Pipe Dreams

The few minutes of hating Delhi

2011-09-19T13:02:00.001+05:30

are usually at 2 am in the morning wondering how the hell one must get back home.

chatting with people from other jobs

2011-09-07T15:21:00.001+05:30

Sachida: that's alright

so you come (home, sic) this evening with Miss Chauhan?

Sent at 15:16 on Wednesday

me: I am unaware of the circumstances that will lead to dusk

But if they are favourable, yes

in terms of bomb blasts and journalism I mean

Mere anarchy may be loosed upon the world by then,

by dawn

Sachida: aren't blasts a journalist's thali?

me: You mean sensous scrumptous

wholesome

satisfying

productive

Sachida: yep

scams and some mistreated woman are his/her bread and butter

but a bomb blast? My god it's a feast

You may say I am a dreamer

2011-09-01T01:24:00.001+05:30

We are the romantics. We put up pictures on our tumblr blogs of pretty wooden swings that fly above wet green grass in a village in Italy. We snatch beautiful words and place them for posterity. We gang up together in our little parties making the best drinks we can with the little money we have and get overwhelmed at the intensities that life throws at us. We make sudden travel plans that are hopelessly impractical and utterly exhausting because we like the practical people have jobs. When reality is gray and so so, we turn up the volume in our heads and our eyes and live in our imagination. We waste money on buying pretty clothes.

We fall bang into the dangerous space of love and do it again and again and again till it seems like we can endure better than the others but we can't. Not really. It's still Delhi here, and tepid fart like weather and a nice-ish day has ended. It's still Delhi and I am in a quiet restrained room, all alone, listening to music.

Of thorns, selling and Shahrukh Khan

2011-08-31T21:03:00.002+05:30

A book launch was simultaneously satire of the consumer world and star studded with Shahrukh's presence

The impression I got was that if I had to get your attention, I should start with speaking about Shahrukh Khan and his explanation for having said "I am the best." He said that only because he had an inferiority complex, apparently -- he didn't feel that he was good enough. People clawed at him for autographing the book, followed him till they reached the hemlines of the backstage curtains through which he disappeared leaving a vacuum of disappointed children, ladies and gentleman. A small girl dressed in a ghaghra choli for the special occasion jumped up and down, smiling.

Since very few book launches these days are complete without the Bollywood presence, IIPM dean Arindam Chaudhuri and his wife Rajita Chaudhuri invited Shahrukh Khan for the launch of their book Thorns to Competition about marketing strategies.

The lights were dimmed and a cardboard cactus (with one of the cactus stems deliberately revealing a middle finger) was surrounded by flickering blue lights. Shahrukh Khan arrived two hours late and pressed the remote control and out of this garish set up, the book burst forth along with jhink jhack music (that was played before the arrival of every important speaker).

Thorns is an acronym (Khan called it a pseudonym) but we come to that later. We knew that the modern marketplace is a war zone but we pretty much had to keep our satirical glasses on throughout the show.

Arindam Chaudhuri enters stage after the music aided anticipation. "This book is one of the best books, I believe," he says. Chaudhuri talked about how he kept gifting his father expensive watches, but his father insisted on wearing his old watch from high school, much to his son's exasperation. It was a problem with his father's generation. They didn't warm up to the consumer economy as well as we do. "They judged people by what they knew and what they learnt. Marketing teaches you to forget a person's worth. He appreciated things like music, art, literature etc," he said. Apparently, the more you read, the more you want to read, the more you listen to music, the more you want to listen. Now, that's increasing marginal utility. Before you switch off, an explanation will be offered.

Usually it is the generation that is in its teens and twenties that is criticized for its 140 character arguments, its Facebook status relationship breakups, the works. Arindam Chaudhuri superimposes a neat economic theory on all these varied life experiences. The law of diminishing marginal utility. The more you have something the less you want it. But at the same time, you don't want the old watch anymore, but you want the new one.

Just as you buy phone 4560, a radio host tells you phone 4560 is out and 4670 is in. "A satisfied customer is the marketing man's worst nightmare," said Chaudhuri.

Meanwhile, in the room with blue lights, cameramen were fidgety. When was Shahrukh Khan, sitting in the front row going to step on stage and do camera worthy things?

When he finally did, they screamed to the organizers. "Lights, lights, lights"

Shahrukh gave thorns to competition we were told. He endorsed women's products, he was the first star to accept a negative role in Darr (1993) and by the way, he has been "chatting with Lady Gaga and is doing a song with her." It's a marketing thing, he says. "We want to exchange audiences."

Khan was impeccable in his role for the night as the humble, saying Namaste to the old ladies and gentlemen invited to stage super star. He came across at least as humble and a little unsure.

He could be a dilliwalla, he insisted, even though he kept on his best theatre accent in Mumbai. "When I was struggling in Bollywood I wanted to hit many people hard. I can be a dilliwallah and talk like (insert Haryanvi accented expletives). Loud cheers erupt from the audience that had till then held on to every word he spoke in a quiet, contained rapture.

The thousands at Ramlila Maidan

2011-08-29T22:44:00.003+05:30

Here were people who had come with anger, with hope and with expectation. They were angry because they had taken the daily frustrations of living in this country as a given. That you have to pay a bribe to get a ration card, that state subsidized food is sold at high prices, that you have to pay to get into medical college, that people who worked less hard could pay their way into medical college. They had laughed it away. It happens only in India.
Suddenly, here was a man who assured them that it was alright to be angry. A man who allowed them to be angry. A quote I read recently makes sense in this context :

“If you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate to do anything in your life. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote; you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution, and our revolution is long overdue.”— Margaret Cho

Anna Hazare gave them this self-esteem. The people were angry and they were hopeful. “What makes you think the Jan Lokpal bill, just another piece of legislation, just like the others we have, will change this country?,” I asked all the 80 odd people I spoke to. The answers were varied and colourful but in essence – there were two types.

Type one: “This is Anna’s bill, not the government bill.”
Type two: “No problem can disappear completely. At least 70% corruption will go.”
Anna is the icon, the go-to God, the sacrosanct Krishna they have waited for. Santosh Chaudhury, a farmer from Darbhanga in his thirties, believes Anna has returned as an incarnation of Krishna. A follower of Baba Ramdev, he has been coming since April. “Yada yada hi dharmasya… glanirbhavati bharata…,” he quotes with great flourish. (Roughly, when there is too much sin in the world, Krishna will return to save it.)

Faith and religion were magnetic words that drew people by the thousands, and it buoyed the other important word—patriotism. Inquilab Zindabad (Glory to the revolution) was at best a quaint phrase reserved for Hindi movies or smaller, less televised revolutions. But at Ground Zero, Hazare, farmers, college students, middle class, lower middle class, wealthy designer wear clad men ,women and school children were chanting it together.
People were thirsty for a revolution.
People like myself – people from the middle and lower middle class had studied Gandhi in History class. They had seen Bollywood films in which heroes fall down and surrender to the police/to a higher power for the country. Where people die for the country to be glorified forever. They cheered to songs from Lagaan, Swades and Rang De Basanti.

People had expectations too. They expected to be heard. They had seen it all play out on TV. TV was finally talking about them. Their day to day problems – not being issued a ration card, etc were getting a sounding board in the national media. All you had to do was walk around with a notebook. (There is also the subtle class marker which identifies you as a journalist.) People came to you and said, this is me, I am from here, I came from there and I am angry with the government, they haven’t done a damn thing right. Shaheen waited three years to enter medical school because of corruption. An 85-year old man from Punjab had seen the British go, the world around him transform and he was deeply disappointed. Twenty two year old Suraj from Allahbad didn’t want to pay to get a government job.
Arvind Kejriwal, meanwhile, is the young hero and hero for the young. He tells the audience how the Government was trying to deny them their rights, how it played games and was trying to force Team Hazare to surrender. The scenes from those inspiring movies replayed in audiences’ minds when Kejriwal spoke.
“Doston, yeh sarkaar hamse kehti hai ki…(Friends, this government tells us that)…,” is the way he starts every line while telling the crowd about the discussions with the government. “Kya ham yeh maan lein…? (Can we accept this?),” he asks like a seasoned political campaigner and a collective ‘nahi’ is followed by another round of “Inquilab Zindabad.”
He then tells them how the government mistreated the Anna’s representatives. The fuse had been lit. Ministers Pranab Mukherjee and Salman Khursheed know the rest. The media rounded them up on behalf of the crowd at Ramlila Maidan.

The crowd at Ramlila Maidan came to you and asked you to write down its story. In front of the Prime Minister’s house, when the all party meeting was happening, a meeting in which talks would fail, a few protestors managed to sneak in. Roads had been blocked for atleast 4 kilometres around the residence. Only the media was allowed. The media had set up camp, with a row of black obedient tripods focussed on the white house. Nothing happened for a while. Vilasrao Deshmukh zipped by the car and the journalists awoke like birds fluttering at a stone.
Finally, a group of women and one or two men came in sloganeering. An alert camera man said to one of the women, “Madam, idhar hi kar lejiye,” Madam, please protest right here – where I have set up.
The women, the men they performed for the camera. The politicians were inside talking politics. Some of them slipped away. One man fell on the ground and said Vande Mataram many times even as the police dragged him away in the police van, to drop him off at Ramlila Maidan, the legal site for protest.

Images from Tehelka.
Some of this material has been used in my stories in Tehelka.

2011-07-10T00:13:00.001+05:30

We are making heavenly smelling basil pesto. I actually want to grow
up into someone who can pluck basil and coriander from the garden and
dunk into food.

Of Butter Chicken and Co

2011-06-26T17:35:00.001+05:30

I have noticed a rather worrying trend in the South and especially in Tamil Nadu. Dravidian Movement, Tamil pride apart, everyone on the street in Chennai seemed to be ready to demonstrate their knowledge of Hindi. The best indication of the North Indianization of the South- (apart from the extra glittered Kanjeevaram sarees) is food. To me, food is a metaphor for many things. When we went to Pondicherry (this was more than seven months ago), we stayed in a mid range business hotel. I am a fan of hotels like this - the clean bathrooms and the anonymous decor that brings us - the guests into central focus.

However, their menu had only one South Indian dish on the menu - Chicken Chettinad, which in any case is a mainstream Lajpat Nagar dish. But since, I had to make use of being in the south, I was always keeping a look out for authentic food.The dosa in the Chennai bus stop can for instance put Sagar Ratna out of business in one day. Anyhow, so I wanted to try real Chettinad food. When I was growing up, I had a cook from Chettinad. My brother would (in his endless cruelty) point out to her birds from books like Birding in North Carolina and she, who has never left South India, claim to have eaten all of them. She was in general, an interesting character. For example, when she was a child she said she had been scared that crows would steal her breasts away....but I digress.

Chettinad food, like most well intention-ed cuisines of the world offers little to the vegetarian and yet I, the lover of Korean Bimbimbap and the braverer of Naga restarants persevere. The typical dishes include Roast Rabbit, the spicy Egg Curry, Kothu Paratha- mashed up Paratha seasoned with onion, tomatoes and spices with the option of meat, etc.

So, we went to Anjappar, a chain of Chettinad restaurants that I have been familiar with since college in Chennai.

Deeply excited, I settled into the musty smelling room. I went through the menu and with great difficulty settled on a few dishes I could try, prepared to over order because it would be months before I was back in the south.

"What is available?," I asked the waiter. " Naan, Fried Rice, Paneer," he said.

Now, you don't spend FIVE hours (despite my penchant for exaggeration, I don't plead guilty) convincing a European to try spicy South Indian "water dal" and then go to Anjappar and order Paneer Butter Masala. That would be loss of self respect.I walked out.

Only to be faced with another buffet for which I paid the whole price to ignore the naan and the biryani to eat Rasam Sadam and Chilly Egg. And so, in any case this North Indianization of the South is something I fear. Homogenization of cultures to adhere to the idea of India which is artificial. Just like in most Bollywood movies, the characters are Punjabi or they have no specific culture but in some odd generic way, are mildly relatable to everyone. In any case, perhaps it's just easier to pack a kathi roll than rasam sadam and convenient packaging makes life simpler.

A woman in Louisiana can pee in peace.

2011-06-21T14:49:00.001+05:30

I was reading this and remembered in retrospect how a conversation
I had in 2008 was so surreal. It was with a woman who had sold her kidneys for

Rs.40,000 to a middle man who would then make sure it was implanted in an American woman.

Yes, true. The details evade me now but it was in a slum on the outskirts of Chennai. It was hot and dusty and we were under pressure to put out a piece for the college Television bulletin that no one watched. The women fussed over my North eastern companion because she is light skinned. We were pointed to the house of the woman who sold her kidneys. There was a DVD Player, a TV and my horrified journalism student mind was thinking, "Damn, the kidneys paid for this." The family was not exceptionally poor by the standards of their community. The woman, lets call her Revati sold the fish that her husband, lets call him Gopal caught. The tsunami had changed their fortunes because they were shifted to apartment buildings far away from the sea. They still got by but the offer of money for kidneys just seemed too lucrative to ignore. And now a woman somewhere in (say) Louisiana can pee in peace.

