Meeting him in camera

(Sometimes you meet the most interesting people in the most unexpected places. This story was published today...)

The story began in 1932…. In a small room on Dr DN Road (as it is now), a man sat at a desk, carefully checking a camera, his fingers delicately manipulating his tools to correct a small defect in a tiny part. He was K Prabhakar and the small shop that he started all those years ago is now a larger establishment, home to another gentleman known as ‘Prabhakar’ to the many customers who inevitably find their way up to the second floor of an old building, along the corridor and into a tiny storefront that hides a well-equipped workshop behind it. The proprietor comes out to find out what the problem is, holding the camera that needs help in hands that know exactly what they are doing, the surety of time and experience plain as he unlocks a lens, peers through the eye-piece, holds the grip in sure fingers.

The gentleman is the original K Prabhakar’s son. His name is Ashok with his father’s name, Kumar, he says with his characteristic somewhat shy smile, but few who come to him for help and advice know that. He prefers to talk with his wife Rekha present, he insists, and she joins in, taking over much of the discussion as he listens, her voice and words definite and detailed. He speaks, but seems to prefer the world of exposures and F-stops, lost perhaps in the world of cameras that he knows so well.

“This business was started by my father,” Ashok says. “He was an expert camera repairer during the war. At that time there were few camera repairers in the Indian market, though there were plenty of cameras – Exacta, Contaflex, Ikoflex.” The real Prabhakar started working with Central Camera, who provided him with a space – the tiny room across the way from the present premises. “He was also doing his own work and continued for many years until he became unwell.” Just 12 years old at the time, Ashok started helping out, leaving school to work with his father full time. “I took the initiative and learned, with my father’s help. Now my son (“His name is Prabhakar,” his mother adds.) is working with me.”

One of three brothers, the other two brought into the same field but not the same firm by Ashok, he became proprietor of the company in 1982, keeping his father’s name. “He loves the name,” Rekha explains, “and he loved his father very much.” And he took his father’s business interests far beyond a small shop. Having acquired service contracts for various globally well-known firms specializing in cameras and photographic equipment – Canon being a long-term contact – he gradually became well known internationally. Along the way, the family set up a factory to manufacture their own brand of cameras too, now a memory, but a very good one. His wife avers, “If you have any queries about photography and cameras, nobody else can answer them like he can. He is so interested in cameras and has read everything there is published on them. In fact, I have had to throw away cupboards full of books on the field since I have no space to store them!”

But with all the time he has spent on cameras, and with all that he knows about photography, don’t his fingers itch to press that button and hear that sweet whirring that signifies a picture well taken? “I have never wanted to be a photographer,” Ashok is clear. “I have done marriage photography, but some time ago, at various Catholic weddings and only for fun and for close friends. I have never wanted to be a photographer.” He speaks of the change in the world of photography – today, cameras, like computers, he feels, are easily available, affordable and become defunct very quickly. When pressed, he thinks long and hard and then hesitantly lists Rolliflex as perhaps the best camera ever made, but leaves that open to debate.

Ashok’s and K Prabhakar’s reputation is jointly huge, not just in Mumbai but in various parts of the world, too, especially in the Far East, where his work with international companies has been most extensive. A number of Indian journalistic photographers come to him – people from the Times of India, Mumbai Samachar, Loksatta, Free Press, Saamna and many others. He explains, “We have a lot of tools to repair cameras. You do not use a screwdriver and a hammer,” he laughs. He has special equipment for film and digital cameras that he brought back from his travels.

Rekha is obviously extremely proud of her husband. “The way he is involved in his work and the way he works, it is a divine gift,” she says. Ashok sits back in his chair and smiles, his mind already wandering back towards the lens he has been working on…

The shame of it!

I am a Mumbaikar. A very proud one, always identifying myself as belonging to the city and its ethos - a multicultural, multi-dimensional ethos, one that is liberal, accepting, absorbing and educative, all on one wonderful experience. While my parents are not native to Mumbai - or Bombay, as it was known when they moved here and how it is known to most of us who live here even today - I am, since I was born in the city and spent a lot of my growing up time here too. I worked here, I lived here - and sort of still do - and will probably die here, unless I am suddenly transported with bags, baggage and life to somewhere else as interesting as my home-town. All my form-filling existence has been dotted with blanks that demand to know my 'native place'. When I come to that line, I stop, wonder, ponder and have no idea what I should say, since I cannot avail of a mandatory leave travel allowance to go 'back home', since 'back home' is where I am in any case.

But all that is a little besides the intended point. For now, I am vaguely ashamed to be myself, to belong to the city I call mine. Not because of anything I have done, but because of local politics and politicians. One man seems to be holding the government of my home state to ransom, free to vandalise and perpetrate violence, excusing himself and his cohorts with the simple statement of "Mee Marathi manoos". Raj Thackeray, very much in the news for just having been arrested and now out on bail once again, has stirred up a long-subdued sentiment which, in effect, translates to 'Mumbai for Mumbaikars', where 'Mumbaikars' further loosely translates to 'Maharashtrians' or those who are native to the state, speak the local language (Marathi) and find a home here. Those from elsewhere in India, from the North especially, are not welcome. Somewhere along the way, that does not compute. There are so many like me who are born here, live here but are not natives of the local culture, lifestyle or language, but they have contributed extensively to what this city is all about, pay local taxes, keep the economy of the metropolis buzzing happily and add beauty, life and spirit to the already dynamic Bombay beat.

So when Raj T demands that the city be reserved for its native population, the question automatically arises: Who is that native population? People like me? People like the myriad and famous-name industrialist families who have given the city its reputation as a city of gold? People like the many young aspirants who have come here to establish themselves as gods of the big screen? People who make the city function, from the taxi drivers to the garbage collectors to the railway workers to the faceless men who install billboards at strategic locations? How are they 'Marathi manoos' except for the fact that they spend their lives trying to make Mumbai a better place to be?

Wis Raj T doing that makes me cringe? He claims that Mumbai is for those of his ilk - fine, that makes sense, we are all in that broad category. But he goes further, goes radical, and says that only those who truly belong here should stay here. The others, like those from the North (many years ago, his uncle, Bal Thackeray, similarly groused against those from the South, sending the South Indian community into a collective tizzy), should leave, post-haste, and if they do not, they will be ejected with a certainty of force. Instead of using his silver-tongued rhetoric (no, that is not my way of putting it, but a media favourite) and politesse, he has been inciting his followers to choose violence as a method of action. As a result, the small man on the street - the taxi driver, the chana-walla, the pushcart vendor - and the outsider looking for a door that opportunity could knock on, from an exam for a job in the railways to a post as intern with a hospital has been threatened, beaten up, even killed in at least one unfortunate recent incident. These are the people who will take Mumbai to where it can go tomorrow or some day in the future. These are the people who keep the city working, ticking along, so that people like Raj T and his party fanatics can live in the style and comfort to which they are accustomed. And these are the people who are being persecuted, their lives and livelihoods endangered. The people that Raj T thinks do not belong here. Raj T is a Mumbaikar, a trule-blue one, he claims. This is how he supports his claim.

And that makes me ashamed to be a Mumbaikar.

Kya cheese hai!

For the last couple of weeks, we have been looking at cheese. No, not as an investment option or to add more to our diet, but for a story I have been asked to do for a newspaper. While I can do it without going through the wanderings and the research, having searched for decent cheese almost all my life that I have been eating it, the sheer pleasure of exploring a favourite subject kept me going quite happily. And it took me for a little stroll down that lane they call Nostalgia, peeking into a past that was, deliciously, nicely punctuated with cheese of various kinds.

But way back in time, I was not too discriminating. I know I am likely to get hung, drawn and quartered for this, but there have been days that I have eaten cheese powder mixed with milk and spread on sliced white bread and toasted crisp. It was absolutely fabulous...then. Now, the very thought makes me shudder, though why it should I am not sure, since the concept is essentially sort of cheese deconstructed without a fancy label attached. Soon after, I found that gustatory bliss could be translated into cubes of processed cheese stuck on a fork (they fell off a skewer - I know, I tried) and held in the flame for a few seconds. the outside would be blistered and crisp, while the inside would be a little warm; for some reason, it never melted like I thought it would. Then I graduated to cheese pakoras - also made with processed cheese, I thing, a deep-fried dream that would be any nutritionist's nightmare. Of course, hot on the heels of this one came the mozarella sticks and arancini in Italian restaurants in the US, which often had me skipping the main course and concentrating on the appetiser and, without fail, the pudding. In college, I would make a vegetable pulao-rice concoction and, just before serving it, stir in vast amounts of cottage cheese and eat it hot, melting into gentle though strangely tasteless strings that were almost as soothing as a dish of tairshaadam or instant mashed potatoes (with grated cheese, of course). I soon developed a serious addiction to crunchy toasted bagels with cream cheese, especially the cream cheese, and found myself using it in almost everything, from tuna turnovers to tortilla wraps. And, then, nothing ever sank to my hips or made my T-shirts tighter than they should have been.

Today, life has changed. Everything I eat goes straight to where I don't want it, from my hipline to my waist to my...never mind where else. But a little cheese every day is fine, my doctor assures me, women my age and stage in life need the calcium. So, I figured, I may as well get the best available. So I troll supermarket counters and speciality delicatessens for favourites, bringing home sharp cheddar, briney feta, hole-y Swiss, even a rather squishy Brie one time. I buy my cheeses wherever I can find them, be they in Pune, in Delhi or at the new store just down the road from the house. It may not be the ten pound wheel of mature Farmhouse Cheddar that we once had in our fridge, but it keeps us going until the next time I go shopping, a vaguely fanatical gleam in my eyes as I look for some interesting cheese, please!

Kya cheese hai!

