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!

Calamity Jane, that's me!

It's not that I am especially clumsy or especially inept. Not more than most, at least. But I do have some very strange accidents that, in retrospect, are very funny. This time, it is no better or worse than it normally is. I dropped a pakad, that tong-thing used in every Indian kitchen, right on the most tender part of my foot. It would normally not have been so bad, but for the fact that I had already hurt that foot and had just gone through the arduous and painful process of having it checked and X-rayed and more. So this was, in a way, adding not just insult, but aggravated assault to injury and causing me more anguish than was worth it for me. And when that darn thing fell, it impacted the only unbruised part of a blue-tinged foot with the sharpest part of the metal instrument, pulling an agonised yowl out of me, enough to wake Small Cat from her morning nap, startle the maid who was cleaning under the cabinets in the living room and grab Father's attention away from whatever he was doing. I sat on a chair near the kitchen, holding a piece of ice against my foot and thinking up the most blue-tinged words that I could think of - unfortunately, 'Heck!' was the best that my traumatized mind could come up with at that moment, even though I know lots of far more interesting noises.

My former irascible boss called me Calamity Jane. And, in my own way, I suppose I am. I do things with a certain panache that is not easily beaten. Like the time I cracked a wrist bone while making popcorn - I did it by bashing it against the microwave overn I was using, but that part of the story somehow gets second billing. And once I was put in a splint to support aforementioned wrist bone, I gave myself a mind concussion by bashing myself on the forehead with it as I turned over in bed while waking up the next morning. Don't even go there. The next time I got concussion was in Delhi, when I was leaving to go to work, and the cleaning lady emerged unexpectedly from the bushes to give me a fright and I knocked myself out with a very hard contact between my temple and the corner of the car door...

And, of course, there was the time I hurt my foot - not this one, the other one; like most people, I do have two - by falling up the stairs walking into a boutique I frequently shop at. It was only three steps, but I fell twice, first landing rather hard on my knee and then sliding onto the wrong side of my foot and bending the toe and ankle rather unnaturally. Perhaps the most painful part of that particular story was having to sit at my table in a tony restaurant about an hour later with my rapidly swelling and darkening foot and ankle in a dish of ice.

So the saga of the pakad is not unusual for me. It all goes with the general territory of being ME. I only wish I wasn't such a pain-full person to have around!

Govinda gela re!

Krishna was born and now he has gone off to whatever adventuring he has left to do in today's world. It was Janmashtami over the weekend, the time when the Blue God was born. We celebrate in this country by eating a lot - which we do for almost every festival there is - and making a lot of noise. Strangely, it was quieter here this year than it has been in previous celebrations, making me wonder if I had the day wrong or whether there was something amiss or whether it was just that people are now starting to see sense and tone down public displays of affectation. As they hoist themselves and their teams up the human pyramids to break open the handi tied high above to get the prasad and the money, some triumph, others die trying, but there is a lot of sound and some fury, signifying another event that has given way to crass commercialism.

My native cynicism apart, I do enjoy the ocasional festival. And celebrate in my own way, tweaking the traditional to create something new that will become tradition for Father, Small Cat and myself. So yesterday, instead of the usual festive lunch of shaadam and murukku and seedai and neiyappam, vadai and fresh-churned butter from the home kitchen, we adapted a little. We did have seedai and neiyappam but bought both from the neighbourhood South Indian store, and we did have shaadam, but with some changes. It was fun cooking, as it almost always is for me, and it tastes good, or so the family reviews said.

We ate pongal, a wonderfully squishy blend of dal and rice and spices and veggies all cooked together, with a dash of ghee, accompanied by bonda made of leftover alu-methi wrapped up in a crisp coat of adai maavu - leftovers, but given a new avatar. We crunched through the seedai and chewed on the neiyappam, with homemade javarsi (sabudana) payasam to add interest, with lots of raisins and cashewnuts to make it better. And then there was some raita, some banana chips and some pickles, all to round off the meal. We lay around like anacondas after that, digesting.

The problem with Indian festivals is that they follow each other in over-quick succession. Just when your waistline is normalising after one, the next arrives and you have more adjusting to do of strings and buttons and zippers. For me, I have Ganesh Chaturti mid-next week to think about, with its glorious sweets and savouries and a whole lot of communicating with my favourite god.