The fanatic who eats like a rabbit.

2011-06-12T10:43:00.001+05:30

Being a vegetarian is like having to live in a cauldron full of defences - that you need to squirt frequently in order to eat your spinach cannelloni in peace or hold on to your love for Thayir Sadam. You need to constantly reassure people that the reason you hate shrimp undertones in your Vegetables in Hot and Sweet Sauce is not because your are a Brahminical - ( and also, muslim hating, purity obsessed, superior thinking-simultaneously uncool, non-macho) piece of shit. Or *admit* that you are hypocritical because even as you type this the bacteria on your keyboard are being butchered to be mass produced on my fingers. Or explain that it's possible to *dislike* meat.

For the record, I am not even bramhin to be brahminical. See, I am not even sure how it's spelt.

Anyhow, this was merely context for my visit to Nagaland Kitchen recently in Green Park, Delhi. A, B and C had thier plates full with pig and fermented rajma, fish and smoked fish chutney. I had to order the only vegetarian thing on the Naga food menu (I don't want to go to a Naga restaurant and order American Chopseuy no). Mustard leaves and beans in boiled water without salt. I had it with Akhuni chutney- spicy and fermented-y. I am usually a fan of light dishes like this where you can actually taste the vegetables but this meal is best had if you are running a temperature.

The deadline to kill a river.

2011-06-07T21:08:00.001+05:30

My hair still has knots from the sea breeze. And my shoes have sand in them. How can the pile of rubble that claims to be my life in Delhi compare.

Drama aside, I have just returned from Goa. I love Delhi, don't get me wrong. But everytime, you leave Delhi and Bombay, and especially when you go to a place like Goa, there is a palpable softness - to life and to people. This time I experienced a vastly different Goa than before. My previous trips, to contextualise this consisted of general alcoholic debauchery and consequently I have very hazy memories of them. To digress and indulge a realisation I just had, the older I grow the more sensible and staid my trips become. From absolute debauched to quiet and romantic and finally more reflective.

This time, we were away from the beaches in Fontanhas, a quiet and colourful ex Portugese colony in Goa. It was filled with lovely yellow and blue houses, white chapels, converted art galleries, the works. The thing is none of these were overly commoditized unlike in Pondicherry were the one small (mostly) street is over Frenched. The Alliance Francaise has a menu only in French. This made me a bit nauseous especially when teamed with all the emotionally exhausting memories, spaces of life I'd rather not go back to.

In the case of Goa, the blessed green land where laissez faire is legitimate however, my memories (or the gaps in memories) are always sparkling. I love the intense red (yummy red earth) of the laterite, the grey splash of the sea, and the green that spreads like a disease in the monsoon. Like my friend Ablong says, you can't leave anything out of the fridge in Goa for more than five minutes- it would catch moss/fungus.

And then there are the mountains sold to DLF. Virgin mountains become the choicest brides to strip for open cast mines. And fields have been bookmarked to build malls. Yes, glass walled malls in Goa can only be conceived of by people with aesthetic cancer. Miners have stationed their private yachts on the Mandovi river. SESA Goa and DLF can have a big party but I truly had a heart sinky feeling.

This was made worse by my brother's Goan friend A who while driving through Goa would casually point out to a whole range of hills and say 'Oh, these are sold to DLF' etc. But knowledgeable as he was, each green range became a vision of

a Select City Walk future. That is my biggest fear about new India. It is spreading like a monster, buying off Environmental Impact Assessment Reports on the way and can take you by surprise. In places where no one has heard off EIAs, the picture is even worse. On a recent trip to Anoopshahr, UP where I lived over a year ago, I used to take boat rides on the Ganges. The river there is a far cry from Varanasi's fecal possibilities. Was actually. In just over a year, construction projects have started on the bank. Ancient temples have new brick additions. (Aesthetic cancer reappears).

And it takes only a year to destroy a river.

To let a cat in.

2011-05-17T23:15:00.001+05:30

When it comes to killing creatures that are inconvenient to us, our ethics melt as easily as the electric fly zappers melt flies.

My surreal problem of the week is that of bees. Four of them have been flying in my apartment all evening and I have been running. One was sinisterly perched under the cane table, another was standing guard on the door knob determined not to let its prisoner out. Another was writhing on the floor, prompting me to throw the book Chettinad Kitchen (of which not even one recipe has been tried) at it. PP however came and killed them all. PP is gay. I wish the landlords would realise he is not my boyfriend. But this brings me to the main purpose of men.

I remember a scene in this movie that I saw 10 years ago. The woman is suddenly widowed. I remember a line " I don't want to want." And then I remember that a mother (rat) gives birth to babies in the woman's house. She is traumatised by this scene. She doesn't want to have anything to do with the killing and yet she is irked by their presence.She lets a cat in finally.

pleasure is a thing, that also needs accomplishing

2011-05-15T14:48:00.001+05:30

The Word

  Down near the bottom  of the crossed-out list  of things you have to do today,   between "green thread"  and "broccoli" you find  that you have penciled "sunlight."   Resting on the page, the word  is as beautiful, it touches you  as if you had a friend   and sunlight were a present  he had sent you from some place distant  as this morning -- to cheer you up,   and to remind you that,  among your duties, pleasure  is a thing,   that also needs accomplishing  Do you remember?  that time and light are kinds   of love, and love  is no less practical  than a coffee grinder   or a safe spare tire?  Tomorrow you may be utterly  without a clue   but today you get a telegram,  from the heart in exile  proclaiming that the kingdom   still exists,  the king and queen alive,  still speaking to their children,   - to any one among them  who can find the time,  to sit out in the sun and listen.

-- Tony Hoagland

of the men who are corn flakes body builders

2011-05-06T02:01:00.001+05:30

I cannot speak.

It's the dead of night and my insomniac self is typically awake. Sometimes, one rude gesture can cloud a whole evening. I think its worth the effort you need to make to be polite to people.

The keyboard of my brand new laptop has failed me, the only way I can type is by holding the function key down all the time and this is major finger gymming.

My ATM card split into two and I spent a whole week using one half of it (it worked) till I cellotaped it back together.

Reliance keeps calling me with fictional bills from 4 months back that I've paid but they insist so I don't pick up unknown numbers anymore, to my loss.

Skype has passed away on my laptop.

My other laptop only works when I stretch the charging cord really tight.

(All this sounds bizzare to you, you don't deserve this bad treatment, I know, I should have written about my theory on men and their google hypochondria and corn flakes body building habits)

Technology has debilitated me into facing these surreal problems.

I wish I was in the hills smelling pine cones and drinking chai, dressed in the cheap new clothes I bought today and staring at the mountains from the terrace.

Robot, don't dead puppy

2011-05-01T20:31:00.001+05:30

The Robot is reading this and should call.

What Maggi tells you about Stalkers!

2011-04-28T17:28:00.001+05:30

Most of us grew up on Maggi Noodles. We have many fond memories associated with it. In childhood, it was cold, comforting and in tiffin boxes. In boarding school, it was floating in spicy chilli garlic paste and was made in an improvised hot water from the tap way, not to mention eaten slyly without the feared House parent noticing. Now it is dinner after a long day at work, when your brain has been omleteered by the nitty gritties of commas..

In the late nineties, something very frustrating happened. Maggi Noodles had what they thought was a bright idea and changed flavours. My beloved Maggi Masala Noodles didn't taste the same for the next few years and I wondered why they would commit such a marketing disaster.

I was, even by then, used to brands responding with eager quickness to customer tastes and problems.

I am reading a book called Niche by social forecaster James Harkin. Largely, it talks about how our appetite for broad concepts (Super market, a "family movie" ) has vanished. How in this world, we cannot be all things to all people.

So, coming back to the question of Maggi and how it didn't respond to consumer needs, it makes me realise how our habits are always under scrutiny by larger forces. Data companies now have systems that process complex data about how we eat, think, shop and behave . One such system in the UK is Mosaic which maps people street by street house by house twice a year. At the end , it takes 21 million bits of data and divides it into 155 kind of people, 67 household types and 15 social categories.

This helps political parties and companies understand the way we think and the way we buy and in turn they respond with their marketing / election strategies to lubricate the course of consumerism.

Coming back to Maggi Noodles, in the early 2000s I think, the packet said 'Your favourite is back' and I jumped. Those long forgotten Maggi Masala tastes of my childhood were finally available again. I despised Maggi for having such a bad marketing department, one that took years to get rid of a flavour that no one likes. I expected them, in other words, at the age of 14 to have surveyed our private instant noodle eating habits.

And yet, it is disturbing this idea. A store like Westside entered India in the early 2000s. They had an audience in mind- women looking for practical, generic clothes. They had the typical 'ethnic' prints on Kurtas with a neckline sized spot of originality. They had plain Tshirts that every girl who had too much self respect to wear bling would buy. But now, the practical generic idea is a Westside person.

The definition deletes all the nuances the idea originally began with. Tide, the detergent in the UK has many many versions that play on ideas of Freshness, April, Spring, Clean etc. They are all essentially the same product dealing with the "image" of what people want to be.

The image, one feels, dominates everything in a world where you can manufacture it, and you are also encouraged to by buying a product that is associated with an image.

It is really a world of smoke and mirrors where it is impossible to separate image from substance.

I wonder sometimes with great fear indeed if politicians too are just images. Obama wrote a speech . ...aaaah next time but they are nooo

PS: there are soooo many ways to make Maggi. Most recent twist is to dunk in fresh parsley, coriander, chilli flakers and crushed garlic in the end.

Of flirtatious parakeets and cockroaches

2011-04-24T19:51:00.001+05:30

The best way to identify a "just arrived firang" in Paharganj is to look at their clothes. I saw a girl with grey jeans, and a tight grey sweatshirt, fresh from the funeral chic camouflage of Europe presumably.When you arrive in Goa, Paharganj,Dharamshala the works, you have to loosen up, shed your jeans and let go. I love that.

That's what we (Sou, PP, N and I) decided to this weekend, take our bags and go check into a hotel room at Paharganj to spend the weekend there. We are too broke and too busy to go on holiday but Paharganj is far enough from Delhi and the tranquil domesticity of CR Park. We arrived at 10 pm and checked into a dirty little hotel (Rs.500 for a four bed room) where there were about 15 cockroaches and the bathroom was for all practical purposes impossible to engage with. But the thing that I have finally realised as PP has been advising me to is that Paharganj is very dirty and cluttered but you just accept it and let yourself loose in the rush of chaos and muddled geographies and idealistic hippies with delusions about India.

Anyway, we went to My Bar, which is wonderful, really the Leopold's of Delhi and less racist too. It had a wonderful energy and cheap beer. Sometimes that's all you need in life.

We managed to sing loudly and not be heard and mostly shut the crowd out. After a while, Sou and I suddenly realised we were the only women in a huge bar full of

at least 60 customers so we thought it was best to leave. Then, we bought omlettes very matter of factly in the backdrop of a street fight. The night extended after we navigated the maze of streets romanticised in Dev D to reach our one night cheap hotel.

We woke up to have the loveliest long (3 hours) breakfast - potato cheese omelette, fried mushrooms, hash brown potato rendered in a delicious sczhewan meets mild masala style, toast and the best chai in Delhi, I had off. (At Diamond Cafe, you should go.)

After breakfast, I entered a leather store lured by the kinkiness of the outfit the mannequin was wearing and there I met Mithu, the darling of this weekend. He was a self confident and flirtatious (hanging around in a kinky leather store!!) male Alexandarine parakeet who climbed on to my shoulder as soon as I met him even kissing me on my lips. We chatted a while in garbled Hindi and parrot talk(mossheee frumples froootlooooooooooooooopssssss fruit fry) . Believe it or not, this has made my entire week. I have an abnormal love for parrot family birds, they are so bright, and soooooooooooo cute.

I also bought the beautiful huge white framed mirror of my dreams to assist my delusions of living in a villa near the Mediterranean somewhere.. I simply couldn't afford it but who cares, I can skip lunch for a while ..

And now I am back and filled with love for all of us mad chimpanzees and for you too.

Move here.

2011-04-20T02:12:00.001+05:30

It is the middle of the night. Mols is asleep. Sou has gone to get more food (even though we've eaten Somalia's share of global food produce tonight). And the three of us who have known each other for 15 years were talking about the same things, the people around us and in our lives have changed but its amazing how we are fundamentally so similar. And it's really something to have friendships like this, unchanged despite living in different cities, leading different lives for years now. Where you (at the risk of sounding cliched) pick up where you left off. I think that's a boarding school thing. We were young enough for midnight feasts in the bathroom - eating aloo bhujia with tomato ketchup. At other times, we squeezed ourselves into the already tiny lockers to bunk PT in the mornings. And lived through the seemingly small things that changed our lives - a theatre workshop in college, one farmhouse party as lost 18-year olds.. There's also Ablong in Goa now but he reluctantly murmured sentimentalities on the phone. My current project is to get everyone to move to Delhi.