For the past couple of weeks we have been looking at cheese. And every time I look at an array of the milk foods nicely set in a large glass-windowed case at some tony store or the other, I marvel at the range available today. A few years ago, if I wanted cheese that was not so heavily processed as to almost be plastic, I had to travel outside this country or, in the rare case, find it in some dairy farm or speciality store tucked away somewhere that I could not access easily.

All sewn up

This morning we walked over to spend a little time with the cobbler, who is a near-miracle worker when it comes to fixing leather stuff that everyone else has given up on. He did that with a pair of sandals that I dearly prized and even duplicated them for me in the colour and with the embellishments that I wanted - the same kind of thing was not available anywhere in the city and was a perfect fit for a bum ankle and a personal ethos that at that time included more walking than I had pavements to pound. Today we collected a camera case that almost classifies as an antique, it is that old and treasured, as is the camera that it cradles. And, as we stood there waiting for him to do the final polish after repair approval, we listened to the story he had to tell.

Not too long ago, he had a flourishing business making watch straps for an export company, he said. But the company went bust and so did his little enterprise. And there was no obvious leftover rancour or negativity. He smiled cheerily as ever and told us how he now worked the night shift as a security supervisor at a local hospital, the same healthcare facility where his wife was ward assistant. He spent all night there, sleeping after 2 in the morning in an air-conditioned cabin (which seemed to be a point of great pride for him), and then came to his small stall near the market where he cleaned, repaired and polished leather of various kinds for a whole family of clients. He lived not too far away and either walked to his work, or rode his motorbike. At times, he volunteered at the church nearby, helping with counselling and treatment for alcoholics. One of his sons was in college, doing well, while his son-in-law had his own business and his various relatives had shops and factories in different parts of the city, working on everything from shoe-making to selling vegetables. The man beamed at us while suggesting we go to his brother to have footwear made, and said that if he mentioned his name, the price would be far less than otherwise.

We stood there listening, chatting, smiling, strangely moved by the cobbler's positive attitude to life and his upbeat attitude. Things could not have been blissfully happy for him all the time, but he had his priorities in order and said with pride that he was law-abiding, all his stalls and spaces properly licensed and legal. I would not have been surprised if he had told us that his family included a policeman or two and maybe even a politician. It would have added to the complete experience that he and his existence were all about.

Changing times

It's funny how things that change invariably stay the same. Yes, I know, someone said it before me and better than I did, but you know what I mean. I have another cliche for you: everything must come to an end. Relationships, books, television shows, even life. They all, some day, finish at some logical point, explained or not, and either fade away softly, get cut off before you know what is happening or stop with a lot of fanfare and hoo-ha attached. Which is the best route to take, I cannot say, but it will all, inevitably, take that road to where you cannot, will not or do not want to follow. I like knowing when things end and sometimes that happens to my satisfaction; other times, things end without all the bows tied neatly and that never fails to irritate me, because then they have a nasty habit of rearing their ugly heads again just when I least expect them to, making my nasty memories and guilts surface when they really do not need to.

Eh? What am I talking about? Well, nothing personal, really, no references to the past or even any sort of deep philosophising. Actually, this is all about my television watching. The only Hindi soap opera that I watched with any degree of intelligence has just come to an end and the heroine faded gently into the night with her enormous family smiling gamely and bonding determinedly. I am sure a lot of the actors will be seen again soon in other soaps, new or old, and some of them are already playing significant roles on various other dramas. It is a strange feeling, that, to see the same people again and again as you surf through what your cable operator beams into your home, and you wonder what this person from that other soap opera is doing in this one. Confusion, almost as bad as the characters and the soaps themselves!

The soap I watched was called Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki. It starred a very pious and good woman called Parvati, who had to live through all sorts of problems and survived them all, along with some time jumps (or generation leaps, as they are called), and wore the same fabulously fake jewels, the same gorgeous saris and the same beatific smile right through. She cried a lot, she got angry a lot and she gave a lot of speeches, while the rest of her clan lived, died, was reborn (or maybe never died at all, just ended a contract and came back with another face courtesy 'plastic surgery'), liked her, hated her, tried to destroy her...ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Fun and games was had by all and at the end, when it had all degenerated (or should that read 'disintegrated'?) into a farce, with Parvati being silly and OTT and the actress completely enjoying the whole act, the family finally came together and said their farewells. It was, of course, very funny to see that only a few members of the clan were present, with some favourite characters conspicuous by their absence.

What is even funnier is the way that the producers inserted a teaser into the last scene of the soap opera. A lamp that Parvati floats downstream is picked up by a new face...and that should lead into a new set of people with new angsts and dramas. What fun!

A wonderful custom

(So I wrote this for a newspaper. I seem to do that quite a bit these days!)

Once upon a time, you went abroad with a meager foreign exchange allowance and did some high-stress budgetary calisthenics to bring back what you really really wanted – and what your friends would really really envy you for having. This could be anything from a pencil box complete with cartoon character erasers to lingerie that most people saw only in the very fancy fashion magazines in five-star hotel bookstores to gadgets that would pluck out your leg hair, provide you with an evening’s entertainment or help you make a sumptuous dinner. Along the way, if you could afford it, and if you had ways to take it back to India without getting caught by customs or needing to pay the duty, you also acquired some real treasures, with fancy tags attached: Dior perfumes, Louis Vuitton luggage, Salvatore Ferragamo shoes, Mikasa glassware, Cross pens and perhaps a diamond or two courtesy Tiffany.

And then, as time went by, life got a little easier for all those who believed that labels were the only route to take and brands mandated not just quality but exclusivity and that much coveted snob value as well. The shops in Heera Panna, Manish Market and other such ‘grey market’ arcades could supply everything from washing machines, refrigerators and watches to chocolates, diapers and hairbrushes, all with the requisite label attached, but no guarantee except goodwill, no service contracts and, usually, no instruction manual. However, there was no real choice available or comparison possible; you had to know exactly what you wanted, or trust the dealer to give you what you asked for, in a time frame that was often unpredictable.

And then the licenses started being issued. Special store spaces were created where you could acquire all the snob value you desired, in a currency you could provide without too much trouble. Fragrances from reputed fashion houses like Cartier, Yves Saint Laurent and Calvin Klein flooded the counters in popular department stores and did not need a special relationship to be established with the store manager for him to reach deep into the cash drawer to furtively fish out the scent you had asked for so long ago, but “No bill, madam”. Clothes hit the racks, from Benetton to Tommy Hilfiger (who seemed to swallow his qualms about making clothing for the non-WASP population in the face of potential profits on a massive scale) to the fabulously publicized Reid and Taylor, much of it riding in on the coattails of Bollywood and its very visible stars.

Slowly, popular international brands starting setting up individual stores in India, selling cameras (Nikon, Canon, Sony), luggage (Samsonite, American Tourister, Delsey), sportswear (Reebok, Nike), white goods (Siemens, Bosch, Samsung, LG) and personal-use products (cosmetics – Maybelline, Revlon, Bourjois; lingerie – Triumph, Enamor, Lovable; clothing – Lee, Levis, Cherokee). Soon, stores theselves made their presence felt, from MacDonald’s to Marks and Spencer. And the shoppers flooded in: young people with a decently high disposable income, like Shyam Somanadh, who works with a media group in Delhi and says that he prefers “international brands in alcohol, appliances (laptop, phones etc), clothing, etc. I like a mix of practicality in both price and looks.” The luxury market followed closely behind, primarily targeting the high-fashion buyers. From Jimmy Choo to Chanel, Vuitton to Tod’s, Elizabeth Arden to Clinique, Rado to Omega, they all came…and, in a limited section of society, conquered. There is a growing population of millionaires in India and they are all willing to spend.

But there is one genre of shopper who wants even more exclusivity than just a label that is known, never mind to a very small population of discerning buyers. And those people find their dreams in products made exclusively for them. Like that hand woven sari, that specially crafted necklace, that perfectly finished dining table, that exquisitely polished floor…all fairly easily possible in India, at a price. As Anuradha Mahindra, publisher of Verve (apart from other magazines) says, “India has a long-standing tradition of producing high quality hand-crafted products suited to the individual tastes and style of the consumer. I would choose custom-crafted products when they perpetuate this tradition in terms of the specific craft that they employ, or when they symbolise a creative vision of the designer or craftsman who draws inspiration from our vast heritage.”

According to Oorvazi Irani, artist, entrepreneur and educationist, “Custom crafted clothes or jewellery would be for a special occasion like a birthday or a wedding and would speak of my individuality and style. It makes you feel good and stand out from the crowd, and you don’t mind spending that little extra to pamper yourself.” Though she is not especially finicky about it, she would use a high-end branded product “if it ensures me quality - like a writing instrument, for instance”.

Perhaps best of all, custom-made objects have the snob value of being one-of-a-kind, completely exclusive, and created to specifications that the buyer has. And it is the way things are done in the country, the way that they have been done for generations. Even today, few will look for a high-end diamond bracelet, for instance, in a store selling readymade jewellery; they will prefer to get it made to order from a family jeweler, or at least someone with the apt reputation and lineage. If carefully supervised, the piece will rival that made by a big-name international firm like Tiffany, Gubelin or Georg Jensen. The same applies to almost anything, from carpets to clothing, art and even kitchen pottery. Mahindra feels that “The advantage of custom-crafted products is that they express your own personal style statement, which often needs courage and a strong sense of self.” On the other hand, “The advantage of 'off-the shelf' luxury brands is an assured standard of quality and the security of being part of a global fashion trend.”

