sun will take over from rain, style has had perforce to take a backseat and allow comfort and practicality free rein. It used to be a sad story, this one, where practicality meant plastic/PVC and comfort came courtesy many Band Aids, but today everything seems to have caught up with itself and life is a great deal more chic for feet during the monsoon.

The old warhorse of footwear, Bata, has finally managed to veer off the antediluvian Sandak path, with a happy set of Sunshine and Lite slippers, or what used to be called ‘rubber chappals’, in bright colours like red, lime green and fluorescent pink, priced from Rs59 to Rs299. Better still is the Bata and I collection, with pretty designs on very light and flexible synthetic material. From totally foldable ballerinas to T-straps to semi-gladiators to wedges, the range is priced between Rs199 and Rs999 and does the walking-on/through-water trick quite satisfactorily.

There is competition, of course, in the multifarious offerings in shoe stores across the city. Kareena Kapoor’s Gucci chappals may not be easily sourced in Mumbai, but Candies, Jellies, even the occasional Sigerson Morrison fashionista flats and kitten heels can be found if you look hard enough. But fast getting ubiquitous in its original and knock-off versions are the Crocs, those clog-like soft-rubber clogs that look like something conjured up by a clod-hopping Dutch farmer on a bad acid trip and with names like ‘Cloud’ (Rs750), ‘Endeavor’(Rs1,695), ‘Cayman’ (Rs1,495) and, enticingly, ‘Relief’ (Rs1,795). Crocs do have less awkward-looking models, like Mary Janes (Rs 1,495) and slippers (Rs 1,495), and a charming sky-blue ballerina slipper called ‘Prima’ (Rs1,295). The street interpretations of these same designs are available at about one-third the price, depending on the buyers’ bargaining skills.

Of course, there are the standards like floaters and ‘rainy shoes’ in clear plastic, but what is cheering is that the average footwear fanatic can now find decent, locally made, branded stuff to slosh through puddles in, to run for trains in and to squelch across maidans in. A good bet is to stay home and watch other people getting their feet wet – or not, depending on what shoes they wear – but not many can manage that!

A fishy story

(The Hindu Literary Review, July 4, 2010)

FOLLOWING FISH, by Samanth Subramanian

According to its writer, this book is travel writing “in its absolute essence: plain, old-fashioned journalism, disabuser of notions, destroyer of preconceptions, discoverer of the relative, shifting nature of truth”. For a reader, it is a journey through a world where gills and fins are more in focus than cities and streets, with a generous and welcome helping of people and personalities, with some politics – local, social and more global – added to spice up the finished dish.

For a foodie, it all starts off most promisingly, with that bony delicacy so prized by the true-blue Bengali; in fact the ability to eat hilsa, manna on a Kolkata plate, without death or at least injury by one of those hidden sharp ends, could perhaps be the shibboleth–test for the Bengali gene. The writer looks for the fish during the winter, when the Kolkata weather is near-perfect, but soon learns that it is not just a fish, but a “lesson in moral science: Good things come to those who wait”. In search of this piscine paragon, he wanders into the Howrah fish market, unfortunately in open-toed sandals and waits…and waits. Finally, by the end of the chapter, he not only manages to find the fish, watch it being prepped for cooking and eats it, but also manages, albeit slowly, carefully, occasionally painfully, to separate bone from meat in his mouth without choking on either.

Having passed the perilous test presented by consumption of ilish maach, our hero then wanders along to Hyderabad and beyond. First he investigates the famous fish cure for asthma in the city of the Charminar – he meets the people involved, discusses the science of the ‘medicine’, looks into the politics of the situation and the economics of keeping the much-mooted practice flourishing for so many years and then is left wondering whether it is all really true, or just a matter of faith. A little history lesson follows, this time in Tamil Nadu, at the Church of the Holy Cross in Manapadu. Religion met the sea and managed to make friends with it, many centuries ago, and the two established a unique community with its esoteric class system. In the process of discovering how it works, the author discovers a fish podi found in infinite variations all over the state – added to rice and a little ghee or oil, it is fabulously delicious, the perfect meal…almost…until the next new food in the next leg of the journey.

A treatise on toddy, sometimes from a perspective not entirely sober, takes the writer through Kerala, looking for the drink in its stages of alcoholic potency, accompanied by the seafood that partners it. Looking for a legendary fish curry in Mangalore and eating with the Kolis of erstwhile Bombay spice up the transit. A serious and socially conscious note is struck in Goa, where the author listens to tall tales of sparring with sailfish and takes a look at the destruction of the beaches caused by the same tourist trade that made the small state so prized as a travel destination. The journey comes to an end in a shipyard in Gujarat, where a fishing boat is being crafted in a manner that is age-old and timeless, even though its makers have learned to use the technology available today to do so.