(Please move to Delhi, thanks.)

Speedy generalizations ahead

2011-04-20T00:30:00.002+05:30

Since the Mumbai vs Delhi debate never goes out of fashion though we sometimes descend to excessive romanticization (I don't believe anything is excessive btw) I want to join in.

Recently, I was on the metro with Tulip and there were no free seats. We wanted to ask all the women there where they were headed to so we could plan our future seating according to when they got off. This is normal behaviour in Mumbai where three women can be in line for a small seat to accommodate the edge of your bum. The corporate Gurgaon girl we asked had a bemused expression when we asked her but we reserved our place anyway.

Bombay is a city where you constantly have to make reservations, you have to be prepared for life. And what is interesting is that this enterprising spirit colours everything about life in the city, prized lines are recycled for every customer. Two examples illustrate this best, one in dreamy Chor bazaar, where they sell Bollywood posters and beautiful (but inane) trinkets, framed coca cola ads from the 50s, kababs etc. The other in Bandra : altey, Bollywoody and nice boutiqued, also old Catholic housey.

(Are you screaming Susan George aka gossip girl?)

So, way back in 2008 when I was still young and fresh, I went to a little clothes store in Bandra. I picked up an eraser (grey) uniform shrug that I practically live in. So I tried it on and the gold chained shopkeeper said with great earnestness , "You will look like the sweetest girl in college tomorrow." Naive (old) me was more flattered about the college part than the sweet part. He thought I was a student. I love people who think I am a student so I loved him.

Now, I went back there in 2010 to buy another inane shirt. I tried it on and walked out of the trial room to get the discerning opinion of beloved bombay fag and the same shopkeeper goes " You will look like the sweetest girl in college tomorrow."

What's worse is that Susan George and Monu Singh Dhillon, my blackberry babes claimed to have gotten the same "compliment" in the same store!

Lets move away from the yuppiness of Bandra to the bustle of Chor bazaar. Chor Bazaar is very bit like Paharganj but kinder, more authentic and less aggressive and MUCH more charming. Show (my room mate) and I rabidly sought exoticism away from our corporate (media) jobs and we would often spend lots of money buying obscure photographs taken in Poland, Coke ads from the fifties and depressing novels among other things. In an attempt to make our staid suburban apartment more elegant, we thought about buying antiques. Like everything else in Bombay, even antiques are manufactured and brand new "1745 English Docks" plates are placed on them, as if some British John of the East India Company got it as part of his wife's dowry when it was actually manufactured in some Ghatkhopar sweatshop by Bihari migrant labourers.

So, Muhammad, the henna haired store owner lures me into the shop by telling me he's got the perfect thing for me. I don't remember any details about this antique but I remember that it had a Robert Frost quote inscribed on it. " The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."

I went back to the same market a couple of months later and he lured me in the exact same manner. "I have something for you that I just get a sense you'll like, " and offered me the same Robert Frost antique. (new piece)

Either he throws this at every self absorbed lost looking person who walks by or just at every person who walks by but the uniformity of this amazes me.

Delhi Daredevils

2011-04-18T01:00:00.001+05:30

On my way to an awesome new Nepali restaurant I saw an old Maruti Esteem parked at the corner of the road.

Two big men had gotten off and when I saw them, there were BEATING up a paapa looking nubile North Eastern boy who had been driving a large lorry. He was wearing a grey vest and shorts. The men were standing on the road and punching him even as he just took it quietly.

They were just continuously beating him up. Cars passed by uncaring.

Can we just deconstruct this for a second? Why is this not the most abnormal thing in the world? To casually be beating up someone on a Sunday evening. Someone defenseless? Even if he had hit their car, they could take him to the police station, respond in a less savage way.

I have surely seen more men beating up men in my one year in Delhi than in the other (more than two decades) of my life.

PS: I feel like the IPL team names have some sort of a marketing angle to it. This is pure speculation and half joke of course. But Delhi daredevils- because being macho seems to be the driving force of this city. Hmmm What else? Chennai super Kings. It's hard to explain but it's very Chennai, the whole Super King, Super Hero, Rajnikanth business. Bangaloreans want to be considered individualistic and be Royal Challengers. And Mumbai - we are all migrants and we are all Indian as long as we are united by the corporate world.

Quotes from here and there

2011-04-13T13:14:00.001+05:30

A woman's trauma is much more than a launchpad for male machismo.

How can I stifle the enormity of all that I feel into an airport sentence. I'd rather not say anything at all.

Poetry is against the interests of capitalism.

I am hungry.

2011-04-11T22:21:00.002+05:30

I am the sort of person who eats only for pleasure, I have realized. Today, for instance, the average monstrous Monday. I have to do a checklist of all that I have eaten.

3 cups of tea

1 cup of coffee (75 f****** Rupees)

1 bar of snickers (Three people have gifted me chocolate in the last week, exquisite lindt type also, a friend has a job there, that would really be my dream job.)

3 biscuits

8 Gudang Garams.

But I am not hungry and feel no need to eat instant noodles at home.

This is awfully unhealthy, I know and yes , I am sure I am not on a diet and never will be. Food is pretty much what matters to me most in the world though my fine dining life has been on a decline since December due to multiple reasons.

However, while I wait at office for my pages to be cleared, I will fantasize about some of the best meals of my life. No, that is way too much digging into the past, best meals of recent times is better.

1) Pasta tossed with shit from the kitchen : The best meals in life are really the simplest ones- an oily, spicy, red blood fest is not my idea of a culinary orgasm. SO, pasta with crushed garlic, olive oil and chilli flakes. So simple, and so flavourful and comforting.

2)On days when your food philosophies and Sattvik ideals simply don't cut it for you,contradict yourself and head to the CR park market and indulge in cheap Indian chinese food - there is nothing more comforting to a dejected soul than MSG laden fried rice, and manchurian floating in come consistency sauce. (Forgive my reference, I am not this vulgar, it is copied.) Your stress is counterbalanced by the assault of flavours.

3)Rajasthani Thali at Dilli Haat - I believed till pretty recently that everything in DH tastes like wet cardboard but this home style thali was a pleasant surprise. Since Rajasthan is a desert and nothing fresh grows there, these dudes have had to be real innovative with just besan, onion, cauliflower and such desert substances. Yet, the soft gheefied roties, the subtle yellow dal, the besan ki sabji and the cauliflower pickle. Beauty.

4)Yesterday, I was as usual craving for cheap and exotic food. It's been a while since I went to a dirty place to eat because I am constantly under pressure to worry about other people's gastronomic fragilities. (wait, it's been one year.)However, we went to this rundown basement dhaba in Green Park. ("Hi, I am cholera, how are you." - from somewhere, don't remember.). Gross. Insects on the floor, OCD on overdrive. And yet, I decided as I have learnt now to suspend disgust, I did and the flavourful palak and undoubtedly the tandoori roti baked with sweat and (godknowswhatelse) tasted exotic, and cheap. After these soulless food that South Delhi restaurants serve- (overpriced tex mex with,horrors, paneer, it's really divine to find character.

5)Talking of malls, it's not always mediocre-globalized , a genre of food I have begin to despise. The Food Chowk at Select City walk offers some interesting street food and regional food possibilities. The Maharashtra stall offers light, peanuty crunchy, healthy sabudana khichdi and exciting Maharashtrian treats like Jhunka Bhakar and pithle which reminds me of lovely Bombay.

6) What truly takes the cake though is an unlikely dish. Naresh Cafe in despicable Paharganj is a small bathroom sized shack that serves Japanese food. In fact, PP wrote about it for first city,a dish called Okura with egg. The editor snobbishly spilled red ink on 'okura' changing it to 'okra'. PP insisted it was an exotic Japanese dish. Anyhow, when I was actually there, and I ordered it I discovered it was good old bhindi after all. The point is, its just boiled bhindi with plain rice and fried egg over it. So simple and so good and such an unlikely combination. Plain rice offers so many possibilities, good with just fried egg, or blanched spinach and salt.

Anyway, so I am at office, fantasizing, as mentioned before, thinking of all the food I want to eat and can't. IF after 12 hours of work, I can think about food with such elaborate desire, I

should go to a therapist.

Hungry.

now.

Edit: I am home, and I ate instant noodles.

Yesterday, I saw the love of my life

2011-04-07T20:52:00.001+05:30

Arundhati Roy. She is so beautiful, I simply couldn't take my eyes off her at the" Free Binayak Sen" cultural event at Alliance Francaise yest.

I know it keeps going in and out of fashion to love her but I have consistently admired her.

Her poem at the end of the talk disappointed me, it didn't have her usual magical words and she sounded loose. (There is democracy in Greater Kailash but not at Dantewada.)

And of course, she thinks the nuclear bomb is the heart of whiteness and one feels paaapa for all those neutral countries out there, yet. Love is pretty blind no.

Deep fried neurons

2011-04-05T01:10:00.000+05:30

Can this neural omleteering and nocturnality please end?

Quotes from sleepovers past.

2011-04-03T10:34:00.002+05:30

Every morning begins with an illogical superlative.

Vanity needs patience.

Some are pahadi phool's :

How can you be soft and sensitive when you say things like CHEERIO

Do I really talk about Madame Bovary when I am drunk?

How is life? Is it elsewhere?

The whole world exploits you. You are the most exploitable person I know.

(Thanks, works for my self esteem..)

also,

Real life is so difficult after Planet Romeo.

History

2011-04-02T17:55:00.001+05:30

History might be being made now, in pouring rain, India might lift the world cup after 28 years. All the hopes I had as a gawky teenager for that, before cricket left my life, might be fulfilled or so do

the orgiastic screams from my neighbours' balconies suggests. But I don't know when the match began and as a storm brews outside, I sit here eating chips and salsa comforting a gay boy about an impending pimple. My domestic help's daughter is sleeping on the mattress below. If there are fireworks outside, I will know. heh.

RIDICS

2011-03-30T22:54:00.001+05:30

OMG this city just gets more an more ridiculous, the only way I found out India won the match is because there are firecrackers all over fucking town, leaking in to my living room through the balcony. The food delivery guy was shocked that we weren't watching the match and kindly told us the score. Even S's mom calls only after the match to find out how our Nepali dinner cooking worked. (Very well)

And pleeeease. Today was that wonderful rain holiday I have been waiting for, for years, spent all day at home.

2011-03-30T13:31:00.004+05:30

The last time I went to a toy store, before yesterday, was at Walden in Hyderabad in about 1995. To me, it was the most fascinating store, one that stored all the wonders of my childhood, pretty pencil cases, coffee table books on parrots, Enid Blytons, later Sweet Valley and Agatha Christie and the other shit I read then. (Although, I never read Mills & Boon, was Cynical From The Begining Girl). The section I liked best was the toys section, I loved the board games. Cluedo was my favourite then and a little earlier in my childhood, I loved those baby sized blonde haired, blue eyed dolls (for the lack of brown skinned, brown eyed dolls which, after all these years, are still not available, commercially. Why?). I remember my parents gifting me one of those dolls that costed Rs.700, then a HUGE amount. I remained eternally grateful till my older brother took a Reynold's ball point pen and wrote Count of Dracula and drew skulls all over her pretty peachy face. Every girl who grows up with an older brother is secretly traumatized for life. Now, a toy car, costs Rs.20,000 - one way trip to Europe, man!

The toy stores at the Select City (et al malls) scandalized me and the mall itself inspires a continuous cynical, satirical commentary in my head. My friends would say its bitterness at my inability to afford everything there. But they know that there is never a co-relation between what I can afford and what I buy.
I am the real consumerism's love child. I digress.

When I was a child, I was always disappointed that toys didn't mimic real life. A doctor's trolley was never pink in real life. I was lucky enough to have a white one with aluminium foil lined instruments- a choice I made over the pink one. That has changed. Now, there are toy food cans, toy hair dryers, toy barbecue sets, picnic-in-the-park sets, shopping trolleys and they are different degrees of realistic, and marketed that way. Everything I would have liked to have as a child, but never could have imagined seeing in a toy shop.

Except and I must bring in the pedantic feminism here, the barbies. Yes, there is the software engineer barbie with the pink laptop, the TV journalist barbie with skin like she has no stressful job, but then there are the homie barbies which make me sick. They sit daintily skirted at the edge of chairs. One even had a comic dialogue think popping out of her blonde head saying "Oh no, Ken is late again." (So, I'll wait here prettily till he comes back.)

There are dolls that sneeze and need looking after with fake tissues, they say mama and they cry and I recently learned that there are breastfeeding dolls.

