Toil and turmoil

The world is in a rum state these days. Lots of upheavals and messes and imbroglios that don't show any signs of being sorted out. Many of these are made worse by the media in this vast and wonderful country of ours, with the Indian penchant for melodrama overtaking good reportage and any standards of programming that may have been part of the world of news at any time. The todo they made over the Arushi Talwar murder case was incredibly tacky and insensitive. The fuss they have been making about the badly handled matter of Kenneth Haywood and his exit from India is execrable, the same footage looping endlessly while the commentators talk on with amazing banality at the whole incident. The Niketa Mehta abortion story got its spice from TV audiences and reporters pushing microphones into the faces of the parents-to-be, the doctors involved and - I am sure if it had been at all possible - the fetus long before it was born. And the Amarnath land issue would not, I am firmly convinced, be as nasty as it seems to be if the media had not blown it up beyond actual fact.

But then television in India is like that only, as they say. They present the facts somewhere inside the thick layer of masala that coats them, pushing the proverbial envelope so far that it drops off the horizon of reality and becomes the staged drama of a reality show instead. Is that the fault of the media or the people who give it so much importance? Sometimes I really wonder.

Winner takes all

Everyone knows that Abhinav Bindra is a winner. He showed it by bringing home the gold medal that he won for shooting a perfect score in Beijing. But he showed in perhaps even more in his mien - that cold, unflappable, focussed way of responding to everything, be it the actual moment of winning or the stupid questions that the media (especially the Indian TV channels) flung at him or his meetings with the political biggies in this country, from the President and Prime Minister to the various functionaries whose attentions he has been subjected to.

Mnay say that the reason he won and, more importantly, the reason he was able to develop that winning ambition was the financial support he had without really asking for it. His father, a fairly successful businessman, was able to give him everything he needed to reach his goal, from his own shooting range at home to specialised training abroad when he needed it. He had a psychologist, a trainer, even what could be called a life coach, someone who helped him develop a certain blinkeredness in achieving that winning personality, literally. Bindra's own psyche allowed that distance and coolness to mature, no matter that he seems to have parents who are exuberant and far more outgoing than he himself is. Maybe he is shy, reserved, preferring to save that bubble and brightness for a very select circle that he chooses to know.

That same selectiveness labels many as snobs. Maybe most people have seen Bindra as a snob too. But does that matter? After all, snob or not, he is a winner!

Ships in the night

Last year was a rather varied one. I lost one potential friend and found another who had never been lost. I think it was more than fair exchange, since the one I lost wasn't worth keeping and the one I found again has been part of my world for so long that it was not complete without it. I also discovered many hidden strengths in many people, especially in myself - loss did not matter as much as I thought it would and not at all (except ego-wise) as compared to the stunning impact of previous losses. And new discoveries were indeed worth all the anticipation, all the imagination, even all the irritation that had gone into finding what should have been there all the while.

Somewhere along the way on this journey, I made new friends, too, in people I never expected to know. Artists who still keep in touch, never mind that I do not publicise their work. Gallery owners who make sure that I know what is happening in the spaces they manage, even if I am not interested in writing about the works displayed there. Fashion designers who tell me excitedly about new lines they are creating, without ever thinking that I could or would buy them. Fun stuff, great stuff, the stuff of future novels almost!

Like the work of a gentleman with a Bengali name, but based in Gujarat: Amar Dutta. I have two of his designs, both kurtas. One is a deep purple, long, with the most exquisite embroidery in the tiniest and neatest stitches ever - you could not tell the back from the front. The other is a creamy white, in cutwork silk, with extravagant sleeves, a touch of silver sparking the neckline. except that he seems to cater to very tall and slim women with no hips, his work is well worth acquiring, no matter the fairly high price tag attached.

I also added Bela Parekh to my wardrobe. Also not cheap, but worth the effort. The top I liked most is a swingy, cap sleeved little thing, which could be worn as a mini if I still had the legs for it. It is in lovely red teamed with a rather odd brown-grey that soumds unappetising but is actually very elegant.

The most appealing aspect of both these designers' work is that there is a very strong ethnic element to it, apart from the functionality of kurta-hood. They have used traditional craft techniques that are not often found in modern western garments that almost everyone wears these days, and that touch of mirrorwork or block-print or applique or threadwork is what makes it happen for me. When I shop for clothes - and most other fabric stuff - that is exactly what I am looking for. It becomes an identity statement, an affirmation of who I am and where I come from. Which is the secret to being sure of who you are and why you exist. I know. I doubt the people I don't know any more know!

Changing times

Well, it's kinda like this: I once wrote a blog with monotonous regularity and made sure that it was updated every day, rain, shine or life's little dramas. Then my workload at the paper I just quit increased and inspiration levels sank, which made the updates a whenever-possible affair. And now that I am home for a while, I decided it was time to restart what I had let go. Even if nobody reads this, it is a way to communicate whatever I want to say, when I want to say it.

And this time there is a slight difference. Where I once crafted my writing rather more carefully and made sure that it was spell checked and evenly punctuated and all that good stuff, now I am doing it directly online, which is a greater challenge. You make more mistakes if you are just bashing away, with the occasional feline walking nonchalantly over your keyboard or the mobile bings in a message just when you are stuck for things to say, which sends your spellings and your memory of what you had been saying far into the blue yonder...see now, I forgot what I was saying!

And all that apart, I no longer have to hear suggestions from anyone about what I should write and how. Nobody who is doing nothing with their lives that is of any use or joy to anyone else can tell me what to do and say, which many have tried, trust me, and not exactly succeeded. And whether I want to talk about people I used to know, people not worth knowing or people who should be part of my 'I-know' circle is my business. Yeah, sore point there. I dislike wofflers and cowards and anyone who does nothing to get what they want but talk endlessly about anything, no matter that the listeners are bored and being polite in at least pretending to listen! Another sore point. But leave those behind and get with it, right?

I am very getting with it these days. And loving it. The first thing I did when I was finally out of my job was to update the various address books I have. All extra numbers were deleted from my mobile and those zillions of scraps of paper with numbers scribbled on them were carefully checked for what I wanted to keep, the numbers transcribed into a stout diary and the fragments tossed. I found many people who were, effectively, ships that passed through my life and out for ever, some with a mild feeling of regret, many with a sense of relief. One or two I will talk about tomorrow. For now, I plan to take my sabbatical seriously and take a nap!