Perhaps the biggest market for custom-made goods is the fashion industry, especially the trousseau business. While street corner darzis and ‘designers’ are a dime the proverbial dozen in this country, quality is not easy to find. As Somanadh says, he will take the trouble to have something made for himself, but “only if they can guarantee the same quality which they expect on products meant for the western market. I like paying for quality, not just for the label.”
Graphic designer Krsna Mehta believes that “customized is better is you are working with the right person. With brands, you get a logo, years of tradition, a product that has been master-created for years.” Something specially made for you, on the other hand, has the cachet of being “exactly what you want, your fit and size, something that is only yours – a complete limited edition, one of a kind”. Of course, he knows, “Some things are better branded,” like a car, but even in that luxury market there is the Mercedes and then there is the Rolls Royce.” For some things, “especially in India and the East, a custom made product is easier than in the West. And even custom-made can be branded, like a Pinakin Patel piece for specially designed interiors, for instance.”

Tummy tuck

We were out to lunch this afternoon to a well known restaurant in town. It was a food festival that we had been invited to and, not being especially social but needing to go to the boutique attached to the eatery in any case, we decided to be civil and accept the invitation. So after doing an errand here and another there, we arrived all ready and more or less willing to eat.

The reason we were a little unwilling to lunch at this particular place was that it serves thalis. Nothing wrong with that, except that you have to perforce eat far more than you actually want to and great amounts that you do not need to. A thali means lots of many things, most of which start to taste the same after the first few bites. Another and fairly major reason was that most thalis that we have come across in our limited experience of them have been overly spicy and very difficult to get through and get over. But we were assured by our hostess and the manager of the place that things would be the way we wanted and the food would suit us to the proverbial T.

And it did, really. There were not too many people at the restaurant, so service was quick, friendly and unstressed. We sat at a good table and discussed the food with our hostess and the waiters who served us. And we were allowed to choose across menus, mixing regions and dishes with happy results. What we ate was well cooked, gentle on the tongue and the tummy and most delightfully tasty. And we came away with a feeling of perhaps finding the courage to go it again…not too long from now.

We started with chaas, a yoghurt drink. It was gently spiced with salt, cumin and a faint touch of green chilli, cool and refreshing. Then we segued into appetizers – onion pakoras, khandvi, kachori and a chopped salad. From there, we moved seamlessly into rotis of various kinds – a spicy thepla, a rough-grained jowar flatbread and a chunky, ghee-soaked, heavy baati. Those were served up with dal, and various sabjis made with methi, with bhindi, with alu and karela, with gatte, with peas, with chana, with cabbage, with carrots….phew, I get tired and full just thinking of it all! The meal ended with a firm but melting mohanthal, a coconut-laden square of mithai that failed to be identified and a puran poli (which we didn’t have), a wonderful filled sweet pancake that has to be eaten with loads of fresh-made ghee. Which we could not stomach, not after all that delicious food was filling us so pleasantly!

With God in sight

Have you ever wished for something so much that you are even willing to pray for it, which is a radical departure for you since you do not normally wish, pray or compromise? I have been for a while now and just ramped up my efforts, just to keep the proverbial wolf at bay. What is the wolf and which bay and what is this all about? I cannot tell at this time, sorry, but ask that you join me in the wishing, praying and willing whatever it is to be the way I want it to be. They say that the best prayers are for strength; that is what I want most of all, to deal with whatever happens...or I pray does not. The rest is a bonus.

All that apart, I was watching from my living room window as a young couple who live in the building stoof in front of their car parked downstairs, lit a few agarbattis and said prayers, eyes closed, with some to-me-unknown ritual in progress. They had the hood of the vehicle open, had placed a vivid marigold on the edge of the engine and went through the puja with obvious reverence. Today is Dassehra, also Ayudha puja, when all things mechanical are worshipped, in order to make sure that they work well for you and as whatever they have been created to be. When my mother was alive, she would put a tiny dot of kumkum on all the household gadgets, from the computer to the fridge, and then say various prayers for all that we used, from the car to the food processor. I am not especially clued in to all this formal ritual, but I do make that silent wish and a quiet thank you to the powers that be for keeping us going with all the help that we have acquired in the form of machines that do whatever they do to make life easier.

For me, a special occasion is about family. As long as mine is safe with me, I really don't care about the rites that I should observe as a Tamilian Brahmin, but make sure that at least some of the prescribed food is served up and the house and its inhabitants are clean, neat and feeling a little virtuous, if not embodying the qualities of a pious being. Small Cat usually participates in all that goes on, from watching me cook from her perch on the microwave oven to warily peeking at the new washing machine spinning with the shrill whirr characteristic of a plane taking of, to licking a little fresh-made kheer off my finger when I hold it under her nose. If there is a small puja to be done - as we try and manage on Ganesh Chaturthi and Deepavali day - she is held and made part of the general blessing process. And even as she squirms and squeaks and demands her freedom, she seems to know that there is something important going on and she needs to be part of it.

As for Father and me, we have developed our own version of whatever the occasion demands. So far, it seems to be working. Whoever there is up there is still watching over us. Part of my wish and prayer is for that power to keep doing so....

Dressing for success

(I wrote this a while ago. But since then, I have met a lot of people for a lot of assignments and find myself deliberately dressing to fit a possible, potential image. And I recently had to go through the same process and found myself wishing I was in the flip-flops and baggy clothes that are such a no-no. So it seemed moot to use this here and now...)

How to look good and impress people has always been a bestseller, be it as a book, an advice column or a television show — the latest in that series being two loud-mouthed and aggressive British women who invade people’s lives and wardrobes to give them a makeover that doesn’t always make everyone made-over happy. But the fact that shows like this work is indicative of more than just a voyeuristic tendency in audiences. It displays a consciousness of the truism that how you look matters. And the workplace is where it all comes home to roost.

A job today is not just a way of taking home the bacon, or the paneer tikka. It is about being ahead of the pack, of succeeding via increments and promotions and doing better than the person you sit next to. It speaks of efficiency, initiative and all those wonderful attributes that are so highly rated by corporate HR departments’ sales pitch to prospective employees. And what they don’t tell you is, it is also about looking good, well-shaped, well-dressed, and well presented.

While an hourglass figure for a woman may be favoured by a male boss with a chauvinistic bias and a lecherously appreciative eye, a generally ‘fit’ shape is the preferred norm, since the first impression makes more impact than an in-depth analysis that unearths talent and experience. But whether this is based on the underlying reality that obesity-related health and stress management issues can hamper performance or an instinctive discrimination against those who are not ‘beautiful people’ is not clear. Health professionals in India see weight gain as a problem that is increasing, especially in urban areas, ironically as a result of doing well at work, and sedentary lifestyles.

But fatness is not all in this context. The way a professional is dressed makes all the difference. A list compiled from a monster.com poll listed tank tops, visible innerwear and flip-flops as the fashion faux pas to end all from a professional point of view. Employers want to know how seriously a prospective employee takes herself, and where she rates herself apropos maturity, self-image, responsibility and reliability.

In a creative field there is no yardstick that one can measure up to. I, for instance went to my first job interview dressed in a — hold your breath — housecoat and spike heels. It was not a deliberate style choice, but the fact that I was on my way from a photo-shoot to my home when I was dragged willy-nilly into an interview and had to sit there answering questions, trying to look intelligent and egg-headed with pancake on my face and eyelashes that threatened to unpeel themselves from my heavily shadowed eyelids. I got the job, but for years my then-boss would look warily at me whenever we spoke. I would not do the same today, insisting on the time I needed to transform into a more work-worthy avatar.

So how does one dress for work in a non-creative environment? Obviously, a miniskirt and camisole are non grata. So are wild prints, four-inch stilettos, sequinned saris, sparkly hairbands and op-deco earrings. Men, too, have their framework to fit into — nude women on ties, knuckle-duster rings and sleeveless T-shirts being no-nos. Experts advise restraint, dignity, chic rather than outré. Let the quirks of personality, attitude and wardrobe dawn on a would-be boss gradually, it is suggested, once performance has been proved. Usually that works. Never mind the calorie count.

All washed out

Father and I went on an expedition this morning. We walked down to the local electronics store and bought us a washing machine. Yes, it has become as simple as that in this country now, and has been for some time now, as long as you knew where to get whatever it is you wanted. Today, you can trot yourself over to the local corner shop and buy everything from the newest candy in the market to a microwave oven that practically buys the veggies for you before cooking them to the perfect turn that you demand. Be all that as it may be, this is about something else altogether, so don’t distract me.

Our first washing machine, Father says – but I have some difficulty believing him – was a stick and a bar of soap. From there, we graduated rather rapidly to a maid, who hung out the clothes in the designated space behind the house where we lived at the time. I was also in her charge and would be stood on the wall while she did her work. And, I am told – and I really do not believe this at all – she also hung out the baby to dry when she was damp around the edges which, considering the age I was then, was fairly often. And then we went off to live in Germany, bringing back a very efficient washing machine when we returned to this country, so eliminating all need for that bar of soap, stick, maid and pruney hands. And when the television did not work, or there was nothing to watch, we could always gaze fascinatedly at the clothes going round and round in the machine – and our household help often did that, finding the spin of the drum far more riveting than the chores that she was hired to do.

Meanwhile, the washing machine, like us, got older and more rickety. It had occasionally to be taken apart and fiddled with and seemed to like the attention, because after a stint of tinkering, it worked well for a while. Until one day, finally, about nine years ago, it just gave up. We gave it a decent send-off and acquired a new machine, which never had the same cachet. It seemed to gradually develop deep psychological issues that, in the end, could no be resolved. And today, with due ceremony, it will get its final farewell. The new machine is to move into its place in a few hours and, hopefully, will be as dedicated to duty as the others have been.

This could be a good time to consider the phrase ‘rest in peace’.

Cat style

(I am still looking, but now at least readers of a popular Indian newspaper also know!)