I wonder if it is an inane question to ask: by why are there no father dolls? Let's try offering some bizzare explanations. Men's instincts tell them to spread their seed, not to nurture its consequences so there is no need to tap into "paternal instinct". Little boys like guns, little girls want to be just like their mamas. I don't know, really, if it's too basic a question to ask, or even a question to ask.

If you are politically correct, animal loving, technology retarded, mildly respectful of women, persongoing into a toy shop is like jumping bang into a future where you'll instantly be regarded as uncool. Sample this: a hunting game that you plug to your TV to shoot deer. The ad says "Catch the best that Mother Nature has to offer."
It also has a disclaimer: mild violence and crude humour.

Then there's the toy shaver, with real foam and fake blades that can make little Rahul feel macho. Rs.499.
Then there are the alien space ships, battery operated, to be assembled by (8+) children, the complexity of which made the waistcoated hag fag and I shudder. Was the world overtaking our ability to comprehend it?

On one hand, toys are mimicking the real world's complexity in subjectively ''healthy'' ways. There are toys that harness wind energy to work a robot, toys that you can perform medical surgery on.I went to visit my niece in England sometime back and she had one of those. Five years old, she lived in a room that was entirely pink- bed, wardrobe, linen, frocks, tennis clothes everything. (The mother care store in Delhi said above the "girls clothes section"- "colours of the season and of course, pink." On the other hand, it worried me, the passiveness that is passively encouraged in young girls. At 5, she was already so self conscious and positively obsessed with how she looked. She wanted to use make up. (I still don't know how to.) Going to tennis class was not about the tennis class but about the image of it, the pink pants, the huggie goodbyes, the prospect of getting sweets after. I wonder if I am being harsh but obviously this is more a comment on the society she is in.

There is another friend of mine, Nathan, aged 4, who knew the Star Wars by heart and played fake gun games with a very bewildered me all summer, that year. I don't remember all those characters from the movies he constantly referred to but I remember he wouldn't let me be a leader because " I am a girl." :)

CQ's mother, being American feminist Wiccan and all this believed that boys should play with dolls and made sure her son did.
Will women fall in love with men who have played with dolls and are in touch with their feelings? Not women who have been conditioned to expect fake strength from a man,anyway, right?

So, it starts with toys, our first real playmates, who engineer this constructed conditioning of how we are supposed to be. MY parents mostly disapproved of Barbie dolls and my barbies came as gifts although they once agreed to buy me the "School Going Skipper", so I didn't die failing to look like one. But the point, is we need to seriously think about some basic things that go unquestioned about toys. Why is a toy guy,(Freudian slip..I meant toy gun), a toy?

Rhododendron Wine

2011-03-27T11:25:00.000+05:30

It's a sunday after a rhododendron wine night, Pahadi Phool is making fun of my too-loose-new dress. N is putting on make up in the bathroom and ish is sleeping. Sou ditched, of course. PP and I watched The Hours the other day and have been throwing away lines from it since, even though he watched it for the 36th time. I apologize for my previous post, it was completely random. I should get up and make chai but then Sunday morning will begin and then end as consequence.

Aiyoooo I went (too late) for a Japanese festival with M and we felt totally lost in a sea of Japanese.Before that she convinced my to go to TGIF where they raped my sensibilities by throwing chunks of raw unwashed carrot and half heartedly steamed Zucchini in my pasta. I know I am vegetarian but there is really no need to do this to me. I had to make a fuss and order some generic tex-mex thing that they always do well.

And then again I went with her to a Francophone festival at alliance where she quickly got entrapped in a speaking to some Congolese men, when we left out, unwanted and linguistically challenged went to fantasize about Swiss country bread in the corner- the only true highlight. There is a domestic dispute about who will make coffee going on..pp has made me breakfast. I must begin my Sunday.

Relative.

2011-03-22T10:47:00.001+05:30

Even as I hit a relative rock bottom, the world is violently revealing a latent acaocalypse. I am so caught up with my own life that I can't even fathom the enormity of all that is happening in Libya and Egypt and Japan and I just want to actually sit and think and write but I must be rational and practical and try touching base with people I should interview today. In a way, as my roommate says, (the relative rockbottom, it's got to be relative when 18,000 people are dead in Japan) is a turning point in your life in a city. In a way it's true, you are comfortable enough in it to stop protecting yourself and just give in.

I guess.

Fashion Show, watched through a blackberry.

2011-03-17T20:44:00.007+05:30

Hi
The blackberry zoomed in and out. Bosom/legs/bosom/legs. We were watching a prelude to the Wills Lifestye India Fashion (WIFW) Week standing behind tall men. Young designers showed their work in front of judges which included designers Namrata Joshipura and Rohit Gandhi. The clothes alternated between banal, fabulously futuristic and even burqa inspired. (Shashank Singh said he was saddened by burqa bans in cruel Europe and is kindly making the burqa glamorous, yet practical.) Rohit Gandhi tittered away after telling us that

Aishwarya Rai could do with more of his clothes. (Read: Diplomacy on her fashion sense.) Namrata Joshipura told us about her upcoming collection at WIFW making us promise it's a Tehelka secret (one that's kept apparently) She was more scathing than her counterpart judge and begged to redress India's fashion grievance : Rakhi Sawant.

Warmly,
Y

2011-03-15T19:32:00.001+05:30

Can I please take a vacation from my mind?

"Aap itni Bhakt ho"/ "Purse key neeche kya hain madam"

2011-03-12T17:07:00.002+05:30

The weirdest thing happened to me today.I had to go to South Extension to pick up furniture from a friend who is moving out of Delhi. So I ordered a tempo - they reached my friend's place and waited till I got there by an auto.

. (It didn't even occur to me that an excursion like this could be unsafe.) When I reached, they had already loaded all the furniture. The light skinned, light eyed driver of the tempo offered me the front seat. I got on, and had planned to come back in the tempo anyway. He was very friendly initially and I made polite conversation. Although, his tone was much more respectful on the phone - as if he had thought I was an older woman. He asked where I was from and if I was married. I didn't want him to think that I was an outsider so I just said that I have been living in Delhi for many years.He insisted on knowing where I was actually from so I told him

Everytime there was a traffic signal, his gaze was fixed on me in the most unnerving manner possible. I began to get very nervous and resorted to using my favourite security blanket - texting. I then became busy having an existential conversation (on sms) about being lost in life and scared and all this quarter life crisis kind of thing with a friend in Bombay,

He then looked at me and asked " Purse key neeche kya hain madam." He might as well have been asking "T shirt key peeche kya hai madam", seriously, that's how his tone was. (What is under your purse, madam?/What is under your Tshirt madam.) So, I usually carry a bag with me but today I just carried my wallet and trust me to be foolish (why is it foolish?), a pack of cigarettes.I quickly lied to him that it was my brother's. He insisted with a sly, flirtatious smile " Aap hi peethe ho" I remained firm that the cigarettes were my brother's.He was curious to know if my brother lived in Delhi. He initiated a long conversation trying to establish how this "cousin brother" was related to me. And then he told me about a girl from NIFT who smoked ganja in her Hauz Khas flat, and how he has seen girls smoke with his own eyes. I looked suitably shocked.

By then, I had already told him that I live with my sisters and that there was a joint family living below us who were also family friends. (I have people to protect me.)

And then, every time there was a traffic signal or we were stuck in a traffic jam (Bloody Nehru Place), he started masturbating. He didn't take his pants off or anything but he kept looking at me and masturbating. I freaked out. On one hand, I wanted to yell at him but on the other I was petrified because here I was, in his tempo, and there were two other men sitting behind so even though this is broad daylight Delhi, newspapers have led me to believe that anything can happen. And then I made a mental list of all the people I could call but I felt really chicken to call someone because was I just
overreacting? By the time someone reaches, he would have stopped and I'd have been home - I was thinking.

So, I called another male friend, again in Bombay, and launched into a conversation pretending he was my brother who was waiting for me at my place. (Also the silly thought in my head was to tell him that I am a journalist and he can't mess with me. But as if being a journalist means anything..hahaha)He continued masturbating, but stopped after a while, hopefully in response to my new found aggressive voice.

When I reached home, I wanted to ask my landlord to come up with me. The thought of him moving the bed into my bedroom made me feel extremely violated, however illogical this may sound to you. So, he came up to the third floor. My landlords have an elaborately done up pooja room next to my house. The moment he saw the pooja room, he said " Haaaw, Aap itni bhakt ho". And seriously, there was an expression of shame on his face. As if he in someway violated a good girl, not one who carried cigarettes under her purse. Like he performed a surgery on the wrong eye.He then graciously said, he was leaving. (He didn't enter my house and let the other men take the stuff in.)

So, what should I have done. Insisted the cigarettes are mine, yelled back at him and taken the risk? Or just tortured myself through the ride. And even if he hadn't done anything "major", was I over -reacting because I felt so violated. Well, I can't deny it - that I was but what bothers me the most is the fact that I am even questioning this. Especially after being so involved in this.

I can't stop wondering why this happens to me all the time. The last time my room mate and I shifted, it was totally fine.

And just for the record, I was wearing blue jeans and a loose pink Tshirt.

Falling in love with the wrong man is ...

2011-03-10T17:56:00.001+05:30

Swara Bhaskar ( google her, she did a bit in Tanu weds Manu) says in a little Tehelka interview that "acting in bollywood is like falling in love with the wrong man...it might ruin your life but then "...you can't deal with the what if feeling..

A date with myself

2011-03-05T15:58:00.002+05:30

I have a date with myself, as in I am on it right now looking out through glass walls at scyscrapers on Barakhamba road bathed in benevolent Spring sunshine. Ever since I stopped being a carefree college student , which is way back in 2007, I have accumulated a toxic collection of fantasies of things I want to do on weekends. Invariably, these fantasies only involve myself - as self obsessed as I am. One of these was to spend a whole day in a book store with no agenda at all. It would be a quaint book store with a cafe attached with me alternating between reading parts of random books and sitting on my laptop and drinking coffee. The funny thing is, in all these years I haven't done it even once so here I am at the Oxford Book Store at CP. (I am the sort of crazy person who will make such a long journey to do this.) Unfortunately, and predictable my photon isn't working so I don't anymore see the point my indulging my luxurious attempt with having two internet connections- one wifi and one photon given that I do such things once in four years.

There are more things like this such as going for picnics, having wine nights at home etc etc.

So yes, I am in the crowded midst of a book store that has an ongoing 80% off sale. The people behind me are covering that nowadays dreaded topic of who is getting married. I am sort of still in denial of the fact that people my age are old enough to get married It can't be, really.

Yesterday CQ tried calling me a feminist so I told him I am not. I found myself performing laproscopy on a light bulb recently. So, to put it more simply, I fixed a light bulb and felt proud about it. And then, I felt so ashamed that a twenty something woman should feel proud about achieving a normal thing such as fixing a light bulb. To be fair to me, the socket was reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally high up so, yes, I was sort of performing laproscopy- I couldn't see what I was doing, only guess. The point is I wrote a long introspective mail that started with the light bulb and went to all sorts of topics. So there, that, according to CQ is what defines a feminist. Feeling proud of fixing a light bulb, then feeling ashamed and then writing an introspective piece about it.

The perils of the PR person

2011-03-04T15:19:00.001+05:30

The perils of having PR people sitting around to intimidate and channel conversations is something anyone who has vaguely worked in media will know. So, yesterday, I went and the executive chef of a very well known international hotel chain.

It was three pm and I found myself in a largely empty expanse of space called the main restaurant.

The chef was seated, opposite to two pr professionals, one in a suit, and the other in makeshift work clothes, jeans, an over sized top and chunky silver watch. I sat next to the chef who was ready with his leather planner, with notes jotted down with ball point pen. In this extremely hostile environment, I tried my best to break the ice, speak about the world cup - clearly, for me to do that is an act of desperation. I hinted to the two PR women that it wasn't necessary for them to take notes on our meeting.

They didn't take the hint and i continued to ask questions to the chef but he was so nervous that he repeated the same three points throughout the interview, no matter what question I asked. Yes, so people are looking to eat something new, Avant garde Indian cuisine is the next best thing and people want their food to be well presented.

I asked him generic questions like what his favourite restaurants were and I sensed it was taboo for him to utter the names of the competition. He would evade my very basic asked out of fascination rather than any form of advertorial obligation to their competition (I mean clearly, I wans't going to write a PR piece on the hotel, what did they think.)

So this poor, little man was at the mercy of stares from the two women staring directly at him and the other mercilessly throwing questions, the answers for some of which he read out. He fumbled throughout. w

The point is that I got nothing out of this interview, he probably is thinking now about the hundreds of things he could have said. After the conversation, I asked if I could see the kitchen. They agreed and asked me to give them five minutes. I waited and after ten odd minutes they told me they had gotten the open kitchen ready for me. The open kitchen is well, an open kitchen that all guests can see anyway. I asked them why I can't see the kitchen but they had no real answer except that apparently it was off limits to outsiders. The funny thing is that just ten minutes ago they had agreed, probably too zapped and not ready with a PR strategy to refuse my offer. It's not like I have illusions about how clean or non clean fancy kitchens are but that is a different story.