Back in business

For a while now, i have been thinking that I need to get back to writing this blog on a regular basis. I took off from a full-time job exactly a month ago and today seems the perfect day to celebrate - India's 61st Independence Day and a sign of my own freedom from a rather stultifying work routine. But, as Father always points out, there has been no break from working, not yet. I am at his computer every day, bashing out an article or trying to get past that dreadful feeling of not knowing what to write and how to get about writing it, since there is a deadline and an editor breathing heavily and passionately (though not affectionately) down your email link and occasionally sending you a nasty SMS to ask just when in heck you plan to deliver your copy.
Sigh. And I thought I was done with all that!
Quitting a job is not easy. Rationalising your need to get the paycheck isn't either. It was great to work at something you had no interest in, grouch madly at home that you really didn't want to work at that job and take home the money at the end of every month. It assuaged the conscience and made spending a taken-for-granted matter. Now, since there is no paycheck coming in regularly, and I am not really looking at one for a while yet (it does not seem to be looking at me either at close range), I get attacks of guilt if I long for a lipstick, a pair of shoes or a new diamond, but those are blended with a little voice with a chuckle in it that says hey, you don't have to wear shoes and put on your makeup and your jewellery and go out, you can swan around in your pajamas all day and feel happily fat and smug about being free.
Am I free, is something I ask myself at least once a day. I can plan my own day the way I want to, but I am also tied down by the routines of the maid, the driver, the various people who traipse in and out, Father's work, Small Cat's whims and fancies and the television I want to watch. And then there are the people who want work done, when they want it done, not when I want to do it. Yeah, at some level this is the life I asked for and managed to get for myself. But is it what I want to do long term? That is something I need to get working on now....

Taking that final step

It’s not easy. In fact, it can be quite frightening. For months I have been saying I want to do it, but now that I finally have, I am feeling rather woffly and unsure about having done it. This does not mean I am going to undo it, not even that there is any remote possibility that I am considering undoing it, but I cannot help being a little wobbly, almost like a downy little kitten taking its first tentative steps away from its mother’s warmth.

Actually, when you just read that wonderful piece of verbiage, you will find that it says very little except that I have just done something I am not sure I should have done. But I have done it anyway and will not be undoing it. Ergo, it needs to be considered to be irretrievably done and not undoable, not under any circumstances.

ANY? Well….maybe there is a tiny circumstance or two I would undo it under, perhaps if I was given the freedom to do what I am planning to do now that I have done the thing that I cannot undo. But since that is never going to be possible, I need to just grit my teeth and get on with the thing that I have been wanting to do, once I had the freedom to do it, that is, which is the whole reason for doing what I have done that I cannot, will not undo.

Whew.

I got the same feeling about two years ago, when I had my hair done. I had it cut short and, much to my own consternation, coloured it a wonderfully deep and dangerous purple. It was lovely. I was pampered and preened and primped and polished for hours and hours by my hair-expert and her crew, and I sat there falling gently asleep even as successions of nasty-smelling stuff were slathered all over my scalp, washed off and replaced with more. At the end of it, strangely exhausted, I tottered out of the salon, feeling more fragile than I had any right to be, but also feeling wonderful, with hair that glowed an almost iridescent violet in the direct sunlight. That this colour did not last was a given that I should have taken but didn’t remember to. I slowly went from deep purple to cherry scarlet to a cheap-bleached orange. And then, for the first ever time in my life, actually coloured by hair to go back to my natural, normal dark black.

Well, the story is just an analogy. My hair does not come into my undoable decision at all, except that I may now have the time to get it done again, though not the same kind of colour-adventure. You see, what I have done, which I am nervous about but will not undo, is to quit. Yes, you read right. QUIT. My Job. I gave in my one-line resignation letter a couple of weeks ago and have another couple of weeks to go before I walk out of here in, I hope, a little glory, if not an entire blaze of it. Where I am going to and what I am going to do remain between me and my mind (and, of course, Father and Small Cat if she has been listening in), but I have all my fingers and toes crossed that I will do it, and do it in a way that makes me and mine proud to be me and mine.

I will miss this place, especially the irascible boss and the people I work with, never mind their idiosyncracies and my own. But life is all about moving on finding new treasures, learning new routes and enjoying new adventures. This is my turn to do just that….

Brown and beautiful

I was in a store in South Mumbai this morning that almost epitomised heaven for me. ‘Almost’, because I was fast developing a headache due to a combination of stress, not enough sleep (Small Cat has decided to hold early morning sessions of high opera just to liven up the proceedings when she is awake and the rest of the house is not) and an unexpected in weather from very hot and muggy to cool and wet to very hot and muggy again this morning. That notwithstanding, I was in a place that could conceivably called heaven, even for those who do not have the same tastes as I do.

The place is called Theobroma and it is located at the end of Colaba Causeway, once one of the most popular shopping destinations in the city. It stretches from Regal Cinema on one end, to Kailash Parbat on the other and runs parallel to the waterline that you can walk along in front (or behind, since it is said that the building is actually the wrong way around) of the Taj Mahal hotel. I had heard about it a while before I actually found it on my personal map, and am glad it took that long, since it would have meant a few more inches to that rapidly expanding waistline rather before I was ready for it to happen.

This morning I stopped the car right outside and hopped in to the store. It isn’t very big, but it fills your head instantly with smells and sights that are enough to delight any food-lovers heart. And a few people who do not like eating (poor souls) would be delighted too, since there was enough in there to make anyone happy. It is as if you run into a physical wall of sweet and savoury, with the tang of lemon, the sharpness of cinnamon, the richness of cream and the bite of meat luring you from every side. Trays along one wall offer up varied delights – chocolate in the form of croissants, brownies, cookies and Danish; puffs and pasties stuffed with chicken, mutton, an occasional veggie; rolls groaning with the weight of mayonnaise-gooey salad and breadsticks of various shapes, sizes and flavours. A mirror lines one wall, where those more involved with their hairdos or figures can take a good look, and there are enough people at the small tables to watch them rather than the goodies.