Many years ago I met three cats – two of those came as a package – that were friendly, sociable, almost-human and extraordinarily responsive. They were rather in contrast to the family feline who has in her young character a pinch of paranoia, much madness and all the hi-bred pickiness native to a princess of some extremely exalted line. These cats were elegant, poised, wise and as close to perfect as it would be possible for a cat to be. After all, they were Siamese. Koko and Yum Yum, the pair, were the property of James Qwilleran, millionaire and bon vivant journalist who solved crimes as a matter of diversion, always with the help of his two furry companions, the creations of Lillian Jackson Braun, author of the Cat Who…series. To add a lighter touch without blood and gore, there was Solange, the long-legged, wide-eyed, languorous lovely from the comic strip called 9 Chickweed Lane. Put it all together, and I wanted a Siamese to call my own.
So when I lost my own black-and-white gutter-bred moggie to illness, I decided I would be deliberate about my next choice and find the perfect purebreed who would embody all the snob value that I could identify with. It has been almost five years since I started looking and no Siamese has reared its curious head in my market. Are they difficult to find in this country, or am I not looking in the right places? Various people manning ‘pet shops’ in the crowded Crawford Market animal section either ignored my questions, or tried to sell me everything from an ultra-lethargic rabbit to a tortoise that scuttled back under its shell when I peered at it. I was asked to ‘come this way’ to take a look at cats, but decided that discretion was indeed the better part of valour when I looked at the man’s paan-stained lips and unbuttoned shiny red shirt. So I chose to troll the Net looking for dealers and found very few in the Mumbai area who had cats, leave alone the snooty species I was interested in.

Saroj Chandran at the Animal Hospital in Parel said that Siamese were the easiest cats to have – “They are friendly and curious and no trouble at all. But they are not often seen here.” She told of a family in the western suburbs that once bred the cats for sale, but they had been raided and not been heard of since. She started looking for one for me five years ago.

Veterinarian Dr DK Patil says that “There are very few cat breeders in India and since the Siamese are not that well known or popular, they have to be imported.” And that makes them expensive. But taking care of them is a cinch; after all, “Food for Siamese cats is now easily available and they do not give too much trouble,” being short-haired and sociable felines.

Saying I was a potential buyer – which in a way I am - I did speak to a dealer in Navi Mumbai, who told me that Siamese were very difficult to find. “They are usually imports,” he said, “but I can try and find one for you”. And the price would be “around Rs 15,000”. He tried to talk me into a Persian, which is “more decorative”, but the cats are long-haired, which does cause some problems in a city apartment. “We have some dogs you may like to see…” But a Siamese cat was what I wanted.

And I wait to find the perfect kitten that embodies all the wonderfully catly snob values that so delight me.

A stitch in time

I don't know why, but good tailors, like maids, are very difficult to find. For some months now, even a couple of years, I have been looking for someone to make my fashion statements a reality, be they straight and simple salwar kameez - the best thing you can wear in the heat of Mumbai's October - or more complex tunic tops that have to be a perfect fit whatever you wear them with. And every time I go through the aggravation of a getting a new person to make clothes for me to conform to schedules, I swear that I will wear readymades from that day forth. And then I find some wonderful fabric that I just have to own in that ideal style...

When I was little, I had someone to make my clothes for me - these people were meticulous, fast, creative, up-to-date and very very good. They were easily accessible, threw only the very occasional tantrum and sourced all the fabric and the accoutrements that were required without being specifically asked to. Overnight deliveries were also the norm. I still call them my favourite in-house designers - my parents made pretty, unusual and exclusive little frocks for me using an antiquated sewing machine, novel ideas and lots of love.

Then we outsourced. A tailor in a tiny shop in the garage of a building down the road made me clothes to my mother's design. That worked out pretty well, except for one instance that I can remember when we arrived at the hole in the wall place and found it firmly shut and my parents were understandably annoyed. Another of the same ilk was found closer to home at a later time in my life and he did a decent job too...until I found one in a shop that rubbed shoulders with the circulating library I temped with - that made getting clothes made the easiest thing in the world. And I could throw a fit when something was not ready as planned and still take it home with me, finished to my needs, when I was ready to leave work for the day. I used the same tailor for many years, from my school uniform days to when I started wearing saris to work, and he was allowed to make personal comments about my changing dimensions and sartorial tastes without my being too offended.

Then we moved house and I had to find someone closer to home. This, my mother did for me when I was away, and she more or less 'adopted' a newbie 'designer' to source fabric and make her designs reality. So I acquired a larger wardrobe than I had ever had in my life, with clothes for all occasions, from ratting about at home to attending the toniest dos in town. But soon, with familiarity and time, the lady started acting up, as they all do. Mistakes had to be forgiven as if they had never been made. Promised delivery dates were taken as a joke rather than a commitment and changes were made arbitrarily, as if I had no say in what I wanted to wear. When I started losing fabric that I had found after exhaustive searching and was given more excuses than clothes promised, I gave up. And have never gone back.

Now I use a tailor in town who works with a small boutique that I frequent (yes, the one I fall up the stairs of). He is unreliable with his timings, vanishes for days together and has no idea that it takes a lot of effort and time to drop by the store to collect stuff he had vowed he would have ready. Of course, he is rarely there for me to tell him. But it seems as if I will soon need to find someone new to make my wardrobe bloom the way it always has.

In poor taste

This is a buzz that has been slowly building, starting with a tiny mushroom cloud of objection in India and growing to a louder noise overseas. Vogue India, which launched a year ago with a great deal of fanfare and many large expectations, has given itself a good helping of egg on its own face. How? Simply by publishing fashion photographs that, while gorgeous as images, are in crashing bad taste as far as the concept and sensibility is concerned. Some people consider it no really big deal - to show the rural poor ornamented (that is really the only word that seems right here) with accessories that only the urban very rich can consider acquiring seems most inappropriate and the kind of statement that would make almost anyone with any sensitivity screw up their noses (well-bred, urban, rich and otherwise) with a certain touch of delicate disgust. It certainly made my schnoz lift a little higher and crinkle a bit. If I had been at home when I first saw the fashion spread that was published, I may have been have been rather more vocal in my feelings about it.

It is not that the pictures were not fabulous; like almost every image I have ever seen in Vogue from anywhere in the world, they were. Stunning. But, when you think about the huge gulf between the haves and the have-nots, the spread was singularly insensitive, never mind that the editor (a lovely woman I slightly know) justified it by saying that everyone everywhere enjoys beauty, never mind which economic stratum they belong to. The people in the photos may have been well recompensed for their smiles and pride in wearing (a Fendi bib on a child) or using (a Burberry umbrella carried by a gnarled old man) products that they would probably never have access to under normal circumstances. But they would obviously have to return them at the end of the shoot, and any damage caused inadvertantly to the objects would have been paid for in some degree of angry outburst or nasty sniping. The whole thing smacked painfully of a patronising attitude and a lack of any consideration for the people and their reality. The international media has been severe in its criticism of the spread. The Indian media has jumped on the castigation bandwagon with a certain relish that is often the lot of those who have what is envied. I waited to find out what the whole story was before I decided to write this. In the meanwhile, this noise has faded somewhat and the next has probably been fuelled by something else that someone else did.

But there is another aspect to the whole thing, the one that has made me write this, in fact. As a wonderful and wise gentleman pointed out to me. India is one of the world's largest hubs for the recycling business. Everything from old computers to clothes to ships to food finds a market here. It is mended, refurbished and resold, more than enough of a business for many to find their livelihood in it. It may well be that the Fendi bib and the Burberry umbrella find a home here, with these same people who could never think of buying it, at some stage in the life of the object. And they would probably carry it or wear it or use it with the same pride that their beaming faces showed in the pictures that have generated so much controversy.

Communication gaps

Funny how we are all so dependent on connections. Once upon a time this used to mean the people we knew or the people our parents and friends knew, but today it is all about telephone links, be they for private conversations, office intercom systems, mobile telephones, fax machines, email and, of course, the Internet. This is about as useful as the people who know people that we need to know, but in a way it is a huge handicap to not be able to get in touch in the good old-fashioned way. In some ways, of course.

Why am I on this track today? After many weeks of being completely in touch with the outside world - I am really not sure whether that is a blessing or the proverbial curse, since instead of my online messengers popping up and people spitting angst at me via the Web, I get text messages from people who need help of some kind or the other, along with the occasional actual telephone call on one of the landlines that feed into our house. Like I said, curse or blessing - the jury is still out on that one.

I know and fully well agree that to be so connected is a good thing. I remember when I was writing a column along with the occasional article for publications overseas and had to run around to find stamps, mailboxes or, at the very least, a post office. Today, having very recently seen the mail piled up in the local post office near where we live, I shudder to think that I was once so dependent on a system that is, on the whole, extraordinarily efficient, but slow and tedious and troublesome. Today, all I need to do is get online, talk to whoever editor needs whatever written and send it off with the click of a key or two and very little effort or hassle.

Ok, so there is a point to this little rant. The Net is not working here. Both broadband connections are phut, kaput, not functioning, and I am using a dial-up connection that could do the same at any time. Which makes me write frantically faster just to make sure that I get this over with before I get bumped off the line. Which means that I better stop right now or risk having to do this all over again!

Happy happy happy!

Today I turn a year older - but not much wiser - and have spent most of the day smiling, laughing, being happy. Calls, text messages and emails from friends from all over the world have made the day a joyous one, with the constant and loving presence of my small family making it, as always, that little bit extra-special. Chocolate has been the theme of the day (if there were more days like this one, I would be horizontal rather than vertical as a bodily presence!) and from cake to cookies to candy, the bon mot has been the semisweet brown stuff of which dreams can be made.

But today is also a good excuse not to write anything meaningful, beyond a happy burble, in this blog. After all, it is my birthday and I am allowed to be sort-of-incoherent, giggly and rather pleased with my life. Over the past year, freed from interruptions and disturbances, it has been good. No unnecessary incursions, no unbalancing presences, no unwanted invasions of my privacy, personality or psyche. And that, methinks, is the best present a girl can ask for, diamonds, chocolate and Jimmy Choo sandals best relegated to the back shelf of an already overloaded closet!