What exasperates me is that as it is , it was hard to get this guy to be comfortable and it is completely impossible to do an interview with someone who doesn't in some sense become your friend by the end of it.

The chapters of procrastination

2011-02-27T23:55:00.001+05:30

I will listen to one song, drink one cup of tea, light one candle, clean up my room, wash my dishes,

read one magazine article, brood about some autumnal song, try on one top, check facebook once,

say hi to C, install antivirus and then I promise, I'll get to doing what I must. Maybe I can wake up in the morning to do it.

Sees,Shoots and Leaves

2011-02-24T21:59:00.002+05:30

A narrow road by Delhi’s Mehrauli jungle will lead you up the stairs into Raghu Rai’s haphazard office. Haphazard, till you enter the serenity of his room where white window panes frame an endless expanse of green. Uninterrupted by billboards, artificiality and performance. Much like his photographs, you think. Rai ,69, is dressed in a black t-shirt over which he wears a red woollen kaftan. Behind his desk hang some of the old portraits he has included in his new book The Indians- Portraits From My Album that explores the history of portraiture in India and includes iconic portraits by Rai and photographers like Raja Deen Dayal.
Rai had been a full time photo journalist for 12 years in the sixties and seventies. He documented the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, photographed Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa among other people. There is no residue of the mad rush of journalism about him today. There is a gentleness and stillness to him which is perhaps what allows for his frame to be real and his subject free.

Talking to Rai will convince you that portraiture is half internal process, the photographer’s attitude and half the sharpening of intuition. (“You allow the supreme and the supernatural to enter you.” The digital revolution or the romantic magic of film are a mere backdrop to this relationship.
“Intutive moments come and disappear like a nudge People don’t notice,” he says, nudging the air gently, suddenly and beaming. To Rai, the portrait should capture the physical , mental and spiritual entirety of the person.“You have to be patient, you have to be sensitive, quick and yet gentle enough for the person to reveal.”
His image of Faiz Ahmed Faiz has that hazy poetic quality to it; his image of MS Subbulakshmi is infused with an other worldly intensity having caught her at an opportune musical crescendo. The photograph of former Pakistani president Zia Ul Haq is almost caricature like in its portrayal of tyranny. Now Zia was a man who intensely believed in himself and could enrapture anyone with his speeches. “Unlike a writer, As a photographer, you don’t listen at all; you just connect to the person’s energy.”
And sometimes even Raghu Rai uses tricks. Notice the stern look on Satyajit Ray’s face. It was taken when Rai told Ray he was leaving. As soon as the film maker turned around with that strong expression in his eyes, Rai was ready with camera to capture that moment.
Rai allows the subject to have a direct relationship with the camera, to be in his element. Photographer Dayanita Singh once said “photography is not the truth.” Suggest this to Rai and he bursts out laughing, dismissing it, insisting that it is too dramatic a statement for him. “I am nobody to make a truthful statement about somebody let them make their own statement,” he offers.
By now, the green outside glimmers in the cool February rain that will soon end winter. Peacocks and parakeets compete for stage space in the sky. Rai insists we stop talking about him and shifts attention to the first half of the book- portraits from 1855 to 1965.
“People say these old portraits or like other old portraits but that is not true”, he says, marvelling at the technical brilliance despite the pre digital age
This section , with a preface by Rai reveal the coloniser’s gaze on the early portraits that gradually transforming into subject’s revealing a self confidence and an aspiration for grandiosity over the years. The cold gaze of the men and women in Bourne and Sheperd’s pictures melts steadily into a warm presence in front of an Indian photographer.
The studio tricks- Raja Sawai Man Singh being blessed by gods, smoke denoting a family tree, individual portraits of the Maharajas of various Indian states superimposed against a palace in Jaipur with a digital precision, the works. One can also trace the strong influence of painting in the early works.

The long exposure time required at the time determined the mood of those photographs. “Everybody is like this (demonstrating an uptight look) with riveted eyes you know. You can hold your breath but all those emotions coming and going in your eyes intensifies your look,” says Rai. Rai’s new work picks up from there, to play with the past and expand it into the present, quite literally. The new series he is working on (the two colour pictures that are included are a “teaser”) plays with backdrops placed in the centre of the frame and “life” occupying its sides. He walks over to the window and picks up a print where women are posing in front of a scenic backdrop and outside it , there are various energies floating around, women at a handpump for example. It’s his way of including contemporary India into the template of the past.
Rai who uses digital as well as film is not one to be nostalgic about the past but to him the modern portrait is “fluent, quick but not so deep”. A fraction of a second is too little time to accommodate intensity and truth.
Photography has imbued a silence into Rai, an alertness and a seeking, not an intrusive seeking but a subtle, even playful one that will catch you unawares till you realise a picture is taken and a moment captured. His daughter calls and he says to her “baby, bacchu please don’t go out, you are still weak, but he is convinced by the end of the conversation to let her.

Rai is a follower of Guruji Maharaj but doesn’t call himself a spiritual person. It is like this, he tells you.
“Satyajit Ray’s early films had everything in them. When he started working out of his intellect, his films were better than ten others in Bombay but it didn’t have that extra spiritual magic, it had become planned. Unless the supernatural comes and plays a part and reveals itself, it is good and nice and informative. It is like the difference between making love and an intellectual orgasm.”

Rape

2011-02-23T14:20:00.000+05:30

The police arrested a 25-year-old man on Tuesday for allegedly raping a 19-year-old woman. The police said that the accused barged into the house of the victim while she was asleep and raped her. The incident took place in south Delhi's Dhaula Kuan area on February 19. This is the third such case i

n the area in the last four months.

According to the police, the victim - who works as a caretaker at a house in the area - was sleeping alone when the accused, Sanjay Kumar, barged into her room. The accused is the victim's neighbour.

In November 2010, a 30-year-old call centre employee from Mizoram was allegedly abducted by five men, when she alighted at Dhaula Kuan. The woman was raped in a pick-up truck and then dumped in Mangolpuri. The police have arrested all five accused.

In February this year, a drunkard in the Dhaula Kuan area allegedly molested a 25-year-old woman who works at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in the wee hours.

Meanwhile, the police said that in the present case, the woman had been living with her elder sister for the last few years. "The accused accosted the woman and then tried to be friends with her. When she refused, he wanted to take revenge," said a police officer on condition of anonymity.

The police said that on the night of November 19, the accused sneaked into the house of the victim and allegedly first threatened her and then raped her. On hearing the commotion, the victim's elder sister came out of her room. After that, the accused tried to flee the spot.

The police said they have nabbed the accused.

In a similar incident, a jilted lover has been found harassing a woman in the Satya Niketan area. The accused Rahul, 22, went to the office of the 20-year-old woman who works as a receptionist and threatened her.

"On February 17, the accused went to her office and tried to forcibly take her along with him," said a police officer. "A police constable nearby saw the whole incident and came to the rescue of the woman."

census

2011-02-22T11:38:00.000+05:30

The census came home today really early in the morning, had to groggily scream answers from my room as my room mate took over the proceedings.

We had to call ourselves Hindu because she said there is no section for 'Not practicing'. Also, she asked who is the head of the family. I don't know how to measure that. When the milk runs out whoever is more desperate for morning tea replaces it.

Where ever you go , an analysis follows

2011-02-21T00:12:00.001+05:30

I interviewed Raghu Rai the other day in his gorgeous office that has the view of the endless Mehrauli jungle.We talked about how photography is about capturing a moment.

It is about being intuitive, aware in a way that situations reveal themselves to you. In a way, it is to suspend the intellect, suspend conditioning and to be still.

I walked out of my house today and a monkey was sitting down with its trainer holding a plate in his hand. He looked so much like a naughty little child. And behind, one of the Nepali domestic helps (there are many on this road) was walking a black pug. The leashed pug was trying to get close to the monkey. This was the first sight I saw in the morning and it seemed like such a photograph. That was my first thought, the desire to capture it. Later, I questioned myself. Was it a gora impulse? Was I seeking drama?

Then I thought it was so bizarre, the need to analyze this perfectly innocuous and yet dramatic (!) sight.

No Sanctuary for Good Men

2011-02-20T16:54:00.001+05:30

Forest official Sanjiv Chaturvedi has been transferred 12 times in the last five years. He has been threatened, booked under false cases, illegally suspended and charge sheeted by the Congress government in Haryana. His personal life has been destroyed. Chaturvedi lives all alone in a house with bare shelves and walls. The next transfer is always imminent.

In April 2007, Chaturvedi was the Divisional Forest Officer in Kurukshetra. He exposed officials who without required permissions from the Supreme Court violated the Forest Conservation Act and The Wildlife Protection Act in constructing the Hisar Kurukshetra Canal through the Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary. At the time, the warden RD Jakati overruled him. Jakati is now the Director of the National Forest Academy. Chaturvedi however was warned by the Haryana government and subsequently transferred.

By the time the Wildlife Trust of India filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court's Centrally Empowered Committee (CEC), the court had no grounds of charging the accused because the forest had been denotified by then. The Haryana Government was let off with a Rs.4.5 crore fine that included private litigation fees.

In one of his postings at Fatehabad, the forest department was spending crores buying rare trees for a herbal park owned by the relatives of MLA Prahlad Singh Gillakhera, a powerful independent candidate close to Haryana's then forest minister Kiran Chaudhary. Chaturvedi halted the work only to receive a letter from the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest JK Rawat that stated Chaudhary's objections.

Someone from Gillakhera's office called Chaturvedi and threatened to "eliminate" him. Chaturvedi was suspended for indiscipline. He filed an RTI seeking reasons for suspension. The department refused stating that it will hamper investigation. The chief job description and the ticket to success in Haryana's forest department is to be blind to the gross environmental violations and to collectively cash in on the spoils. Chaturvedi consistently failed on both counts.

Chaturvedi appealed to the central government and finally his suspension was revoked. However, a fake FIR had been registered against him accusing him of criminal intimidation and stealing a Kachnar plant. Since then, to cover the illegality of the herbal park, it has been declared a protected forest. No one was punished except the man who exposed the crime.

Chaturvedi was kept without a posting for six months. In January 2008, he was finally posted as DFO at Jhajjar where he exposed a five crore rupees scam for fake plantations. He suspended nine forest officials and fired 40. Transfers and harassment followed.

Chaturvedi is an unassuming jovial man with no airs about him. His family says that he refused protection because it sends a signal out to the world that he is scared. He is matter of fact when he tells you that he cannot talk to the media because of his position in the government. He is today the Divisional Forest Officer for production in Haryana.

"What can I say on the phone, madam, I believe in karma. Whatever I have done, I have to pay the price for it and so does everyone else. My fight is an issue based one and it is futile if the process is not initiated against the guilty. Conviction is of course far away," he ends unwilling to continue the conversation.

The most important thing to him is "self accountability". He understands that external motivations are short lived. Yet, it is this awareness of self that drives him to fulfil his external obligation, to live up to what his role in the world expects of him.

To preserve the sanctity of Haryana's power corridors, its leaders decided to destroy Chaturvedi's personal life. His wife was convinced by unknown persons that he constantly sought transfers because he didn't want her staying with him. His in-laws were paid to slap a dowry

Since it is a non bailable offence, they thought they had hit a jackpot – one that could silence their only enemy.

In the next three years till the case reached closure and Chaturvedi won, his aged parents were traumatized by the legal battle. Simultaneously their son was moving from one obscure posting to another. For him, personally and professionally life was proving to be a nightmare. He divorced his wife and appealed to the central government.

Initially the central government wanted the state to respond on its own. Officials in the Haryana Forest Department would tell you that Haryana and Delhi are close especially when it comes to their shared vested interests. There is no explicit rule as to how the centre can intervene in this situation. As of January this year, President Pratibha Patil has called for the charge sheet against him to be quashed. This is the first such intervention by a president in independent India.

A two member probe panel investigated his case and recommended a CBI investigation. The Committee found strong evidence again former forest minister Kiran Chaudhary who recommended Chaturvedi's suspension.

The world we are living in is satisfied celebrating the quashing of the charge street. We triumph in having successfully protected the whistle blower even as the criminals he exposed are rapidly extracting more power and wealth from very crimes they committed.

Kiran Chaudhury has since been given the plush posting as the Cabinet Secretary of taxing and excise. Prahalad Singh Gillakhera has become the Chief Parliamentary Secretary. Chaturvedi plans to file a petition in the high court and Supreme Court. The battle isn't over anytime soon. The price is still being paid.

Part of this appeared in Tehelka magazine.

Javed Akhtar

2011-02-09T00:49:00.001+05:30

(An as told to interview with Javed Akhtar)

Do you dare snuff out the moon?