I stood there for a moment, breathing heavily. Then I walked slowly past all the deliciousnesses on display and cogitated, albeit only briefly, and started selecting what I wanted. I took brownies, deeply chocolate and studded with chunks of the semi-sweet brown stuff, I chose pasties for a friend who craved them, I chose plain chocolate for Father, just because he was often half-sweet-half-not and I chose a cake that was so dense and rich that it made me feel vaguely bilious just looking at it. And I chatted briefly with the lady in charge as she had it all packed up, billed and paid for.

I am in a strange way glad that I am not in that part of the city too often. Apart from the sudden wicked need to get to eat more than is my wont, I also tend to have eyes that are bigger than my stomach, if you know what I mean – I buy much more than we can really go through before we get sick of it all. And then, of course, there is my favourite pair of blue jeans that refuse to stretch…

Rain days

Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Jairaj Pathak seems to have a brilliant mathematical mind. He also has his facts and figures – as local parlance so pithily puts it – at his fingertips. The last three days has given Mumbai 10 per cent of the season’s average rainfall which, according to Pathak’s numerical wisdom, means that 10 per cent of the city’s monsoon worries are over. Now all we need to worry about is the remaining 90 per cent.

But that 90 per cent is occupying about 100 per cent of the Mumbaikar’s mind these days. After all, one day of rain threw Mumbai’s various mechanisms out of gear. Trains were stalled, roads were flooded, walls collapsed and short circuits abounded. To cap the list of disasters, in a brilliant stroke of irony the Bombay Municipal Corporation’s heritage office building in South Mumbai had leakage and flooding problems, on the sixth floor that too, where accumulated files had to be covered with plastic to avoid data being damaged by water dripping in. The same plastic that shelters pavement dwellers and road-crews alike. Through the weekend, at each high tide, the areas of the city prone to flooding became mini-lakes as the rain fell persistently. Workmen stood in often-thigh-deep water, trying to pump away the flood and clear the choked gutters of the rubbish that prevented efficient drainage. The emergency clean-up services worked, but they should not have been needed at all.

Who is to accept the blame for what happened? The Municipal Commissioner insisted that promises have been kept – the city’s sewers have been cleared of muck, the roads repaired, potholes filled, railway tracks de-silted and the storm water drains cleaned and refurbished. The flooding, he said, is because of the basic structure of Mumbai’s drainage system – it is too old and not extensive enough to cope with a population that has increased so-many-fold since it was originally built. As a result, when the tide comes in, water cannot drain out and collects, causing traffic disruptions, hampering pedestrian movement and resulting, in a few unfortunate cases, in death. An excuse we hear every year.

The roads are being repaired, some relaid, but the rains came two days before schedule, disrupting progress, he reported. But he could not explain why, in so many instances, digging up road surfaces to concretise whole stretches of major arteries began just before the rain did. He also – albeit in passing, perhaps knowing that nothing will come of it - blamed the civic sense of the local people: accumulated garbage accounts for a great deal of the waterlogging, on roads and railway lines.

But the plain truth is that what has happened over just two days of rain is frightening if it is a prelude to a three-month-long monsoon. How much more damage will a sustained and much heavier downpour produce? And, even with the paranoia of fairly recent memory to prevent a recurrence of July 26th, 2005, can Mumbai manage to survive another such disaster? With such hard-working and responsible civic officials at the helm and with an urban disaster management system as the one Mumbai now has so firmly in place, it seems highly unlikely.

Don’t be a damp squib

Never mind what the Met Office may say about it, but the weather has changed suddenly from hot, sweaty and irritating to cool, damp and invigorating. The weather-people can call it a depression if they want to, but most of us are thrilled at finally feeling – and how! – the end of the mugginess that bogged us all down. But that euphoria rarely lasts. The joy that the first rains bring is soon dampened, literally, the rain seems endless, you long for sunshine and cabin fever wreaks deadly havoc on relationships, however close.

Now that is the problem. The monsoon has a nasty habit of making more than just clothes and floors and hair feel soggy and sticky. Romance, too, seems to be stuck, in some soggy rut, where everything is boring and mired in clouds of gloom and everything seems so much worse than it actually is. Worse still, you start fighting with your significant other for nothing, just because you are not able to go out and play, shop, eat, watch a film…whatever makes your cookie crumble. You want to eat popcorn, but it goes limp by the time it has finished popping. You want to sit on the windowsill and feed the birds, but they are all sheltering under some eave somewhere, out of the rain. You want to drive down to the mall to buy new socks, but the car is standing in four inches of water that you do not want to wade through to get in. And it’s all his fault…or hers.

But come the monsoon, when real rain pours down in thick sheets, when all you can see outside is water, when not a fly or a crow (think the Tamil proverb) is stirring, romance should be. There is love in snuggling on the couch eating hot onion pakoras, sipping tea, humming along with Raj and Nargis as they croon under an umbrella. There is romance in being warm and dry inside the house while people struggle to get to wherever they are going by train, by bus, by flooded road. There is passion in the knowledge that you really do not need to get your feet wet and your hair frizzed while you wait for the next clear patch before you dash to the store to buy milk.

There is indeed romance in the rain. So stop being a damp squib and grouching about the season of sogginess!

Waiting for the unexpected

(I did this for the arts page of the paper. It was a fun experience...)

“A story becomes a story when its end is known,” Martine Franck once said. Her own story has been one of adventure, excitement, discovery. Born in Antwerp, she grew up in the United States and Britain before heading to Europe – to study art history first at the University of Madrid and then at the Louvre School in Paris. She started working for Time-Life in Paris in 1963 and met her future husband, Henri Cartier-Bresson, while on a fashion shoot in 1966. When the Theatre du Soleil was established in 1964 by director Ariane Mnouchkine, Franck focused her lens on its stage and has photographed every production there.

But its not all glamour, there’s a gritty side too. She has been involved with humanitarian reportage and was part of Vu and Viva (as a founder) photo-agencies, and has worked with Magnum for many years now. As Franck says, “A photo-agency is stimulating. It keeps you on your toes, inspires you to follow your colleagues’ work.” Reportage can be soul-sapping, exhausting, even painful. “I personally have never been in such a situation, but there have been times where I have censored myself and refused to take the photograph. There are no fixed rules. Each photographer reacts in his or her own way according to their feelings or principles.”