Happy day, all ye folks wherever thou may be!

View matrimony

(And another...)

Essentially, everyone is a closet Bridget Jones. That is what someone said to me recently. By this logic, all women – though I would prefer to say ‘most’, or even ‘many’ – see the ultimate destination for themselves to be the state of holy, happy matrimony. Which means happily ever after with someone who is as close to the man of their dreams as it has been possible for them to find. Add to that a balanced family of two children, one of each kind, a supportive set of relations by blood and marriage and a stable home with no landlord demanding rent increases, a stable bank account with no EMIs demanding instant payment and a stable professional set-up with no irascible bosses demanding unreasonable satisfaction and there you have it: nirvana for the woman of this world. Isn’t that what someone like Anita, in the hotly haute fiction release Marrying Anita by Anita Jain is trying to find? Or even the far younger Arshi, in You Are Here, from blogger-author Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, who, with all that youthful adventuring and postcoital musings, seems to want?

But – and this is always a big but – there is one big fly in this particular soup, especially for the modern urban woman. Even as she longs for marital bliss (in a manner of speaking, of course), and even though she will never tell Mother, who is lifetime-guaranteed to utter her favourite phrase of ‘I told you so’, she will only settle for the man she believes to be ‘right’. Ah, and there lies the nub. With our cited population statistics and the hoo-ha about sex selection being given such importance in, unexpectedly, upmarket areas of major metropolises like Mumbai, one question never gets a satisfactory answer: Where are all the men?

Like so many Indian women, I traveled the whole route when it came to the husband-hunting scenario. Ever since I turned legally eligible, or even perhaps before that, I was trotted out to various dos to be ‘met’ and to ‘meet’ the families of young men who satisfied all the mandates of becoming one half of the to-be ‘us’. I rarely came across the men themselves, since most were away studying to become green card holders or were waiting for that significant visa change in, usually, some small town in the United States. With typical Tam-Bram snobbery, nicely blended with Mills and Boon aspirations, I wanted more and never hesitated to announce that to my own family, often with the fallout echoing loud, clear and tearfully through a locked bathroom door. As I got older, of course, I got more assertive and, mercifully, less valuable in the marriage market and I finally got the space I wanted. Before that, I had to go through a number of sessions of desperately searching for something, anything, to say to fond mothers who stared piercingly at me and tsked about my academic ambitions and vaguely uneasy fathers who smiled tentatively at me and wondered what books I read.

Those were the days I wanted to find my own man, my dreams techni-coloured by romance novels, The Princess Bride and my own parents’ story. Today, much older and rather wiser, I find that men have not changed, except to slide a little lower on the evolutionary scale. They put out their charm, which never fails to put up my defenses, and the lines that they come up with have me on the verge of giggles at a moment when I should be smiling idiotically, starlight glimmering in my carefully shadowed eyes. Or else they are paranoid about maintaining their own privacy, never even telling you if they are married, never mind that they want to invade every aspect of your own – from the colour of your undies to the last time you were sexually active – all via sms, email or some other disembodied form of modern communication. And, what is really funny is that they have no idea what your own intentions (if indeed you have any beyond mere friendship) are, with regards to them!

Seriously speaking, being single, by choice or by fate, is not a pleasant route to travel in the real world. Not in this country, not in this context, not even in this metropolis we call modern, liberated and accepting. Not even if it is what you have chosen for yourself. Apart from public opinion, which can be fairly painful if you let it bother you, there is an overwhelming feeling of sadness when you contemplate the simple – and single most important – fact that when your door closes at night, you are alone, never mind the cat who shares your pillow. As the youngest in your family, it is inescapable, inevitable, that you are the only person left as everyone else slowly gets done with their lives. And then what happens? Do you keep yourself company in the mirror like an ageing movie star long after her sell-by date? Does someone from your vast and intimate circle of friends find you dead on the floor of your apartment days after you are gone, your body slowly rotting and reeking? It is a frightening prospect. One that makes it well worth the trouble to find a man (or woman, if you prefer) that you can spend the rest of your life with, thali strung around your neck and your vows to love, cherish and belong until the death or a new love do you part forever etched in your psyche.

Never say sari!

(Again, I cheat a little. This was published Sunday...)

I first wore my grandmother’s wedding sari when I was 15, to a wedding reception. The gold threads checked over the heavy emerald green silk glimmered under the bright lights and the almost-solid gold work on the red border was more brilliant than any jewellery worn that evening. It weighed me down to the point of exhaustion; the zari work on it was gorgeous, heavy, enduring. It was stored in my mother’s closet, cuddled in soft silk and gently scented with sandalwood. And when I took it out a few days ago to look at it, admire it, treasure it, I found that it had not aged well at all. The green of the body had faded to an unsightly patchy paleness and the gold had weighed down the fabric so that it was shredding and, in fact, tore wit a dreadful sound even as I lifted it delicately to check how badly it was damaged. Many self-recriminations and some tears later, I had to conclude that there was little that could be done to save it. But what could be done with it?

The saris my mother left behind will probably last some years longer, but the few that she inherited from her family need urgent attention, never mind that they have been babied and protected from bugs and the elements alike with more care than the family itself perhaps got. There are a number of small streetside shops in Kalbadevi who have a solution to this problem, one that many women today must face when they consider their own sartorial heritage. One that I have been to on occasion is run by a gentleman who is very careful with not just the garment, but also the feelings of those who bring it in to him. He sits on a soft cotton gadda in a small shop set into the wall of a building just across the way from the famous silver bazaar behind Mumba Devi temple, and hordes hundreds of rolls of silk strips in specially built drawers lining the space. And he shows off his treasures – this border came from a wedding sari from a royal family, he says, as he unrolls a dazzling length of gem-studded silk. And this, it shows a whole army – see, here are soldiers and elephants and even guns!

As he speaks, he evaluates the sari you have brought him. He is gentle, understanding that the piece is woven through with memories and some sadness. But see, the silk is shredding, so it is no use keeping that. But the border is still lovely; this is not real gold, it is silver that had been plated or washed – he holds a match to a single thread he pulls out of the zari. He weighs the sari, makes elaborate and mysterious calculations keeping the day’s gold and silver prices in mind, and then suggests a price. He will save the border for someone – and many come to buy, fashion designers, sari shops, people who want something special to use on their clothes, even foreigners who will add these touches of ‘exotica’ to their sofa cushions or curtains – not to long ago, Bloomingdales in New York had a sellout line of organza, crepe and tissue curtains edges with antique sari borders. Or else he will melt down the precious metal in unusable saris to form a small lump of silver, perhaps even gold, to be sold to jewelers in the same loop.

Many of these sari borders are the mainstay of small shops in Kalbadevi, Chor Bazaar and the various fabric markets in the city. Yusuf Sareewala runs one such store, which stocks thousands of borders typical of various cultures – from the old Parsi garas, Maharashtrian, Gujarati, South Indian, Orissa and so many other forms of weaving and embellishment. This is where many of the big-name designers find treasures that they use in their own work – Neeta Lulla and Manish Malhotra, for instance.

But a heritage sari does not always have to be cut up and reused or its border sold and used by someone else to create new fashion. Designers suggest keeping the vintage drape, but updating it with a more ‘today’ blouse - Gaurav Bhatia, for one, who with his wife Pratima works on creating exquisitely ornate garments, says, “We never encourage a wedding sari being cut up — that would almost be sacrilege! There are ways to drape it that will make it re-usable. And you can always give it a twist with unique blouses.”

A new blouse will not save my grandmother’s wedding sari. But maybe the gentle-man in Kalbadevi can help keep some of my heritage alive.

Exploring taste

Father calls me a sucker and always says that shopkeepers rejoice to see me coming, since they can sell me almost anything. While I have to admit that I do buy things that perhaps many would not, this is not arbitrary shopping. I do pick and choose from the array that I am shown and I generally know what I am getting, or what I want to try and do with what I take away with me. And, don't forget, in me are the genes of that redoubtable woman who bought everything from feminine hygiene products to cocoa powder to plastic brooms from women who came to our door selling these products, more because "Poor things, they looked as if they needed the money!" than because any of these purchases were required in our house. Mother passed these qualities - to call them 'virtues' would be perhaps inappropriate - on to me, her daughter, and though I do not entertain door-to-door salespeople, I am, admittedly, rather a sucker for a sob story. But, as I never fail to stress, especially to those who would make fun of my shopping habits, what I buy almost always is useful. And when they remind me about the kurta that melted in the wash, the pillow cases that never fit anything and the jam that was more synthetic than a nylon sari, I quickly change the subject. No, I am not looking furtive, let me assure you.

Today I spent some time at the market, going through what they had at one of my favourite stores. 'Favourite' because it stocks stuff that I have little use for and have rarely ever come across, mostly because it is all hardcore traditional South Indian, which is a genre that is unfamiliar, exotic and very interesting indeed. Like puttu mix, for one - I often joke that I like being half Malayali, but that is mainly for the food and the saris, I insist. Never having been to Kerala and not having eaten much of the region's cuisine - apart from standards like adai, avial and beef chilli fry - to me it seems like the land to explore, to enjoy. And the closest I can get is the food. But, as I always tell the man who serves customers at this particular shop in the heart of the South Indian enclave in the city, I cannot make it unless I know what it should be like in its authentic version. Puttu has been described to me as a kind of polenta, or a dirty grey goo that can be used to seal tiles in a bathroom, by different people, of course, but neither gives me an idea of what the stuff tastes like. So while I eye the packet of puttu powder carefully from a distance and wonder aloud to my friend at the store, I have never yet found the courage to buy it and try it. Anyway it takes a special contraption to cook it in, Father tells me.