A hundred years after his birth, revolutionary Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz is still a pebble creating ever-widening ripples

BY JAVED AKHTAR

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

GROWING up in a family of poets, I was surrounded by poetry. But to me, it is Faiz who was the brightest star of the brightest literary movements in undivided India. My first memory of Faiz is a package that came in the mail. It was an autographed copy of his first collection of poems — Dast-e-Sabha. I was nine years old at the time and staying with my maternal uncle, the poet Majaz Lakhnavi, who like Faiz was part of the Progressive Writer's Association. By the time I was in school in Aligarh, Faiz's words were very much a part of my life.

There was something extraordinary about Faiz Ahmed Faiz. He was more than a big poet. He was a big man with a tremendous amount of humility.

The word mein, me, never made an appearance in his poems. Poetry was to create awareness, to create the desire for dreams, social justice, gender equality and to stand up for the downtrodden. To be a poet is not to be didactic and dry in order to make a large statement at the expense of beauty. To be a poet is not to be holier than thou. Faiz understood this. To him art was for life and not just for art's sake.

Loud and clear Faiz addresses trade union workers. He was president of the Postal Workers Union in 1949

There have been other poets who wrote about politics but somehow they were prosaic and violent in a way that Faiz never was. His work is an unbelievable synthesis of art with social and political values. Of course, Faiz also was phenomenally popular. In this age, artists can cater to the lowest common denominator and be assured that they will become a celebrity. Faiz maintained a standard and still was so hugely followed.

Faiz was like a pebble tied to a string and thrown in the water to create larger and larger circles. Faiz kept tradition intact but he pulled it to modernity. He didn't break from poetic conventions and maintained an extreme literary aesthetic, a painterly one. Faiz could infuse an evening in prison with a heady beauty. Take these images, (from a version of Zindan Ki Ek Shaam translated by Agha Shahid Ali) where he describes each star as a rung in the spiral staircase of a descending night. The poem continues...

Dil se paiham khayal kahta hai/ Itni shireen hai zindagi is pal/ Zulm ka zahar gholnewale/ Kamran ho sakenge aaj na kal/Jalvagahevisaal ki shamayein / Vo bujha bhi chuke agar to kya/ Chand ko gul karen, to hum jaane.

To be a poet is not to be didactic or dry to make a large statement at the expense of beauty. To be a poet is not to be holier than thou. Faiz understood this

(This thought keeps consoling me/though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed/in rooms where lovers are destined to meet/they cannot snuff out the moon, so today,/nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed/ no poison of torture make me bitter/ if just one evening in prison/can be so strangely sweet/if just one moment anywhere on this earth.)

Talking heads Faiz with journalist Asaf Jilani and thespian Zia Mohyiuddin during an interview with BBC Urdu Service, London

I first met Faiz in the 1960s when he had come to India after a long absence. He read in our house to a gathering of poets and Bollywood stars. Amitabh Bachchan was there as were many major poets of the time. When people read their poetry, they usually read it with energy. They take care of the intonation, rhythm, of the whole performance. Not Faiz. He read his poems with no special enthusiasm; as if it was a mildly tedious duty he had to perform. That day, a cheeky poet asked why he didn't read his poetry as well as he wrote. Faiz replied that he couldn't possibly do everything well and asked the poet to read instead.

Faiz has definitely influenced an entire generation. He has added to the aesthetics of Urdu poetry. Today, Urdu is in a strange situation. The language has been politicised for the past 100 years and sacrificed at the altar of the two-nation theory. In India, it is constantly given step-motherly treatment. On one hand, there are a growing number of people who appreciate Urdu poetry but the language is also becoming nostalgia. By its very nature, it is secular, anti-fundamentalist and embraces anti-archaic values but we are denying it its place in our heritage. The birth centenary of one of its greatest poets is occasion to reflect on this. I want to end with quoting my favourite lines of Faiz.

Dil na umeed toh nahin , nakaam hi toh hain/ Lambi hain gham ki sham magar sham hi to hain. (I haven't lost hope, but just a fight, that is all/ The night of suffering lengthens, but just a night, that is all).

Chuma types

2011-02-09T00:43:00.001+05:30

At the Persistence Resistance Film Festival, Arun Khopkar wondered why his film, his life's work should be playing on loop in some vague booth where people could casually walk in and out. The festival has been trying to explore formats which make the documentary more viewer friendly. Tough choice you make if you want random people watching your films I guess.

Winter is sadly ending . The good thing is that you can wear colours again and not feel like a stuffed pigeon.

Friend of many years V and I had a three hour conversation at the comfortably slick and clinical Oxford Book store about how we were just 18 but it suddenly feels like time has slipped by so fast. I mean it is surreal.Like a jump cut bang into the middle of being adult.

I don't have a plan of action for this post clearly but I haven't posted for so long and felt I had to check if the blog still functions without my er. profound thoughts.

Also, I am in love with Prateik Babbar. Yeh Saali Zindagi was just not my type of film at all. C Singh is too sophisticated for that role but is yummy so who cares.

Rape

2011-01-18T19:38:00.001+05:30

The Ghaziabad police on Monday arrested three persons for allegedly gangraping a 17-year-old girl in a moving car. The girl had alleged that she was abducted and gangraped by the three on her way to her college in Sector-7 in Rajnagar last Wednesday. A case was, however, registered only on Sunday.

The family of the victim said in the FIR that the girl had gone to her college, Mahavir Singh Intercollege, to finalise a tutor when she was abducted. The victim also named one of her classmates, Nitin Dagar, as an accused. She said Dagar, along with his cousin Ankit and friend Monu, abducted her when she was in the Sector-7 area. She added that she was dragged inside their white Swift car that had tinted glasses and the three took turns to rape her.

The police said the accused have confessed to the crime and said the girl was going towards Sikrod fields with her friend Rizwaan on a motorcycle when they abducted her. "Rizwaan fled the spot after seeing the accused. The accused then allegedly asked the girl to come with them. When she refused they pulled her inside the car and raped her," the police said.

Source: Indian Express

2010

2010-12-31T19:38:00.001+05:30

A lovely insane year that began in the quiet Sahyadri Hills, took me to live it up (watching, not with, the rich and famous) at St. Moritz, pizza in Rome,

two months in a distant village in UP,a few sweet months in Bangalore and then writing for an awesome magazine in Delhi and back in Blooru for a bit.

Love,

Charcoal Air and Mirch

2010-12-22T11:18:00.001+05:30

If I had to solidify this air, it would taste like charcoal. I couldn't sleep last night due to bouts of smog induced tuberculaic cough. Judge Maami and I watched Mirch last night. The actors were dressed in Christmas decorations and the special effects were stolen from the Vikram-Baital series.Enough said.

The winter is too much for my soul. Wearing pink tights plus mismatched red and beige socks plus jeans, three t shirts, two sweaters, one Nehru Jacket, scarf, shawls and still feeling cold.But it's nice somehow. I am already dreading summer. IT's cruel, the winter, but not cruel enough to dread.

Alone

2010-12-17T21:45:00.001+05:30

As it were, I dreaded it, this prospect, of being alone for ever so long. C left and the last two nights I drowned myself in other people. And yet, here I am alone in my room, double bed rearranged to single,and room spacious and suddenly sterilized of memory. I am cooking. There is something therapeutic about chopping onions,peeling garlic,washing dal.

It's almost unhealthy, the fact that I never have time alone to myself and this is the first time in six months that I am sitting in an empty house and hearing the slightly faltering voice of my mind. I am happy with the silence, wearing my brothers pants (warm, corporate and good for winter.) walking around with unwaxed winter legs, suddenly noticing a copy of Hesse's Siddhartha lying around. (Is the universe sending me a message because my last interaction with it was listening to a teacher read the whole book out in 7th std.) Am flirting with such possibilities and getting ready to eat a messy hot meal of Dal and Rice and two boiled eggs. (I had to make a meal out of what was available at home which includes nothing functional like fresh veggies.)

Pain is like your bladder.

2010-12-13T10:49:00.001+05:30

Pain is like your bladder.When you get an ultrasound.You know how your bladder is so distended, so large that the deeper you press ,the clearer the other organs appear. Pain does that.It turns up the volume of every thought, every conflict becomes bright and blazing and every mangled dream is naked.

Hurt is more specific, more singular.It can be one sentence that becomes a liquid hammer incessantly swimming in your soul.

Make up!

2010-12-11T15:17:00.003+05:30

The challenges of caking up are far beyond the reach of my bare face and unbrushed hair. That women can use mere make up to transform into smoky eyed divas has always fascinated me. And so I found myself under the mercy of a brush, endless creams, bronzers, fixers, and other er’s that would make my face bett-er!

Make up artist, Vidya Tikari is a petit woman dressed in black skinny jeans, a black blouse and can carry off bright red lipstick on a Tuesday afternoon in a way that most other women can’t. She is just finishing a class with a client when I walk into her studio. The client, Priya has had her glowing makeover already. Vidya meticulously goes over every step of the process with her, drawing it out on a paper with an illustration of a woman’s face. She dabs lipstick and blush on it, while explaining how.

“I am in my forties, I haven’t used make up all these years. Now my children are working and whenever I go to parties, I have no clue how to put on make up,” Priya says. No clue? Not quite! She’s doing confident pink strokes on her cheeks giving a sudden flushed definition to her cheekbones. It looks so easy, running a brush on your cheeks but it really isn’t if you don’t want to look like birthday cake.

Priya came to Vidya to learn basic everyday make up. Most clients are single women under 25. There are many housewives over 40 with grown children coming in to nurture their new interest. “I have even had 60-year olds coming in,” says Vidya.

It was soon my turn to have a go at the many coloured products in front of the mirror. I started with washing my face, deleting the Delhi dust. And then, fixing. You may have realised by now that make up doesn’t naturally stay. It has a nagging habit of inviting itself to the edge of teacups, to the stubbly cheeks of men or altogether disappearing. To prevent all this from happening you *fix *it, tell it to stay put.

My face was divided. Vidya painted half; I did the other half . We went through a foundation- a Skin Tint which offers a slight, natural smoothening and evenness to your skin tone. Next we used bronze cream based blush to rather unsuccessfully aspire to the condition of the Brazilian model. Vidya insists that there should be colour on my face, pre-empts my refusal and tells me to just try it out. And so I try to achieve a ‘back from a run’ flush and it does sort of work, that is, if you learn to “follow your cheekbones”. Want Mascara without raccoon resemblance? Look down and run the mascara brush on your lashes starting inwards and going out.

Next is the dabbing of bronze eye shadow in strong strokes, in an even not hurting the eyes sort of way. Gloss and some mild lipstick later, we are done. With session one, that is, which covers day make up. The next session will be party make up, a tad bolder. On day three, it is all about shaadi make up, very Indian and elaborate. Of course, you can also request Vidya to design these courses based on your interest. And it worked, I think. Because I have been told that I look like a different woman.
Rates:

Three sessions of one-and-a-half hours each.
With Vidya: `18000
With an assistant: `10,000

Vidya Tikari Studio B-21, Lajpat Nagar-II, 1st Floor, Next to Barclays Bank),Ph: 41635074/5. www.vidyatikari.in

Other personal grooming courses in Delhi
BLOSSOM KOCCHAR 52-54, Fifth Floor, Govardhan House, Nehru Place, Ph:26473051 www.blossomkochhar.in
Three day make up course. Includes make up and hairstyling.

VLCC offers short-term courses for self-waxing, make up, manicures and pedicures, sari tying etc. 20 hours. Priced at `7500 plus taxes.

Samit Basu Interview

2010-12-11T15:09:00.002+05:30

Every one on Flight BA 142 got off with a superpower that they subconsciously dreamt of having. Uzma wanted to be loved and to make it in Bollywood. Aman wanted to be well networked and so he can now control the Internet. Vir can fly. Television journalist Namrata apparently can sense news before it happens. Throughout the dizzying, scene shifting (London,above Pakistan’s nukes, Delhi, Carter Road Coffee Day) plot, these characters come together harnessing their good intentions to (well, try) save/change the world.

They all live in your India of IPL and Manmohan Singh bleating-condemning terror attacks. It is postmodern but there are singing aunties and blue babies and snide allusions to the going-out-alone-at-night dreams of Delhi women. So, everything urban India, except add super powers, chaos and the license to laugh.