Apart from photography and administration of this continuing interest, she does social and charity work for the Little Brothers of the Poor, a non-governmental organisation which cares for the elderly and outcasts of society. She has also authored a number of books.

Today photography is sometimes as much about creating an image as it is about capturing a moment on camera. Digital technology has made it easy to ‘cheat’, allowing manipulations, but “This depends very much on the individual photographer; I personally do not manipulate my photographs,” Franck clarifies. ‘A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either, it's more of a fleeting, subjective impression’, she has said, and explains that “A photograph is only a split second of ‘reality’. A person may look very happy in an image and yet be in a tragic situation and vice versa - that is what I mean about not it necessarily being the truth.”

Once a painfully shy person, she has used her camera as a screen. “But I no longer hide behind my camera,” Franck smiles. She prefers to speak with it, though, “I hope that I communicate with my images, but that is for the viewer to say, not me.” And what is she trying to say? “I basically photograph what I like or who I like and admire. The important thing for me is to put myself in the other person’s shoes and try and understand or feel what they are feeling.”

Though Franck will not be in India with her work this time, “I have been many times to India and hope to come back again next year.” She says, “I very much like the work of Dayanita Singh and Raghu Rai, but I know there are so many whose work I have not yet seen.”

She has spoken of ‘transgressions’ and explains that “Transgressions for me are a matter of going a little further than what reason tells you to do - either getting closer, being insistent in meeting someone, sometimes being ‘impolite’, pushing your way forward, stepping on people’s toes…” all that today is essential to being a paparazzi, the least liked species of photographer. And, as Franck says, “All these things I have done.” After all, being true to the lens and always in search of that perfect picture is what the craft is all about. “What I most like about photography is the moment that you can't anticipate; you have to be constantly watching for it, ready to welcome the unexpected."

Martine Franck – Photographs, Art Musings Gallery, Colaba, May 3 to June 21

Running from the rain

(I wrote this for the paper I work with. I kinda liked it. Hence it finds its way here....)

I feel a bit like Mrs Macbeth, even though the weather is making me look a little more like one of the witches on that blasted heath that Shakespeare spoke of. My hair is frizzing beyond even the control of the stern ministrations of my hairdresser and the kitchen towels are not drying even after being double-spun in the machine. It is damp – nay, moist – within and without and the atmosphere hangs heavy in my very existence.

There’s something in the air tonight, oh, Lord! And that something is not just Phil Collins’ squeaky-smoky voice, but the monsoon. Like the good Mumbaikar that I am, I wait not-too-patiently and watch the sky from my bedroom window, but there has not been any tangible sign of that cloud that people chase from its first appearance off the Kerala coast to its descent over the mountains of the northeast. Nary a raindrop in sight, not in my sights, at least. When I am lying in my bed, spreadeagled to catch every waft of the coolth from the airconditioner, I hear an occasional drop bouncing off the chhajja and spring up to peer through the olive green sheers…nope, that is just the AC from upstairs dripping.

I am not really sure why I want the rains to arrive. Maybe it is because, with my usual stickler-ish-ness for keeping to schedule, it is supposed to, therefore it must. Maybe at some deeply existential level I am being my vaguely eco-aware self and realise that to get the crops growing and keep the farmers from dying the rain is essential. Maybe it is all a matter of that cycle of life thing that those animal folks sang of. Or maybe it is just that the season of hot and more hot is getting really boring and I need change.

Frankly, I am not a rain person. I hate the smell of sheets not drying and the green stuff that grows on slippers that got damp in a puddle. I hate the feel of dankness in the hot air and the stickiness of floors that never dry. The time that my small car actually floated a couple of inches off the road in many feet of dreadfully dirty water – that happened last year – is something that will always haunt me. It was not the fact that we were pretending to be a boat, but the fact that not having solid ground under me aggravated my vertigo and actually made me, who hates getting her feet dirty, long to splash in a few puddles.

For now, I do not have too much to worry about. The potholes are being filled, with promises if not with asphalt, the roads are being concretised – or at least dug up for the process – and my new car has been rust-proofed and Teflon-coated to minimise damage. In my world, things are all set for the onslaught of the monsoon. All I need is that first downpour. And while I wait for Nature to do its thing, I watch the drip from the airconditioning system above my desk in the office.

Up the food chain

It’s amazing how much Mumbai has changed, especially over the last few years. When I came back from college many years ago, I found that much of what was familiar to me by then was now available closer to home, often in the local markets. And it was wonderful to find everything from my favourite chewing gum to the brand of tissues I liked to take my makeup off. But what has been even better is the fabulous range of food that the city was so rapidly opening up to. From sushi to satay, burgers to banana splits, everything seemed to be available and popular.

This thought came from a taxi ride I took a few days ago. I was headed to a part of town that I had not been to for goodness knows how many years, riding there in a taxi because I remembered it as being crowded and dirty and cramped, certainly no place I would be happy taking my new (and rather large, I must admit) chariot to. The taxi was in decent shape, the driver drove decently, too. So I was not as hassled and frazzled as I am wont to be when I go anywhere in a black-and-yellow rattletrap and even managed to be a little kempt and properly presented once I got there. And on the way I noticed all manner of delight in the direction of food, from the small street stalls to the more interesting small eating places and bigger restaurants that catered to a rather more discerning clientele.

What really sparked my interest was a small falafel restaurant. Refreshing in its green and cream paintwork, it showed off its offerings on small boards stuck on the wall outside (or perhaps it was the window, I could not really tell. And it printed its menu alongside, with hummus, falafel, pita bread, salad, et al advertised for the interested to read before they made choices to go in or not. I was tempted to stop, but was in a hurry to get where I was going without being soaked in sweat and wanted to get back to work before it ran away from me towards a closely combated deadline.