This is a book that wanders across this vast and wonderful country, exploring its tastebuds and traditions, taking frequent diversions and tangents into socio-politics and psychology, in language that is free-flowing yet a web tangled with journalese, experience, skill and a soupcon of what could be called pedantic verbosity. In that, with that, it is fun to read, in parts, and tells you a lot about the land that is eternally fascinating and a delicious place to explore.

Under the skin

(Hindu Sunday Magazine, July 4, 2010)

It is indeed a woman’s world now. A sculpture by Delhi-based artist Bharti Kher, The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own, fetched a record $1.5 million (Rs 6.9 crore) at the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction last week. It is an almost-life-sized figure of a prone female elephant, its contours covered with bindis. Created in 2006, critics have called it ‘iconic’, ‘awe-inspiring’ and ‘deeply moving’.

Born and educated in the UK, Kher favours the use of the bindi, more often seen decorating the female forehead than on inanimate works of art. “I use them as markers that are both conceptual and banal. Bindis have a transformative quality both aesthetically and conceptually, and can lend themselves to many forms.” These small stick-ons, glued on to the fibreglass behemoth, “have become a part of my language; a lot of my work refers to my own way of working through symbols. By engaging with a material continually, it starts to take on its own life and the life that the artist assigns it.” Women use bindis as decoration and to cover, protect and enhance that invisible, omnipotent ‘third eye’, Kher says, and “the conceptual underpinning of the work is as much about the act as it is about the narrative. Women put on this third eye, which suggests that today I can see more than I saw yesterday, or that I can see you, or myself, better. Sometimes they function like scars or markings.” And there is a more complex implication: “You can also see them as a skin, a covering for a body that marks time; skin as a sign of who you are, where you’re from.” The shapes themselves, round or snaky, are far less complex – “Keep it simple and the art speaks.”

James Sevier, Director and Specialist, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department, is all praise: “Every fold and recess of the sunken form is meticulously contoured by the intricate patterns of bindis that organically swarm across the beast in a second skin. It is India’s identity in all its glorious complexities that is the hero of this masterpiece.” He feels that Kher’s “unique sculptural practice employs familiar motifs and presents them in unexpected combinations and contexts that engage the viewer physically and viscerally on various social, political and cultural issues. Her work is renowned for its distinctly allegorical approach as well as its capacity to draw upon and enhance the inherent symbolism of everyday objects she employs. And whilst the vocabulary of her chosen motifs is typically Indian, her work also has far broader relevance to a global audience.”

The work itself was chosen as Kher’s most important work to date, Sevier says. “It is an unequivocal icon of contemporary Indian sculpture, awe-inspiring in its scale, detail and beauty. It brilliantly combines two traditional symbols of Indian culture – the bindi and the elephant – but leaves us asking whether this is a vision of India on the rise or India exhausted by its own rapid modernisation.” The sculpture itself is as ambiguous, leaving the viewer wondering whether the elephant is sleeping, dying, trying to get up or peacefully comfortable. “It is an intensely emotive sculpture and a vision that engenders extreme pathos from the viewer,” Sevier feels and critics agree.

Kher clarifies that the beast is “not lying down, she is dying. An elephant would never lie down like this. She is at a cusp between life and death - a private space where no one else can go except you and you'll do it only once.” And the cliché about elephants holds true. “The work talks about the memory through the skin of an elephant who never forgets, so it carries the stories of life-like texts that run over the body,” the artist explains. “It's one of the most resolved pieces that I have made.”

The enormous work, almost five metres long, is “truly monumental; its physical presence is like that of a fully grown elephant,” Sevier says. A viewer needs to be able to walk around it, almost feel the animal and its emotion. “One would hope it went to a museum collection or a foundation where it can continue to excite and engage as broad an audience as possible.”

Kher makes it clear that “Auctions don't have much to do with the artist’s direct practice, because the works have left us long ago. But I’m happy if the work goes somewhere where people can access it and its significance is clear.” After all, she adds, “It wasn't made to be a gold bar in a vault!”

And how is a value put on that kind of experience? “One needs to take into account the object’s iconic status, its rarity and its broader art historical significance, as well as prices being fetched for other iconic and important works of monumental contemporary sculpture by artists such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, etc,” Sevier explains. The big league, indeed!

Take a chair…

(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!

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?

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.

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!

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.

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.