Samit Basu has been given many labels and has dabbled in what is for the Indian writer exotic genres. He had decided, he says, as he settles with his cappuccino in a coffee shop in GK, that he didn’t want to do a “fancy novel” anymore. Samit has written The Simoquin Prophecies, The Manticore’s Secret and The Unwaba Revelations, part of the GameWorld Trilogy and has been thus far celebrated as ‘India’s first fantasy writer.' “You are supposed to write an India book right if you are an India writer and examine contemporary Indian reality, all this while I was writing books I wasn’t supposed to write,” he says

“When I started thinking of the checkboxes on contemporary India and what it means atleast through perception, I ended up with a really insane landscape. I wanted to write about urban 20 and 30 somethings which is also something you are supposed to write about.” Supposed, I ask? Samit grins and continues, “Ya ya, so I wanted to write a very good boy kind of book. Real people tend to be very self-involved but I wanted the story to have some societal relevance. I kept turning up the volume on these characters and they ended up with strange powers. See it’s not that I started off wanting to write a story that disobeyed the laws of physics at any point of time.” It’s like you begin reading and then you feel like your on edge in a gaming station, being chased by giants, or otherwise feeling love for comic book superheroes in shiny costumes.

He always knew though that he wanted to be a writer, “in the same way that (he) knew he wanted to be a rock star or an astronaut. “I have picked the least glamorous of these professions ya, also, the lowest paid.” Samit says that to work across media means that element of each comes into the other. He has co-written comics with X-men writer Mike Carey, written children’s books and screenplays.” You look at the different structures. The comic is the tightest structure- you have to be controlled. In a screenplay, there is a lot of room. I think that’s why my last two books have been shorter; you get across more in a shorter space. Also, in comics and screenplays, you learn escape routes through tight corners so that helps with the novel. But having said that there is nothing like writing a novel because the annoying things about other media is not present at all: (he lists in an almost wicked exasperation) budget, nature of artist, temperament of collaborators, evil businessmen associated with large scale entertainment companies you know.”

We are interrupted by a light eyed, dashing, whitewashed Hrithik Roshan sort of boy from the next table who says he relates to everything we are talking about. He plays video games, he wants to act and was writing a script for his audition to be a news anchor later that day. “See what I mean”, says Samit. “So much of all that is in the book is the lives of urban India. Your standard day, it will be fairly easy to sit back and laugh at most things in it.” He gets drawn into a conversation with the Bollywood aspirant telling him to skip the anchor audition and take the next flight to Bombay. “Look, I don’t want to suddenly come and crush your life plans and all but am telling you!”

Suddenly getting back on track, he continues, “And so ya, I wanted to look at some kind of encapsulation of the present generation and make it a book at the here and now. I mean you are in your twenties, and I have escaped mine and at the sage old age of 30, I am looking back on that distant period,” he says somewhat theatrically.

“The twenties are about figuring out what you can do with what you have. It is about making the compromises that you will come to terms with when you are in your thirties and forties. If you had powers, you might do things better right?” And so he gave his characters superpowers. “I figured that super heroes are completely mainstream I mean Dark Knight’s got an Oscar nomination and when you are writing, you kind of have to explain the context especially in India. In Turbulence, it’s not a standard costume -adventure thing. Which puts you on the same ground as someone writing a campus novel or a romance novel you know.” That things go beyond the normal, he says, is the “setting’s fault.” So, these well-intentioned heroes transfer money from drug lords to relief agencies and are ecstatic at this sudden sense of control they have to choose how to change the world. But then they are very much like the staff at the DNNTV where Namrata works, most people have the job because their dads knew the owners.A very important job done with very little skill. The chaos that ensues fuels the plot.

These characters hint at satire but they are etched out in bold uniform strokes, true to reality but more crayon drawing than impressionist painting. Although, its fun because everything is a snide target: security comparable to Hollywood stars scouting slums, a political party promising to ban women’s jeans, that this whole mess was predicted by some insane people on internet videos a long time ago etc.

Samit explains that it is a book with neat sections, very conducive to a film interpretation, apparently. The buzz is that the rights for Turbulence are being sold to Bollywood. “Selling the rights and having the film come out are very different things in Bollywood…there are three potential producers now but I need to find a director who can do something with it.” Samit “shuddered more”, so to speak, earlier, to think of what Bollywood will do to his book. Now, it is just a matter of shuddering a little less.

He interrupts me again to ask what sort of a book I’d want to write if ever. I am forced, of course, to aspire to some decent level of articulation till I manage.. “a really silly book about really serious things.”

“That’s my exact ambition too,” says he, the writer of the good boy book.

Old Delhi Street Food Walk

2010-12-11T15:00:00.001+05:30

(Some pics by Pamela Timms and the rest by C)

We meet at the steps of the Chawri Bazaar metro station, that spot where the enormity of Old Delhi- its tangled wires and rickshaw jams threatens to spill over and roll down the steps to meet the zipping silver of the metro. On the agenda today is an Old Delhi food tour and a look into food writer, blogger and the host of Uparwali Chai, Pamela Timms' own food secrets. She's had a hectic week, she says, and the best way to unwind Pamela style is to devour the culinary treats on offer in the old city. (Although, by her own admission, she over does it.)"I wasn't watching Social Networking with the kids last night because I was right here eating Nihari." She has made a "reckless promise to make at home everything (she) eats on the streets." And so whether it's milk cake with chai( which involves stirring 12 litres of milk with one kilo of sugar for almost two hours), or making Shahi Tukda at home, street version, she's up for the grind.

Our street food-hobbyist's rickshawwallah friend- Rahul is already waiting for us at the Metro station. He takes us through the noisy certainty of the rickshaw jam straight from the metro station into the gully near. Here, in a grain store called Jain Coffee Shop is a little known Old Delhi food secret- Fruit Sandwiches. (Sounds so Scottish high tea, right?) Pamela, her husband Dean, his father and I sit in the bare blue walled backroom while watching them slap on some marmalade on the soft white bread. They place sheets of paneer, butter, pomegranate and apple (it is seasonal, ask for mangoes in summer) and it's done. An unlikely but excellent and fresh start to a day of eating. "By the way I try to recreate this for Uparwali chai but it didn't work out so well - the bread didn't hold together. It just is this way sometimes with street food."

Uparwali chai. Duh! It is tea- the high kind. Pamela always loved afternoon tea even as a child. "I even used to make afternoon tea for friends at university. Then with a Dutch friend, Laura, we decided to create a pop-up tea party event for Delhi" Inevitably or Indian-ly, it was nicknamed Uparwali chai by a friend. "And, just as I expected, Indians love tea and cakes just as much as the British. We love doing the events - we've done them everywhere from my roof to Sanskriti Kendra, to Yum Yum Tree and Gunpowder - each one slightly different" They innovate according to venue. Mini Utthapams in Gunpowder, goodies going around on the sushi belt in Yum Yum Tree etc. "The range of people that come to the events is huge - young, old, Indian, expat - all united in a love of home baking."

Pamela seems to have learnt to get unused to the super market shopping experience. "In the UK, a Tesco pops up everywhere and it is impossible for a small butcher, baker or fisherman to survive. I enjoy going around to different store picking up things and trying out new ingredients although there is the occasional day when I crave for convenience."

By now, we are full with chikoo milk shake that her husband Dean (who self admittedly is prone to exaggeration) declared rightly that the shake was the best shake he had ever had. We head out towards Church Mission Road to Kake Di Hatti but obviously tuck into every culinary distraction on the way. First, A-Matchless (9311150022), a tiny little corner store that has all sorts of baking equipment (mango shaped cookie moulds at `20 a piece), cutters etc.

Improvising Scottish baking with Delhi ingredients isn't just a matter of compromise for Pamela, but a creative exercise that has formed much of the muscle of her blog (rated as India's top five food sites by Good Housekeeping). Cheese Cake has been given an old Delhi make over by using naan khatai as a base, malai for cream and phalsa berry as garnishing. She has even convinced restaurant owners in the Kullu Valley to fry up Bar-one Pakodas. "My starting point for developing recipes is to find delicious combinations rather than creating a novelty item for the sake of it. I've been baking all my life and it feels natural to start incorporating some local ingredients into some of my recipes. I'm loving what jaggery, malai, spices, whey are doing to my repertoire!" We know that the traditional Scottish Haggis ( sheep's heart, liver and lungs with oatmeal etc) isn't an invitation to Indians but Scottish shortbread is immensely Indianise-able to Pamela. "I decided to transform the shortie's natural homeliness into go-get-'em brazenness with the addition of cumin and jaggery." And she served it with Mango Shrikhand as a dip.

We walk less than a few metres when Pamela insists we try the Daulat Ki Chaat, the gift of winter, an airy soufflé flying playfully with a saffron- pistachio breeze. The legend, according to Pamela is that it is set with early morning dew.

Dessert in our bellies, we head for lunch as following order in eating would murder the beautiful haphazardness of Old Delhi. The rickshaw plods through narrow streets. "Oh, wow, the first batch of strawberries", gushes Pamela as we pass a fruit store, imagining all the baked goodies she can conjure up. "The star fruit, you must must have with Shakhar-khandi- sweet potato", another winter blessing on the streets. After much chaos we reached the packed Kake-di-hatti. Not for the faint hearted or the obsessive compulsive, as plates lie on the wet brown road in the entrance, piles of curries are kept in huge open aluminium vessels but the smell draws you in, pushes you through the crowds and upstairs into the gaily painted family section. Multicoloured tables that we wait at for about ten minutes, unattended. "I almost feel like they are intimidated by me because they can't understand my Hindi and I can't theirs", laughs Pamela. We order Aloo Naans to go with a deep, flavourful Aloo Palak and Lauki ki Raita. Pamela says that she has never fallen sick eating street food. "I realise I'm tempting fate by saying this .I have been sick after eating in some posher restaurants though." (She insists she won't name names.)

My father-in-law thinks I am crazy. He's always telling people 'Oh, dear, the kind of places Pam goes to eat.' He's watching over her, sipping his Miranda and smiling even as his daughter-in-law affectionately slanders him. He's careful not to eat even a morsel. She continues explaining all the food to him. Why the spinach in the Aloo Palak is good for his health, just like some, if not most of street food.

2010-12-11T14:53:00.001+05:30

Stuck in office without work when life waits outside awkwardly with its hand held out.

Am going crazy as usual. But its only when I have the semblance of a life that I am stuck at work.

There are so many phases in life when I have lots of free time and nothing to do.

Back

2010-12-08T11:21:00.000+05:30

So disoriented I feel waking up in a charecteristically cheap Chennai airport hotel at 4 in the morning and dazing through lets make a commonwealth impression Delhi airport and now in office.

Life is so long.Travelling so short.

Sigh

Pride,Poppadum and Olive

2010-11-29T15:36:00.004+05:30

Went for Gay Pride yesterday, was fun. Gay parties in Delhi are awfully boring compared to Bombay. Seriously. Compare Olive to Bollywood Mischief. At Olive, you kiss the air and you pretend to touch.

Also, of great interest to me is the number of fancy sounding restaurants that open in Delhi every now and then. It's About Us wanted Utthapam to marry Lasagne. Ambrosia had Greek Curry. Chalchitra had a trying so hard to be funny Bollywood theme. All of the above are foodwise extremely mediocre.
The thing is if you promise to serve world food and have Paneer Shashlik or Rocket Salad on your menu, it doesn't really mean anything. I recently went to this place called Banyan GRill tucked away behind the grime, dirt and asbestos opposite select city walk. Under a banyan tree, white walls, quaint cabinets and flower pots hanging like it is the South of France. (the visitor comments claimed this place transported them to
above mentioned coveted corner of the world.) Thing is I don't fit this profile of well travelled Indian. All my knowledge of food comes from spending too much time with well travelled people. So judge my opinions keeping that in mind. Total country bumpkin.

So yesterday , we went to Poppadum. As soon as I entered, they enquired if I actually wanted to go to Thai High. I assured them that I actually wanted to thulp one proper Andhra Thali and not pick at Phad Thai.
The place was completely empty and apparently my friend was asked the same question last time around.

Anyway Poppadum with its new temple bells and paintings of babas by Israeli travellers in Pushkar was a far cry from the Andhra Mess of my dreams. I was determined to hate the food and offended when the waiters said things like Baingan Pulusu or Pumpkin Kadi.The food didn't disappoint. Sure, it was spicy like
the war won't end. The dal was slightly thinner than preferable. The pacchadis were gorgeous- beetroot, peanut, spicy-sourthing. And also, the cabbage peanuty dry vegetable was notable.The diversity of flavours, the sour faintly spicy gongura , all of this was heady. Overall, each piece was a gem. But in order for me to taste anything I had to isolate each ingredient and eat it with the strong, neutral and ever loved curd rice. An assault of too many flavours.

So, yeah the point is why doesn't this restaurant work. Is the food too spicy for a Delhi audience? Andhra Food too new? Fine Dining and South Indian very niche?

Well, atleast the food is good. Which I can't say about any of the other ambitious places I listed above.

(I am so screwed right now, I almost ended this mail with (and am now)..