It set me thinking. One of the most popular eating places close to where I work is a large American chain, the Hard Rock Café, which offers up huge helpings for a decent price – not everyday fare for either waistline or wallet, I have to say. Not too far away is a whole slew of Chinese restaurants, from tiny hole in the wall streetside eateries to more lush and plush spreads where the waiters wear funny hats and the table linen is so stiffly starched that the napkins slide right off any lap, however large. Then there is a sweet little café under the trees that varies between nouvelle and modern western food, combining jalapeno bagels with grilled salmon, couscous with baked vegetables and sinful chocolate cakes with low-calorie fruit tarts.

The turnover of restaurants in Mumbai is as quick as the service at fast food chains. A burger joint may persist, but a Thai food eatery is not likely to last as long, even if the cuisine is very like the Indian menu – lots of chillies, exotic flavour blending miraculously into each other and fresh veggies that retain their individual taste and texture. Lebanese food is making surprising inroads into the Mumbai stomach, with its again-familiar flavours of cumin, chilli, cinnamon and lemon, along with garlic and cilantro (or parsley, which is not a common part of our kitchen stocks). And there is more. Sushi and teppenyaki bars jostle for space with health drinks and bagel-wiches. Rustic Italian vies with traditional tapas. Mexican and Middle Eastern live happily side by side. And French co-exists with good old American.

What I am waiting for is more native African and perhaps Slavic cooking to hit the city’s food-line. Then it will be a truly global experience.

Speaking in tongues

D Ebenezer Sunder Singh speaks of energy and the super-man in his art

There is a darkness that prevails, punctuated by sparkling brightness that is, to put it mildly, startling. The work of D Ebenezer Sunder Singh in his latest show - called Thus Spake Zarathustra - at the Pundole Art Gallery is a study in contrasts, of flashes of ‘lightning out of the dark cloud’, shades of grey occasionally interrupted with vivid splashes of pink, orange, lime green and blue. His charcoal drawings have a depth, a mystery, almost frightening in the tortuous contortions of the human figures and fantastical in their scope of perception of a world that cannot be completely understood.

“In my work I have a physical and a metaphysical element,” Ebenezer explains, “like the figure of a man with babies around him, one lying on his hand, or a man falling with a fetus held in his splayed fingers.” The drawings, all in shades of black, “remain unlit. I don’t mean black as in darkness,” he says, “only a gradation from black to white – black needs to be worked to create the different shades,” the varying intensity. And he is working with a limited medium, “so it is not easy”.

But the works do not derive from a tortured soul, one suffused with darkness, he is quick to point out. When he paints in colour, “I use very bright hues. And my drawings, even in blacks, are very light related.” What he did was “to make this metaphysical thing work in light. And in this show, the light effects work very well in the sculpture – there are bright hues, with sequins and beads thrown all over.”

The idea of the super-man is strong in Ebenezer’s work. In fact, his inspiration comes from Nietzsche, whose book Thus Spake Zarathustra defines the concept in ‘I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is superman…as lightning out of the dark cloud.’ The artist believes that this definition could be used to describe his work, as “a contemplation of myself, my energy growth. Nietzsche said there is no god to help man; only super-man, or Zarathustra, can help man. The saviour can only be a super-man.” This ethos is captured in his Superman sculptures, where tiny gold-painted, bead-dotted elephants are held, one tumbling over the other, in huge black, sequin-splashed hands. “There is some sort of energy between my hands. I articulate it with these images. The elephant is a symbol of energy as well.”

Heads are a refrain in the sculptures on show. And tongues are a prominent feature of each, as is seen in Tongues, an installation of 15 lime-green heads, each with a tongue of a different colour sticking out of its mouth. According to Ebenezer, “The tongue is a sensory code, and the head is a connotation, of speaking in tongues. The work, my thought, is about words, communication, and sensual and sense-related communication at that.” In Sky, that tongue is elongated, just a hairsbreadth away from touching the ceiling. The images are “intense”, and the artist is “trying to bring their reasons for existing to the fore as subtle symbols”. In Hair Grows, he speaks of a “contemplation of life and death, of dead cells growing. It is a sort of very fundamental question in life – life goes on and hair keeps growing, even as you cut it, even after death. It is an intense question on life.”

The sequins and beads are indeed novel, though Ebenezer says that “I have been using sequins for a while now, even on my canvases – as I paint, I throw them on top, paint over them, and then throw on more. This time I am using them on sculpture and the sculptures come out of my drawings.” For him, it is all about the “contrast between my dark drawings and the sculptures that are very bright and light.” The sequins catch the light and create more scintillations that add more depth to the darkness of the hands, the heads, the charcoal drawings.

All the figures that he creates are male. “It’s because I am male, so I show the male body,” Ebenezer explains. “I view the world through myself, I understand the world through my understanding of myself, my world, my education, my own being and energy.” In his work, “there is more of Ebenezer there in the idea of the person I draw or sculpt. My interpretation is with reference to myself.” This post-modern philosophy, essentially one of deconstruction, implies that “all interpretations are valid. You cannot make someone understand something from his point of view, but only from your own.”

And in that interpretation, Ebenezer makes his point. As a man, looking for super-man.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, Pundole Art Gallery, till May 31

Dead wrong

It’s been a rather nasty month all over the world. Personally, it has been painful, not just physically, but spiritually as well. Reading about and watching children dead, ill or suffering in any way is always sapping. Most recently is the murder of a 14-year-old in Delhi. All the police theories have been debunked and now, even as I write this, her father has been arrested for her killing – a matter of honour, investigators say. It must be terrible to have to face the fact that you have killed your own child; it must be even more horrible to have to hide it, even for a moment, leave alone many days.

Not too long ago, there was mass murder in Jaipur, perhaps the best known destination in India for tourists. Seven bombs blasted into the peace of the Pink City, killing more innocent people than could be counted – children, women, young men, old people…no one who was in any way deserving of such a violent death. The investigators are slowly unravelling all the tangled webs that have been woven around terrorist activity in this country. That the bad guys would plot, plan, shop, then walk in, plant the bombs and leave, all without any qualms or shiverings of conscience is frightening.

Then nature played its own part. The earth shook in China, houses and public buildings came tumbling down. And lives tumbled, crumbled, shattered into death and dust. Most of the dead were young, some of them just starting school. Instead of a great adventure that is life, they were sent to a world that no one knows about. It was not the dying that mattered as much as the fear, I believe. Those last few moments before they were killed must have been about the most frightening they have ever faced in their tiny lives. And those who lived will always remember the horror of being almost-dead, of waiting until they were brought back into the light.