There is so much more at just this shop that has caught my fancy. From string hoppers to stuff made with ragi (our equivalent of rye, I think), dried fry-ables to fresh sweets with a ghee-coconut aura, interesting little packets of powders and other perishables...I am slowly working my way through the stock. Today I got some puliinchi, a spicy pickle-like sauce that I have been wondering about for a few years now. What it will taste like will determine what I do with it. AT best, I can store it to use every now and then in various avatars; at worst, some friend who likes culinary exotica will inherit it.

And so the story goes with all that is new and acquired...

Bare necessities

It's funny how much you can pare down all those things you always thought were so vital to life and living it. When I decided to take a break from working full time, one of the main aspects of my life I wanted to focus on was to get completely well - my sugar levels tended to go ff kilter very easily, I was gaining weight for no discernible reason and my foot (one or the other, occasionally both) was giving more trouble than all my wonderful collection of shoes was worth. My doctor said most of it was stress related and somehow I had to agree, since I had more or less eliminated all the other factors involved and saw how on the days I did not go in to work, I felt so much better. So, after much thought and some agonising, I made up my mind, shocked a few friends and many who knew me only casually and walked out of a life that had become a painful routine and into one that is, in many ways, so much happier and healthier.

Not too long ago, a lot of people I know did not believe in stress as a genuine health unbalancer, if I may make up my own wonderful word. Today, almost everyone blames some part of their mental, physical or emotional disturbances on stress, taking occasional time out to fix the problem, instead of - like me - waiting until it gets to a point where it becomes a choice between going on or falling flat on your face. And it is so necessary to stop, think, sort things out and then go back to what you are doing, feeling newer and more improved than ever. In the process of doing this for myself, I have found that so much of what I once believed to be essential is actually trivia that can very easily be left behind without too much heartburn.

Like make-up, fancy clothes and jewellery, snob value shoes and bags and whatever else goes on you rather than into you. While I still love all that, I do not miss it beyond the very basic elements of the feel of luxe fabric, the beauty of an exclusive jewel or the exquisite vamp of a stiletto sandal. It is external, a kind of take it or leave it sort of situation that I can have fun with now that I do not feel constrained to be part of it. I know that when I do decide to go back to working full time outside my own home, I will go back into the cycle of putting on my face, choosing my clothes carefully and sliding into pretty heels before going out and about, but for now, casual pajamas, flip-flops and a clean and shiny face are fine by me, thank you!

But there is more to time out than these accessories. There is the attitude that matters. Even though you, like me, will always want to know what people you care about feel and think about you and your work and more, spending a little time thinking about what you really are and want makes you realise that realistic, honest, critical self-image is far more important than how others see you. Can you look at yourself in the mirror and approve, not from a vain and conceited perspective, but with truth and detatchment, and like what you see? Today, two months after I quit working, I do. I know that what I am may not be what I have always wanted to be, but it is a far more balanced, interesting and, most and best of all, happy soul that looks back at me.

Just for that, everything that I have given up for now is well worth it.

Well bread

(Ok, so I am being lazy. Again, a just-published piece...)

A long time ago, I decided I no longer wanted to eat packaged white bread. Perhaps it came after an encounter with the famed Wonder Bread, that marvel of American culinary engineering – a whole large loaf can easily be compressed into a think slice of not-too-dense dough, with lots of additives, preservatives and goodness knows what else added to give it the texture, taste and never-say-die character it has. And while the resilience and immortality of the stuff made it manna from bakery heaven for the average college student living in a dorm, it did not appeal to me. Then gradually exploring and learning my own city of Mumbai, I found lots of small family-run bakeries that produced bread that was, to say the least, interesting. Some of them I still drop in to sniff today, the fragrance of cinnamon and candied peel blending nicely with the aroma of fresh-rising dough and the hot metal of the pans the bread and cakes are baked in.

A few days ago I went to Yazdani, in a small lane behind Flora Fountain. My goal was their well-known seven-grain bread, something that has an ever-evolving taste and texture and, in its round-loaf form, looks astonishingly like a large cow pat. It is not seven-grain any more, the chap in charge told me, as I waited for my order to be packed up. It now has nine grains. And he proceeded to list them – dalia, sunflower seeds, ulsi, bajri, jowar….I lost count and may even have got some wrong. The bread also comes in smaller buns and regular sliced loaves and is lauded even by the nutritionists at Bombay Hospital, my friend told me proudly. It tastes best fresh and toasted crisp around the edges, with lashings of salted butter melting into its grain – all nine of them.

Comparable but about twice the cost is the multi-grain ‘jumbo’ bread at the delicatessen at the Oberoi hotel (now the Trident?). It is enormous and sliced not too thin, ideal for a sandwich with the fairly mild flavours of celery-spiked chicken salad or just cream cheese and a few leaves. It has a solid bite, with a nutty chuck as punctuation, refrigerates well and makes good French toast when it gets older. There is a more-ish-ness to it and, I am told, the fibre content and the proteins from the various seeds and grains making it as healthy as it is delicious.

The multi-grain loaf at Banyan Tree in Worli is dark and earthy. While most of the grains – at least the seeds – seem to be on the outside and tend to fall off when you slice through the uncut loaf, it tastes of good health and freshness, with an odd oiliness to the outside which makes for nicely crunchy toast. Eaten with unsalted butter, it is perfect, but made into a sandwich with gentle flavoured fillings, it makes you look forward to lunch.

A number of bakeries big and small are now producing wonderful multi-grain breads. The shop at the Orchid does it pretty well, while chains like Bread Talk and Oven Fresh are not bad. It is not difficult to make at home either, easiest by just adding various whole or cracked grains and seeds to the basic whole wheat bread mix. And it is a delicious way to keep your body – and your conscience – in great shape!


Great fillings for multi-grain bread:
Smoked salmon
Chicken salad with mild mustard and chopped celery
Cream cheese
Unsalted butter with a tangy mango chutney
A slice of grilled tofu with a little balsamic vinegar

Science and smuggling

(Sometimes you just like how a story you wrote for a newspaper turns out. Like this one. With all the hype and hullaballoo about the new machine at CERN and figuring out how the universe was created, people seem to have forgotten the human aspect, the gentle joys and laughter that went into the process. These are some of my memories of a time when life was simpler and softer...)

Arriving in a suburb of Geneva on Mayday was a kind of foretaste of what was to come for us in the time that we lived in the city. Everything was closed as tight as only the Swiss could do it, except for a tiny branch of a chain department store, where we found a couple of cans of petit pois and the last crusty loaf of bread that we grabbed from under the outstretched hand of a browsing housewife. We had just landed in the city – in the country, in fact – that was to be home to us for a while on a total holiday and had no idea what to find where and how, but we went about looking for it anyway, undaunted. Father was doing a stint at CERN, working on the cross-border SPS (the Super Proton Synchrotron) – the hot haute machine at the time – and we soon learned what life as a CERN family was all about.

Enmeshed in a gently strict but intense Baccalaureate programme at the local international school, I had little time to absorb or even understand that ethos of belonging to the scientific community, but various terms soon entered my vocabulary. SPS, of course, was one, the ring-shaped facility where Father did experiments studying the quark-gluon plasma and various other nuclear physics delights. The instant high level of respect we got in contrast to the way gastarbeiters or immigrants were treated was another. What was more fascinating to watch from a youngster’s perspective was the family’s varied biorhythms. Father was often asleep when I left for school or had gone out to work long before dawn cracked, since the tests were done around the clock and the team worked on a shift system. He told us stories of the people he worked with, like the Portuguese who admired a pretty girl’s behind with typical physicist jargon: “What an oscillator!”

Every now and then he had a full day off and we would all go grocery shopping. Meat in France was far better than that available in Switzerland; there was also Evian to be bought in carton-loads, since the water in Geneva ran right off the Saleve, limestone and all, and was hideous to drink, and then there were the wonderful potato chips that only the vast store just across the border had… Going through customs was a cinch for us. The car had a small round sticker on it that identified it was belonging to a CERN-ite and we waved and smiled as the bar lifted and allowed us to coast through from one country to the other. Perhaps the only time that the customs stopped us was when we were smuggling meat on one of our trips – it was rationed then, to half a kilo per adult, and we had about three kilos in the boot. But no, no danger, they waved us through after admiring Mum’s sari. The sticker was essential for Father, since he worked in France but lived in Switzerland and had to navigate the Duane many times a day in a long tunnel that was a special entrance to the research centre. It was almost Bond-ish, or even something out of Le Carre, with hidden eyes watching every move and monitoring each trip.

The SPS, which now feeds the brand new LHC (Large Hadron Collider) for the just-started experiment to recreate the Big Bang, was also where I did the main experiment for my biology lab for the Bacc. A few select mung beans were put into the ring and subjected to high-level magnetism, after which the beleagured seeds were coaxed to grow – which they did, dutifully pointing in the direction I had said they would when influenced neo-germinally by magnetic forces. I got a decent grade for it, too. And as he took me for a little permitted tour into the facility so I could see just where my seeds would be placed, Father explained how the new and hugely larger ring would be built, deep under the place we called home a long time ago.

Into the past

I had lunch with an old friend yesterday, someone I had not seen in ages, but have always been in touch with. As we sipped cold water, munched pizza and pushed our hair, blowing in the sea breeze, off our foreheads, we laughed and talked and generally caught up with each other. IT was a fun time, one that we promised each other we would repeat, and as we parted, smelling gently of fresh air and a little garlic, it was with a smile, a hug and a knowledge that we were on the same wavelength. Even though we had known each other for a long time, this was the first time we met on a 'social' basis, apart from long chats over the phone and the occasional meeting on the stairs of the office building or at her desk to which I would bounce to say a cheery hello, usually en route to somewhere else.