But with all this, there have been small joys that have delighted the world too. David Cook (I rooted for him) won American Idol, beating favourite David Archuleta, the boy-child with a wonderful voice. One of the main roads in the city that I drive in to work and back home on has been concretised, becoming a smooth, safe, seamless path that is a pleasure to coast over. And all is more or less well in my small world and that of the people around me who matter. Touch wood.

Does it all balance out? In a tiny, selfish, almost callous way, it does. Tragedy is usually someone else’s to cry about. That we all are moved and battered by it is the cost of being a good human being with that conscience I spoke about earlier. That it matters to me and you and so many others that a young woman, one who has not yet started her life, has been murdered is a matter of being a decent person. That it matters to us all that so many people died in an earthquake in a part of the world that most of us will not ever visit is also part of being human. And the fact that we will remember with horror how bombs planted on bicycles splashed red blood on pink stucco makes us people with heart.

Out and about

I was out doing various chores this morning, hopping from bookstore to grocery store to…well, you get the idea. It was fun, even though my leg was not entertained, and I enjoyed the experience thoroughly, in spite of my toe objecting rather noisily by the end of the time that we were out.

I started at a speciality bookstore, from where Father had asked for a couple of the tomes he needed for his work. Once I found it, I stepped very cautiously down the stairs (since my record with steps is not exactly brilliant) and beamed sweatily at the two gentleman sitting at the counter. One of them looked dour, while the other smiled as fondly back at me. The dour one seemed to be having some difficulty in operating the computer that he was battling with, and barely looked up to see what I wanted. The other one, younger and less furrowed of brow, bustled around and fluttered from shelf to shelf explaining what was where to me, who mutely handed over a list and waited, smile still firmly in place, for more to happen.

It was the minion who actually knew where the books I wanted were. He sprang purposefully up the stairs into a tiny gallery-like space and ferreted out multiple volumes. At first, I though optimistically that they were very kindly giving me a choice – some books tend to get rather battered over time and I like the pristine sort and always demand it. But, no, the first on the list had two volumes, each fairly substantial. The second was rather more alarming. Nicely bound in faux leather and lettered in gold, it had five volumes, making up in weight what it may have lacked in size. I demanded help in transporting the load to the car and it was promised. The dour gentleman fought a veritable war with his computer trying to do the billing for my books, while I stood there still gently a-sweat and trying not to let that aforementioned smile slip.

And, as always, I had to confuse the issue a little. While I waited, patiently, my eyes settled on a book that looked interesting. It was a single volume, but a large one, matching the others in cumulative size and weight. I demanded it and scanned through. It seemed like something I wanted to be curious about, so I asked the price. It was, in fact, rather cheaper than some of the books that I have been buying lately, so I took it. The dour man went back to his struggle with keyboard, mouse and monitor, while I counted out a scant sheaf of crisp notes. And then, farewells said, the dour man still not smiling, minion, books and I proceeded in a dignified procession out to the car.

But there was no car there. And I had more errands to run. So, the books transferred to my slowly-stretching arms, I went into a grocery store that purportedly had cheese. Good cheese, not the plastic processed kind. I checked in my parcels and walked in. There was indeed cheese, some interesting kinds, too. I nibbled a tiny fragment for taste and chose what I wanted, the weight I wanted. And, while the chappie efficiently sliced and weighed, I wandered about looking at what else was on offer. There was plenty, from my all-time favourite soft fudge chocolate chunk cookies to pasta of a sort that I had seen in speciality stores in New York. I looked, I sighed and I went past.

It is not that I do not have the wherewithal or the taste to take home what I wanted. But it seemed a waste at a time when there was more to do and bother about than just the food I sometimes had dreams about. I needed the time and the leisure to cook that same stuff of dreams and savour it. Some day, that time will also come….

Shoe fly!

It’s been a hard two week for me. First I fell up the stairs, which was not half as bad as the consequences, to be frank. Yes, I got to stay home for a week, during which I slept a lot and cried some – with exhaustion, frustration, stress, pain and sheer relief that I could stop for a while and try and figure out what I was doing. That was the good part. The bad part was rather more serious, from my point of view. I could not drive – that wonderful new car has been driven by Father, by the driver and by, of course, the chappie who delivered it to us at the showroom. But NOT by me. Well…if I have to be honest, I did drive it from the shop to the temple and back again, but that does not count as real driving, you know. I could not go running around to do all the chores I had set myself for when I had time off, from buying new carpets and curtains to chasing spiders with my trusty arachno-broom, sorting out the lofts, rearranging the linen closet, trying on the most impractical shoes at the store and making cookies that combined the flavours of cheese and chocolate without ruining either (perhaps not, but it sounds interesting)….

Some years ago, I was confined in a cast after surgery. It was rather more fun then, since the fibreglass did the supporting and I could run about as much as was physically possible without fearing any further damage. At the time, the cast had to be changed weekly and I got the most exotic colours, from pale cream to emerald green to bilious yellow to sapphire blue and dashing fuschia pink. In all that I had a mobile fashion statement and, astonishingly, shorts to match. It was a handicap to outdo any. And I could dream happily of a time when I would shed the rigid casing and be able to get back on my sharp heels – albeit after a period of learning how to walk properly again, of course. This time, I am rather irritable about the whole thing. It is not spectacular, not as much so as the time of the cast, but it is painful and, in a way, limiting. I am various colours along one limb, my toe is still somewhat reminiscent of a, over-done cocktail sausage and I feel a lot more self-pitying than I am normally wont to do.

The jeans are back on after two weeks of wearing loose and flappy salwars. They are restrictive and hurt rather, pressing too hard on the bruises that still need TLC, but they are back in the forefront (hehehe) of my style saga. What is going to take longer is the heels. One-inchers today are already making their unsuitability felt. My toe is singing an A-sharp of reproach. My ankle is not very happy with me. And my knee is protesting rather violently at being confined thusly.

No pain, no gain is a phrase my physiotherapist loved to throw at me – if I could have thrown something back at him, I would have with great pleasure, especially if that was something that was hard and could cause very painful damage. It is a mantra in the world of style, where shoes that are beautiful are generally semaphores of great anguish. Nothing showed this off more than a pair of very pretty and funky kitten heels I bought in New York one rainy afternoon. They were Jellies, clear red plastic, peep-holed and pert. They fit beautifully in the shop, tried on when my feet had been walking for a few hours, which is the best time to get a realistic idea of what is a good fit, I had been advised. And I wore them often. But never without suffering untold agonies. They bit where I never imagined shoes to be able to bite. They left deep welts in tender portions of my foot, making it almost impossible to slide into any other kind of footwear without squeaking in various notes in pain for days afterwards. And when they finally had to be confined to that nowhere land where shoes go when you throw them away post-many years of suffering, I did truly miss them, though not the blisters I earned every time I wore them.

Vanity, thy name is me. And even though I wince at every step in these fragile sandals I am wearing right now, I think of how nicely they complement the jeans that I should not yet be wearing.

Sweeping clean

It’s funny how the same joke seems as funny the millionth time around as it does the first. One of father’s favourites is about brooms – and it never fails to make me giggle. Whenever I am seen wandering about the house with a broom (either on my never-ending quest for brushing out spiderwebs or sweeping cat litter out of my bathroom where Small Cat has her…umm…facilities), he will ask me with a tiny smile lighting up his eyes, “You going somewhere?”. And when I mumble irritably about needing new brooms, he will say with a delightful solemnity, “You just got a new car!”.

Sigh.

Keeping a house clean, even a decent-sized apartment, is not easy. The process starts when I wake up and ends only when I lie down at night, sometimes hopping out of bed again because I have forgotten to make sure there is detergent in the washing machine or I need to be sure that the towel on the spare bathroom door has not fallen off its hook. It is almost borderline obsessive compulsive, though my doctor assures me that I am just the compulsive allergic-personality type who stresses if something is not just-so and comes out in a rash if I do not do something about making it that way. Whatever the case, these days I make sure that things are basically just-so and let the rest go until another day when I am more in the mood to be persnickety about it all.

So, as I was saying, the cleaning thing – it starts early. I roll out of bed and wander blearily around dealing with everything from making green tea for myself to – for some reason I can only ascribe to that aforementioned borderline…- pushing the sugar container back on the shelf to line up with the other boxes. From then on, it is a matter of keeping one ear on our rather temperamental and admittedly ageing washing machine, making sure that everything is in place for the maid when she storms into the house to start her job by throwing dishes in and out of the sink – it’s called ‘washing up’, though I would do it myself in a rather more gentle and silent manner, but each to her own – and getting myself ready to head out to work.

Of course, both Father and Small Cat have their contributions to make that are greatly appreciated. Father has his set of self-designated chores, while Small Cat takes her morning task of singing high opera to wake me up very seriously indeed. She also helps clean house by pushing all the feathers that she plays with under the carpets and keeps a stern eye on the maid as she blows through the bedrooms with her broom and swabbing cloth and bucket. And I trot dutifully behind, switching off lights, switching on fans and switching direction as the maid does an occasional unexpected turnaround to redo a spot she thinks I have just left a nasty footprint on.

Then comes the dusting. It is a job that has been traditionally assigned to me, as daughter of the house and youngest member of the family, and I have always hated it, never mind that it was made mine to make sure that I understood the value of the pocket-money I ‘earned’ by doing it. Now I pay the maid to do it, with the money that I earn by working at my job in the newspaper! As long as it helps me/us keep the house clean and gets the essentials done without too much damage to self or property, it cannot hurt, right?

And just for the record, this morning I went broom shopping. In the new car.

Sweeping clean

It’s funny how the same joke seems as funny the millionth time around as it does the first. One of father’s favourites is about brooms – and it never fails to make me giggle. Whenever I am seen wandering about the house with a broom (either on my never-ending quest for brushing out spiderwebs or sweeping cat litter out of my bathroom where Small Cat has her…umm…facilities), he will ask me with a tiny smile lighting up his eyes, “You going somewhere?”. And when I mumble irritably about needing new brooms, he will say with a delightful solemnity, “You just got a new car!”.

Sigh.

Keeping a house clean, even a decent-sized apartment, is not easy. The process starts when I wake up and ends only when I lie down at night, sometimes hopping out of bed again because I have forgotten to make sure there is detergent in the washing machine or I need to be sure that the towel on the spare bathroom door has not fallen off its hook. It is almost borderline obsessive compulsive, though my doctor assures me that I am just the compulsive allergic-personality type who stresses if something is not just-so and comes out in a rash if I do not do something about making it that way. Whatever the case, these days I make sure that things are basically just-so and let the rest go until another day when I am more in the mood to be persnickety about it all.

So, as I was saying, the cleaning thing – it starts early. I roll out of bed and wander blearily around dealing with everything from making green tea for myself to – for some reason I can only ascribe to that aforementioned borderline…- pushing the sugar container back on the shelf to line up with the other boxes. From then on, it is a matter of keeping one ear on our rather temperamental and admittedly ageing washing machine, making sure that everything is in place for the maid when she storms into the house to start her job by throwing dishes in and out of the sink – it’s called ‘washing up’, though I would do it myself in a rather more gentle and silent manner, but each to her own – and getting myself ready to head out to work.

Of course, both Father and Small Cat have their contributions to make that are greatly appreciated. Father has his set of self-designated chores, while Small Cat takes her morning task of singing high opera to wake me up very seriously indeed. She also helps clean house by pushing all the feathers that she plays with under the carpets and keeps a stern eye on the maid as she blows through the bedrooms with her broom and swabbing cloth and bucket. And I trot dutifully behind, switching off lights, switching on fans and switching direction as the maid does an occasional unexpected turnaround to redo a spot she thinks I have just left a nasty footprint on.

Then comes the dusting. It is a job that has been traditionally assigned to me, as daughter of the house and youngest member of the family, and I have always hated it, never mind that it was made mine to make sure that I understood the value of the pocket-money I ‘earned’ by doing it. Now I pay the maid to do it, with the money that I earn by working at my job in the newspaper! As long as it helps me/us keep the house clean and gets the essentials done without too much damage to self or property, it cannot hurt, right?