But there was another person at the lunch table, too, someone I had known a long time ago and not met since. She was in closer touch with this person, and knew more about what had happened to all of us in the interim. He was a journalist at one point in time, and we worked at the same newspaper for a short while before our paths diverged, travelling routes fairly distant from each other, I would say. He had the same wild hair, the same smiling look in his eyes and the same laid back way of sitting, talking and reacting, as well as the same way of staring penetratingly at me (and her, I presume), as if to try and figure out what I was about after all these years. He is now a scriptwriter for television and is doing very well for himself, my friend told me, and seemingly happy with his life.

Well, perhaps our lives have not diverged that drastically. I also write for a living, more or less, and have a great deal of fun doing it. I think the difference is, apart from my being female and from a different kind of life in many ways, that I do not care as much for what I do. What matters to me, I think, is why I do it and how I feel in doing it, whatever 'it' may be. To me it is more important to be happy, satisfied and changing something in your life for the better, than the paycheck at the end of the assignment or even the name on the article. Does that make sense?

But what I found, in talking with my friend and our companion, was that I do not seem to be very ambitious. I do not want to write a film script or make a television show that is new and different. I do not want to be part of creating a newspaper that is well presented and edited and read - I just got out of that, remember! What I do want to do is enjoy whatever it is I am doing, with the end result, apart from the nice fat check, of course, being a sense of achievement, a sense of pride in having done something worthwhile, a sense of making people who see my work think of me with a certain feeling of joy. And whether it means writing a book or writing fortunes for cookies or even writing a brochure for a lipstick line, that is why I like doing what I do. Because, for me, it all happens.

A little left over

It’s funny how things end up. I had a fridge full of leftovers only this morning and now much of it has been transformed into just a few dishes full of deliciousness. And I do not speak as a conceited cook, but a very practical housekeeper. Since I hate wasting anything, I threw some of that spicy green chutney I got with the kebab takeway into a dressing for a potato salad, chopped the last couple of kebabs themselves into a sort-of-kind-of-maybe version of the famous Delhi speciality, butter chicken and introduced the little bit of potato sabji to the mouth-tinglingly chilli-spotted spinach and corn that lurked in the far corner of the bottom shelf next to the end of the banana bread. Which could probably go into a fruit-filled trifle that we could slurp up with ice cream, don’t you think?

My existence tends to be full of leftovers, of which only the edibles are saved; the rest goes into the trash. For years I have been able to get rid of the unusable bits and pieces that almost always make up a life. Photographs, emails, gifts, even memories are binned as soon as the person involved has made his or her exit from my small world. And while I do not really have any bitterness or even any feeling attached to those relics, I do occasionally pull the time shared out of my mental closet and check to see if those too can be thrown away. If they have some flavour left that will not give me the burps, they are packed carefully back into the box that they were stored in and shoved into the deep dark corners of my mind, where they rightly belong.

What bothers me, however, and prevents the cleaning and storage process of all these experiences is if part of it is left incomplete. Sort of like a box of peanuts all ready for grinding which never makes it to peanut butter. Or a pair of jeans that does not fit right any more, but will still be saved for that time of ‘just in case’ which, of course, never arrives. I hate people vanishing without explanation, however offensive and unwarranted the probable cause may be. I hate the explanations that always begin with “I don’t know why…” and end with “It’s not you, it’s me.” What is worse is a self-pitying, self-righteous silence and inaccessibility. And I hate knowing that all this will bug me, no matter that I know full well that I wanted to get out of something long before it ever ended and just never figured out how to close the book when there were still many chapters to read through. This works with jobs, with relationships, with book contracts, with any kind of agreement.

I wish life was like refrigerated leftovers. Then each phase of it would come to a logical conclusion, to be gently melded into something else that is far more useful or thrown away because it smells a little odd and leers at you when you peer into its container.

ATM blues

I am often teased for being occasionally inept with ATMs. When I worked in town, there was an ATM on the ground floor of the heritage building in which the newspaper office was based. It was all a fairly new concept at the time and many people, not just me, had problems with it. I could manage most of the time, but occasionally failed to get the door open - it had to be swiped with the ATM card and almost always stuck. Of course, that started it. I would surely bog up the ATM, people said, rather nastily I thought. And my reputation as such survived.

But, compared to a lot of people, my record with ATM machines is pretty clean. I left my card in one only once and that was an emergency situation, where I had to deal with a crisis at work after a sudden phone call that pulled me away from the machine when I was just done taking out money. Of course, the bank charged me for a new card, but also upgraded me and never had me pay for that. Which all worked out for the best in the end. And ever since I remember, I have been using one of these facilities for everything from depositing money to taking it out, transferring it across accounts and making sure that all transactions were as they should have been.

So why am I moaning about these things if they work fine for me? Simple because the ATM I went to today misbehaved. I did everything it told me to, from feed in my card and then my password number, to specifying what service I wanted to access and whether it was indeed me. Short of giving the powers-that-be a retinal scan and DNA sample, I did it all right. But then it spat the card back out at me and said the machine was not working. At which point I stormed out of there and stomped away, saying some very rude words to myself.

Of course, the annoyance had a deeper root than the obvious. I knew the teasing, which had faded into almost non-existence after so many years of doing well with ATM machines and cards, would make a comeback that would have anyone sizzling a bit at the gills. And thus is is indeed.

Size doesn't matter

(Who says you need to be working with a newspaper to write for it? I wrote this for the paper I was with before I decided to go on sabbatical, and it was published a little while ago. I was going to delete it, but then I kinda liked it...)

For an audience, Indian art tends to have no format. It is truly free expression, with so many styles and formats that the average critic would be hard-pressed to find words to describe it, briefly and completely. From traditional realistic art to the more modern abstract works of today, from the tiny miniature paintings of the north to the massive installations of contemporary artists, there has been no real unifying thread and no particular trend that can be easily identified. However, with the growing international popularity of new Indian art and ever-increasing exposure to global ideas, many artists in this country have been experimenting with scale, line, form and, of course, style.

And with the growing need to explore and a new freedom that comes from spiraling market prices and a surety of finding a buyer, comes a new way of thinking: BIG. There is space to dream and an awareness that somewhere someone will want to acquire the work, and artists spread themselves, fairly thick on the ground. Consider Jitish Kallat, for one, whose works are self-confessedly ‘monumental. A few months ago he revealed Aquasaurus, a seven-metre-long water tanker made of the same kind of bones that he used for his Autosaurus. It was awe-inspiring in its scale, living up to Kallat’s reputation for enormous works (Artist Making a Local Call, Public Notice II, 365 Lives) created with contemporary issues, social comment and a dash of humour in the thought process behind it. The viewer has options – to try and find perspective from outside the piece, or to stand within it and explore its various aspects.

There have been many others, old and new. Many years ago, MF Husain painted his cavorting horses for a wall of a research institute in Mumbai. Ravinder Reddy’s big-eyed heads take up plenty of room in various corporate houses, while Navjot Altaf’s very large flame-orange sculptures can displace a good-sized truck. Pakistan-based Rashid Rana, who showed at Chemould Prescott Road some months ago, covered huge expanses with his digital print composites – Offshore Accounts, for instance, spread across two walls, angled together. Reena Saini’s Walls of the Womb at Galerie Mirchandani & Steinreucke occupied an entire room, the work spanning the walls, the floor and a verriere.

But even with this immense scale of creative inspiration, artists do rein themselves in, committing to another set of boundaries that, in their own way, test their skills. Ironically, many of those who now need whole galleries to show off their creative talents, have – and still do, on occasion – limited themselves to more practicable spaces. For instance, Kallat has taken part in the Miniature Format Show (Sans Tache gallery), as have many others. From one extreme to another?

Loud and clear

I walked down to the grocery store this morning and noticed that the local Ganpati pandals are getting simpler in external design. There were two of them that I passed, one at the end of a cul-de-sac leading to the neighbourhood garden and the other at the entrance of the shopping complex through which I needed to walk to get to the store I was headed for. Where every year I have seen the path to these little enclosures within which the Elephant god sits for a few days all decorated with buntings and elaborate light arrangements, this time it seemed strangely bare, with bamboo scaffolding, a few advertising banners and some coloured lights. The deity is nice closed off to the public gaze, swathed in curtains and draperies, the entrance concealed behind very heavy fabric. The organisers used to charge for entry, but now I think that is not allowed by law, but who knows what scams people come up with to make money!

But the most annoying thing about these pandals, apart from the traffic around them and the crowds hanging about, is the noise that they make. The large enclosure in the cul-de-sac was oddly quiet - maybe the festivities happened only in the evening, who knows. The one near the plaza was blaring devotional songs with a very filmi flavour, at top volume. The music was not bad, not overly nasty or tacky, but the noise level was all that and more. As I walked past, trying to peek into the curtained space to see what the fuss was all about, I had to plug my ears or else cringe and feel assaulted by the sound. As I was anyway.

Making all that noise as a sign of devotion is peculiarly Indian. Where many rituals from all over the world use music and loud chanting and even yelling to bring worshippers closer to thee, oh Lord, it is perhaps only here that we channel the populist vote and grab attention, eyeballs and eardrums with speakers blaring and no one especially concerned about issues like noise pollution and deafness. Perhaps in this country of so many billion people, all needing divine intervention, we need to make a lot of noise to be 'seen', who knows!

Say a little prayer...

...for me, for you, for the world. Today is Ganesh Chaturthi, one of the most looked-forward-to days in the Hindu calendar. At least, in my part of the world - Maharashtra, where I was born, where I live and where I am rooted, and the south of India, where my heritage lies. We, as a people, believe in the Elephant God as the destroyer of evil, the benefactor of the good and the protector of the innocent. He blesses every new adventure and watches over every old venture. And He appeals to everyone, with His pot belly and His good cheer, His generosity and His childlike humour, His wisdom and His sagacity. His special day is about prayer and food, with all His favourites being dished up at the altar before being eaten by those who worship Him.

For me, Ganpati, Ganesha, Gajanana, whatever name He may have, is all about new beginnings. While I am not a woman of any great faith in any particular deity, I do believe in a higher power, and Ganpati is a good way to visualise him, being round and happy and yet very, very wise. What He advised works well: Leave the old behind, the bitterness, the anger, the hurt and the pain, and move forward into a new day, a new feeling of anticipation, a new start of a brand new adventure. Trust what you are being given, be it love or friendship, feelings or freedom, and go forward with bright eyes, a light heart and a happy state of existence. That is the lesson that we were taught in our school texts and that is the same lesson that the so-called gurus of the modern urban world are teaching us now. Instead of looking to them for direction, look within, I was always told, and you will know what to do, when to do it, how to do it and with whom to do it.

I think for me the 'whom' has always been most important. Because that is the only part that I cannot keep a firm eye on. Who knows who comes into your life and what role they play, until they are actually there, playing it! I find that those who really matter are those who stay with you, no matter what happens to them and to you. And when you discover one of those special people, reach out, hold on to them and treasure them, like a very wise woman I knew told me. If you are willing to let something or someone go without too much of a fight, that thing or person was not too important anyway; they do not matter as much as you believed.

I have found very few people like that in my life. One or two have always been with me, but I never knew them until very recently. And now that I know which is dross and which pure gold, I know which I should, as my friend said, treasure. It is one of the lessons you learn from Ganpati, too, the God of all things bright and beautiful, big and small, wise and wonderful. After all, as the holy book said, "The Lord God made them all".

To write or not?

When people find out I am taking time off from a full time job, they suggest - almost all of them - that I should write a book. So many of my friends and contemporaries have been doing just that for years now and I think they are very brave. As for me, a book is a brilliant idea, but for some reason I have never wanted to write one. It is just not my thing, as I keep telling these people. When would I have the time - now, I am told, now that I do not have to go through the routine of getting set to go out every morning and coming back late every evening, with no energy, even if I had the inspiration, to do more than just wiggle my fingers at Small Cat and wonder if I can stay awake long enough to see at least the start of CSI.

Ok, so I have the time these days. Do I have the inspiration? Well, I could come up with some. May even be fun. I could write about my own life, which I don't find especially unusual or interesting, but could make the stuff of great novels, in parts, sort of like the egg of the curate who, if you ask me, was a rather bad cook - or had one, I don't know which. I could put bits of it, nicely embroidered, into a steamy romance novel, with the hero a tall, dark, handsome and, very unlike reality, intelligent man who satisfies the wish list of any sane woman. But then why would he be single, right? If he was, he would be embittered and nasty, a commitment-phobe, gay, or just plain untenable in some way, be it via bad breath or bad karma. On the other hand, steering far away from my private life, I could write a travel-food book. How I Ate My Way Through Europe, or Eating With Your Fingers In America, or even Cooking In A Campus Apartment.

But today people want to read books that are deep, exploring the psyche and existentialist sensibilities of people. Very few choose - or admit they do - stuff that is fun, that doesn't do more than talk about scenarios with a few corpses, a kiss or two, some chasing through the dark streets of a big city and a couple of dragons, some magic and a love story, all included in the complicated and hilarious plot. That would be my kind of book, one that laughs at itself as much as it makes its readers laugh. One that has something serious to say, but not in any way that is serious or sledgehammer-ish or preachy or even dire. Few people read for the fun of seeing words jump through hoops, to find a new way of saying something old, to explore just what can be said when it is, in any obvious way, unsaid.

Be all that as it may, why don't I write a book? Because, frankly, I don't think I can. It takes a mind that is not trained to edit, to express what needs to be said. When you are more used to cleaning up other people's writing in a newspaper, a magazine, a website, a script or even a book, you see too much, you analyse too much, you dig too deep to just be able to say something simply and easily. You are always correcting yourself and finding hidden meaning in what you write, so you cannot just appreciate the beauty of language without making a special effort to do so by dissociating from your work. Which makes writing a chore, hard work, something that needs attention and some degree of pain. Which makes it no fun, no joy. Which makes it a no-no for me.

Back to the future

It's funny how small things remind you of things you did, wanted to do, or should have done. I was talking to an old friend this morning and he told me that I should make contact with someone who had floated briefly through my life. He saw this former acquaintance recently, but did not speak to him, and wondered why I had cut him out of my life so totally. We had been fairly good friends, he reminded me, with so much in common, so why not just make the first move and get back in touch?

But there are things in life that are just impossible. Once your ego is hurt, once your feelings are hurt, once your physical self is hurt, there is no going back to something that was or was becoming or even might have been. But it is very difficult to explain this one. I did meet someone I liked, someone I may have wanted to know for a long time. we had many common interests, from photography to art to food to writing to travel to people, to asking questions, to.... But, as I got to know him better, I started discovering that I really did not want to know him better. He had a strangely narrow view of life and its denizens and could not see beyond his own point of view. Few other people mattered and he stayed the centre of his own universe. We are all selfish in our own way, but perhaps this was my 'fault' - I wanted more if I wanted involvement. And if I didn't get it, well, I would try to make it work, if it didn't, I would find out what the deal was and if that didn't work for me, then it would not matter any more. I made that resolve many years ago and, this time, I even kept it!

I kept it without any qualms, no regrets and only one fleeting thought: that it could have been great fun. And, as I told my friend who said I should make the move, I am always open to friendships and knowing people, maybe even developing a relationship, whatever it may be. It is exciting, a whole new adventure each time. But if I have to work harder than I can and am willing to, if I have to give up what is important and meaningful to me, and I have to become someone I am not, I cannot do it. No fun, no point. Even though life is not all about fun, it also is about meaning and stimulation and caring and sharing. It cannot be one-way, it cannot be on any one person's terms, it cannot be compromise. Not for me, at least.

Doing? Not much!

Yesterday I dropped by the newspaper office where I worked until fairly recently and found that a lot of people who vowed that they would quit are very much still there and working as hard as ever, as unhappily as ever. They all came to chat and try and find out what I was doing these days and they all got the same answer - nothing much, just taking time off. Whenever I say that, people listen, smile and get that expression when they are thinking 'Oh, yeah, she just doesn't want to tell us!'

But I would tell, really, if I had anything to tell. For now, I am writing and cooking and cleaning and reading and generally finding my feet after over-doing it for too long. Maybe this is what the whole process of 'finding myself' is all about. I have not gone off to the Himalayas to meditate and smoke strange weeds and have not become a hippie or even chosen to live in a village doing good deeds, but I am in a tentative state of discovery, of learning what I want to do and, more importantly, why I want to do 'it', whatever 'it' may be, and not anything else. There is, as I was just telling a close friend, no hurry, no sense of desperation to get something done, to pelase someone, to fit in, to change to suit someone or some situation. At least, if I don't want to, I will not, except for family. Which is the ideal state of existence, don't you think?

But this, I know well, is utopia. And utopia never lasts too long. I know one day, not too long from now, I will be back at work, slaving over a hot keyboard, trying to get something done in too short a time and at too intense a pace. It was what made me what and who I am and it is what I need almost to sustain that self that I have become. But until then, I enjoy every moment of being me...and the journey of finding out just who that is.

Stored in the past

By the way, just for the record, I hate dusting.

That said, I was wandering about town yesterday, with not much to do and plenty of time to do it in. So I drifted into a couple of my favourite stores, looking for something, but looking at everything. I didn't find what I wanted, but found a lot more that was interesting, if I had been looking for it, or even looking to acquire it. Undaunted, I went further, walking down the uneven pavement and exacerbating the pain of a hurt foot, but pleased with the fact that I was out in the fresh (as it may be) air, with no deadlines breathing down my neck and no mobile phone ringing, no text messages coming in and no place to be except where I wanted to be. Being in that Mumbai state of mind, I walked into the age-old Khadi Bhandar on DN Road, still looking for what I had been looking for and not especially hopeful that I would find it, but in the onward-ho mood nevertheless.

The first thing that struck me was the beautiful light. You find it only in places where the building is old and cracking, the sun shining through dirty windows battles the fluorescent light from dingy bulbs, where the lovely old tiled floor is overlaid with peeling linoleum and dust sparkles in the drafts like thousands of tiny diamonds. In fact, it was the dust that grabbed my attention - and my sinuses - as I trotted about the vast store, manned by very sleepy staff and mired in a bog of outdated systems and typically Indian-government-style lethargy. While I didn't find what I was looking for - and still am - I did find some other treasures, from hand-milled soap to fresh honey, gorgeous handloom silks and beautifully printed fine cotton. But all of it was dreary, depressed, from the people behind the counters to the way in which the goods were stacked and displayed. A huge pity, since there is so much that can be done to make what is essentially part of our valuable heritage into quality retail at not very high prices.

In contrast, the Bombay Store (I noticed that the local fanatics who insist that our city should be linguistically at least nativised have spared this place) has learned its sales lessons well. The old, dusty, musty, fusty institution that was once Bombay Swadeshi Stores is now upmarket, smart, globally self-conscious and very very with it. It displays Indian-made clothes, jewellery, furniture, leather and handicrafts of every function for the home and person in a user-friendly, hip, happening and buyable way. The attendants - in spite of their often rather shaky English - are quick and helpful, using training and charm to wangle sales. The customers are tourists, locals and expatriates alike, and there are plenty of them. And though the price tags are a little higher than at the government-run store, they are deserved for the service and presentation - which makes all the difference, when you think about it.

This country is a fabulous one, one that I am proud to belong to, with all its flaws and foibles. But I wish the powers that be would take their responsibilities more seriously. Khadi Bhandar, for instance, is part of our heritage and can be used so effectively and proudly to show off what this country and its people can create. Why not channel some of that pride in 'Incredible India' into making it more a store of today than one that is mired in the dust of the ages? I would be proud to shop there then...once I stopped sneezing, that is!