And just for the record, this morning I went broom shopping. In the new car.

Taking a cab

After a very long time, this morning I had to take a cab to work, because my idiot driver did not turn up when he was supposed to and was completely non-contactable. A cab was found and I hopped – still rather one-legged – into it, and directed the driver where I needed to be taken to. And then I sat back and faded into my own mind, vaguely resentful that I should have a perfectly good car but be unable to go anywhere in it. When we were almost at my destination, the cab driver suddenly decided to get chatty. And what he said showed me just how much I did not know about my own city and its familiar, well-known black and yellow taxis.

He called them ‘kaali-peeli’, which is only logical, since they are black (kaali) and yellow (peeli). But it took me a moment to figure that one out, since in Mumbaiyya Hindi, khaali-peeli, said with a little more spit and less polish, is a way of saying that something is unnecessary, be it an argument or a rule of any kind. These are, in a way, a dying breed, the driver explained, a car that will soon be defunct on the streets of this city. Because, as an old and discontinued model of Fiat, spare parts are not available any longer; in fact, if repairs need to be made, they are done by cannibalising parts from older vehicles that have long passed their use-by date. The factory has been shut down, the company has moved out of the country and the land it once owned has been sold, the man said with a touch of regretful nostalgia.

Today the kaali-peeli is fast being overtaken by more comfortable, faster and efficient taxis. There are mint-green cabs and golden-yellow cabs and even violet cabs meant only for women, driven only by women. And most of these are the call-on-demand kind, which come to your door when you phone for them and convey you to your destination in air-conditioned comfort. At a price, of course. As my taxi man elaborated, these are good, these are nice to sit in, these are fancy, but these are not always available. They need to be called; they are not allowed to park at street corners (neither are the kaali-peelis, to be absolutely correct) or at taxi stands and they need special permits to ply the usual routes.

My cab driver had ambitions. He had enough saved, he said, to buy a new car. And he knew exactly which one he wanted. The problem was that he had a taxi permit for the ordinary kaali-peeli kind of cab, not for an air-conditioned ‘Cool Cab’, as it is known here. But almost all new cars came with a built-in air-conditioning system that disallowed it from being an ordinary black-and-yellow taxi. Which meant that either he had to spend more time than he wanted to explaining to prospective customers that a ride in his cab would cost the same as in any other kaali-peeli, or else he would be restricted to being a Cool Cab, which he did not want since that would be more expensive to run, cost his customers more and reduce his client base. It all made good business sense.

Taking a cab is no longer a matter of getting from one place to another for me. I have become spoiled by the luxury of having my own car to transport me from hither to yon, putting me in the self-indulgent position of not needing to find my way from anywhere to anywhere else at the mercy of strangers. I do not need to dig in my purse for change, nor do I have to search for a taxi that looks as respectable as its driver. But on days like today, I feel battered, bruised and bent by circumstance…and a set of stairs that just invited me to fall up them.

Home and away

It’s good to be home for a while. But it is not good to be stuck at home, with lots of places to go but no feet to go there. Well, I do have both feet, it’s just that one is nicely tinted in various shades of blue and black, with two and a half toes that look like sausages that are on the point of bursting, but not as burnt as they seemed to be yesterday. The ankle is still more swollen than is my usual self, and the knee and shin are…well…interestingly hued, to put it mildly. It hurts to walk faster than a casually nonchalant limp and if I stand or even sit too long with my foot down, it tells me I am being negligent and nasty in a very loud and strident voice.

So, with this, and with feeling rather sorry for myself, no matter how much I tell myself however sternly that I am not that kind of person, I have been wandering vaguely around the apartment occasionally coochie-cooing with Small Cat, annoying Father and, in sheer self-defence, sleeping a lot more than I normally do. I have read a lot more of the newspapers and books and magazines scattered about and am looking with some degree of desperation at the vast array of bookshelves that line the study walls for more that is readable when lying down or at least with one leg up higher than is easy to balance when sitting. And the mood is more than wontedly sensitive – pain, annoyance at my own amazing grace, fear at the thought that perhaps more damage was caused than is known and irritation that results from cabin fever are starting to set it with a vengeance. So every now and then I indulge in a bout of self-pitying sniffling, pairing it with a bawl to Small Cat and a wail at poor Father.

I did want a vacation. But a VACATION, not a break from the dreary routine at work where I sit drearily at home wondering what to do with myself. I could have done myself proud at the beauty salon (he he he – me??), or started my long-promised exercise routine or even just done meandering walks to deal with that annoying new bulge in various parts of me, but…sigh. When I actually get to take a break, I find myself doing almost literally just that – suspected break, proven not-break, then enforced break, if you know what I mean.

What do I normally do when I take time off? I am not sure, actually, since it has been a while since I have taken time off to do it. The last time I was on a break, my friend was here from the US and we careened madly about town “getting stuff done”. I still need a holiday to recover from that one, I think. Before that, I was at home for about ten days, trying to get over a spell of the dizzies, as you may have read in a previous blog (if you ever read a previous blog, that is). And before that…oh, yes, before that I did actually take a real break, wandering off to see buddy in Delhi, eating a lot and meeting old friends with the pleasure that only a genuine holiday can bring.

Holidays are a rare species these days, in most people’s lives. Father has not been on a holiday in forever, I think, the last time perhaps when he came to visit me in Delhi during the time I was temporarily based there. Small Cat, of course, has a busy day every day, as has been the norm in her fairly short almost-two-year life so far, what with singing lessons at the crack of dawn, then breakfast, then a mad chase after Father or me or a feather, then dodging the maid as she cleans the house, then a snack, then – the most vital element that she must deal with through the day – a nap, then more chase, then more food, occasional potty breaks and water-bowl visits…oh, the work never stops!

There are those who know how to take holidays. Some people fly off to Morocco or the Maldives, others drive into the mountains or go skiing, a few even luxuriate in a spa or a meditation centre. And one day, this family will understand what a break is really all about, refrain from self-damage of any kind, and actually take time off to do absolutely nothing that could possibly be defined as ‘work’.