Best
Y

The Appointment

2010-11-26T19:57:00.003+05:30

You can sleep all you want but the day is still there waiting and the bed is not another country.
A young, unnamed Romanian seamstress living in Nicolae Ceauescu’s regime is constantly summoned. Her crime is having sewed ‘’marry me’’ notes into the Italy bound trouser pockets in the factory where she works . The hope is to escape the country. Women could apply to get married. It was all about Italy. It was nothing about him(the potential husband). It was about going from being bare assed poor to having a marble vase on your table.

There is of course always a battle between content and form.Here the content is unnerving. You are invited as voyeur into this woman’s mind, as she takes a tram ride from her home to meet General Albu for an interrogation.The prose is like thought process , especially as it would be in a totalitarian system- disjointed, scattered, wretched, random, hopeful. You end up reading in rhythm,this happened , that happened, her best friend died, her body splattered red like a bed of poppies , the nut, it always helps to eat a nut to face the summons.

And so, the form is not friendly, not conducive and you feel like an outsider visiting neurosis. You understand how terror’s largest presence is not in the
fire of bombs or the drums of gunfire but in the rhythm of the mind trying to retain sanity, the mind that occasionally tips over, scrambles back to an uncertain balance.

The first and the best: don’t get summoned and don’t go mad, like most people. The second possibility: don’t get summoned, but do lose your mind.. The third: do get summoned and do go mad. Or else the fourth: get summoned but don’t go mad like Paul (her lover) and myself….or to be young, and unbelievably beautiful and not insane, but dead.

Her tram journey was supposed to take her to the interrogation but
she misses her stop and where she goes is worse, by far.

The trick is not to go mad.

Rating: ***1/2

What to romanticise.

2010-11-26T19:38:00.001+05:30

It is really tragic the way I only blog about Delhi. I know Delhi well in theory because of my job , (Wait, what, I can't blog about Delhi again man.)

I just came here to say that the only way to deal with one's moral flaws is to romanticise them.

I wish I was "pregnant with departure'', as in leaving to the hills for nine months.

Delhi is a kind, soft, polite city with manners? Agree?

2010-11-24T18:10:00.001+05:30

I almost hate to admit it but Delhi has been kind to me. Despite feeling completely depressed now (and please man depression means like my generation genre depression - scattered, nothing happens even on facebook types ) I can't help feeling complete warmth for Delhi's love and excitement about winter.

Giani's sweets promptly put up a red banner saying 'Winter Special Moong Dal Halwa and Gajar Ka Halwa' when winter was just a cool secret hiding in the air. A month ago, girls at clubs were already in stockings and boots. Obviously, the best part of all this is wearing winter clothes.My previous experience with extreme winter clothes has been tragic, freezing, temperate and usually grey.

By extreme winter, I mean , something below the 15 degrees of Bangalore winter.

So yes, Old Delhi and it's delightful Daulat Ki Chat- like Phirni air flirting with badampistasaffron breeze.

Set , apparently by winter morning dew. It is special because you only get it in winter and in the age of

oranges from Mozambique, seasonality is a fragile beautiful thing.

Unlike in the other cities of the world (I hear), people are nicer in winter than in summer. They turn down the volume on the customary aggression of Delhi. This was recently defined like this. I see auto. I see another girl telling the auto guy where she wanted to go. In the cold, dark, madam come with me sort of street, the only thought in my head was : Hope she doesn't get the auto.

Pahadi Phool and I (rather cruelly, it must be admitted) decided that it is the line that defines Delhi.

Facebook

2010-11-19T16:07:00.001+05:30

Access my basic information

Includes name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information I've shared with everyone.

Allow

Don't Allow

Delhi is like a deep fried snack..

2010-11-08T16:06:00.001+05:30

greasy,inviting,delicious,angry,sleazy,dripping,seductive and altogether and simultaneously exhausting and fun in a hop -skip- jump but can't find an auto back way.

But I crave to sip afternoon beer at Pecos.

With due thanks to chole bhaturey at Nathu's Sweets.

As one can tell, I feel exceptionally greasy and full of despair this Monday after a blissful weekend.

An ad for a media job.

2010-11-03T12:12:00.001+05:30

Job profile:

This assignment falls under the Promotions team of Condé Nast India. The primary role is to create advertorials / promotional articles for brands that advertise with us. This translates into a major revenue stream for the company. Since the magazines caters to luxury and life style readers, a lot of brands would rather have us create something in the Vogue/GQ/Conde Nast Traveller style for their brand than simply placing an ad, because no one in India understands this set of Audience better than we do. The advertorials follow the editorial style to ensure that the promotional article looks like an editorial point of view and not a paid promotion. The role also encompasses developing all marketing and advertising collaterals across all 3 brands – billboards, print ads, emailers and any other collateral needed. The designation and salary will depend entirely on the years of experience of the candidate. The biggest benefit of working on this team is that it allows a writer to fill his / her portfolio with three genres of writing – Travel, lifestyle and fashion. Moreover, the writer is given the chance to work on some the best, most well-known brands across the world.

Apply to all of journalism.

Nadeem Aslam Interview

2010-11-02T17:34:00.011+05:30

The best piece that Nadeem has ever written, says editor John Freeman of Leila and the Wilderness, which is also one of the longest pieces ever commissioned by Granta.
“I was on a panel in Edinburgh with him almost two years ago. It was all about the short story. I asked him, do you ever write stories? And he said no, but I have a story I think I want to write. I’ll send it to you. He did, only 9 months later, which is much longer than most people wait when they say something like that. It has such thematic depth and story-telling muscle – so much of what this issue ended up being about: love, family, the pull of extremism, tradition and honour, the feeling that Pakistan is becoming someone else’s place…all that’s in this story. So it was really a no-brainer putting it first.”

Past its minarets from where Allah was pleaded with to send the monsoon rains…..its snow blind mountains and sunburned deserts… past the boy sending a text message to the girl he loved…past the crossroads decorated with fibreglass replicas of the mountain under which Pakistan’s nuclear bombs are tested...past the six year olds selling Made in China prayer mats at traffic lights… in this immense homeland of heartbreaking beauty…

Nadeem Aslam, who was born in Gujranwala and lives in England, had Leila in the Wilderness in his mind for 15 years. In the two months that he took to write it, writing for 12 or 13 hours a day, not leaving his house, not seeing any one, not celebrating Christmas till the novella was done and sent to Granta, which accepted it immediately without any editorial cuts. What it does is that it distils the purest form of truth in prose, sprinkled with a surreal magic and an inhuman brutality, the politics of this moment - Guantanamo Bay and Jihad and love, all at once, in a sweeping fable. Leila is a young woman separated from her lover Qes and married into a family that kills all her just-born daughters and despises her for an inability to produce a son.

“I was introduced to a man – an educated man – who asked me whether I was married and had children. When I told him that I had no children and that I thought of my books as my children, he said, in utter seriousness, ‘Yes. Your successful novels will be your sons, and your unsuccessful ones your daughters.’ That was when I began to think seriously about writing the novella.”

“But I do love thinking about religion and how it attempts to put something other than money and sex at the centre of human discourse – it puts love there. As Borges said: I give thanks…for love, which lets us see others as God sees them.”

“It has always been the case. I remember being a student and buying Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles for 50 pence in a second-hand bookshop after reading the first paragraph. No one told me it was a great book, that he was a great writer. I knew it instinctively. When the real thing comes along you don’t need anyone to tell you: something inside you tells you. That is how I wish the readers to come to my work.” (Nadeem has never had a reader in mind while writing.)

“That sentence (the one-and-a-half page one) is the only occasion in the story when I let my subconscious speak. It was like a word-association game – I asked myself: What do you think of when you think of Pakistan? Give me the answer as fast as you can. I took less than ten minutes to write, one thought led to another – and it all feels like a train journey, sometimes the rhythm is uniform, sometimes broken, sometimes a wide and deep vista is seen out of the window, sometimes the back of a building looms up just two yards away. And all the while the wheels on the track keep up a steady beat – ‘past the…past the…past the…past the…’”

“Reality (referring to the many worlds in this book) is like that – it is made up of many layers, and our mind is quite capable of perceiving them simultaneously. We try to keep this aspect of existence out of art, out of stories, because we wish to see order in art, not chaos; we wish to sense rhythm and pattern, as opposed to confusion.”

“Pakistan is a country with immense problems and huge moral dilemmas - so it calls for minds that have to be sharp. It's not up to writers to do PR for Pakistan or Islam, or America, or India.”

PS:

The italics in the first paragraph are deeply unintentional but the calm, serene ,slow moving nature of my internet makes sure I make no ammends.

Who let the dogs out?

2010-11-01T12:56:00.002+05:30

My neighbourhood's idea of a beautiful Sunday morning is rape. Seriously.I have the whole house to myself and it's soft and cold and quiet when suddenly,loudspeakers achieve a vulgar audacity strapping on the excuse of a Diwali mela to scream.

It's my life..stop nanaanana me stop nananana me stop stop it's my life.

Munni Badnaaam huyi darling teree leyeee.

Who let the dogs out? Who Who?

And you know what adds insult to injury? I was at the wedding of a friend in Goa recently where I briefly danced with random gora who assumed that I lived in Bombay because this friend is from Bombay. (I was obvi making polite conversation.) So I was like "No, I live in Delhi."

He says, "Oh, GK- II"

I was obviously kind of stumped. I was like, yeah, but, how do you know?

"You are so Greater Kailash II, man."

Yum

2010-10-29T14:00:00.001+05:30

When the magazine goes to press, a happiness descends, light and sparkling after all the vulgar exhausting hard work. One needs to listen to music that doesn't demand anything from you. Like really, Norah Jones types.

And then a huge chocolate cake arrives from some arts council.

Delight, well deserved.

Also, since I am free for a day, I feel like vomiting all thoughts on blog.

Rats,Dogs and me.

2010-10-29T13:08:00.003+05:30

"First you lived in a godforsaken village, then you moved to a rat hole, and then to a dog hole, and now you are insanely ill." This is how C described my life recently and I suddenly and self indulgently began to indulge in (the in retrospect kind of) self pity.

Dude, seriously, ever since I moved to North India, I have been facing insane situations

1) So NINE months ago, I ventured north of the Vindhyas to a village in Uttar Pradesh.The experience to me was almost, well, hate to use the word, but EXOTIC.

I loved the err..quaint villages, the quiet Ganges, the long boat rides and of course the daily trips to dozens of villages, collecting data and realising the ridiculousness of government schemes in UP . I had been frivolously exposed to what they(who) called real India - Covering Deprivation trip, Rural School Teaching Program- you know the excesses of alternative education na? Uttar Pradesh was more than I was prepared for. Pradhan Confrontations, teenage girls eloping with boys while pretending to be in school and then hiding in sugar cane fields, milk served warm from buffalo breast, twenty cups of chai a day,"I killed him because he looked at my sister", being told that it was bad Hindus like me who pollluted the ganges, awesome lunches and birthday parties,dawats for the birth of sons, nose ring shopping, squeezing cute children,the best holi ever,salwar kameez shopping, the begining of immune system breakdown etc. Also, long rides on buffalo carts-aiyo how to explain all this without sounding like gora volunteer who flew from Alabama somewhere to Anoopsheher direct?

2) Now, after my work was done in the village, I had no interest in returning to the comforts of Bangalore.In Bangalore. I had only two real job options- one was working for the features page for a daily or financial reporting for some wire that paid pretty insanely well. Death only.

So, I continued at this very generous and amazing NGO in Delhi and considered looking for another journalism job. I lived in their office which was full of rats because it also doubled up as storage space for all sorts of things. Every time I entered the kitchen, a rat would dash past.So, just in order to avoid this sight, I would warn him before I entered.Make a lot of noise, put on the light(while not looking) and then enter the place. Because, if I don't see him, he doesn't exist and his sewaged footprints are not resting under the dal and rice on my plate, na? (IF anyone has seen Khirki Village, where the office is, they will know the potency of sewage there.)

3)Dogs.I finally found a job and a house with room mates and two street dogs.I am animal lover enough to be vegetarian.But these dogs would shit and piss in the living room so much so that in the morning I had to daintily walk an obstacle race so as to not desecrate my Dilli haat chappals with canine urine.Plus one of the dogs was named Pussy and was schizophrenic. Also the drain in the bathroom was always clogged with dog hair and for the longest time I accused C of hair fall because my hair is black and straight and not like the dirty blonde fuzz in the drains.He became vain and started googling hair doctors.

Now, I am a messy girl. I curl up on my mattress in a way that I don't disturb all the magazines and books lying around. But this experience was so traumatic that I seriously began to develop a vulgar form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that according to C makes it impossible for him to travel with me in the third world. Yeah right, only South of France from now on.

UFF . I want to stop existing with such uncool predicaments.

Anyway, finally I have clean nice house with nice room mate.

writer's block sample..

2010-10-23T15:57:00.001+05:30

in office..

Give me another word for give yaa

Because leaving Delhi for a bit

2010-10-21T19:23:00.001+05:30

makes you realise you don't like it as much as you thought you did....

Bombay

Why?

fried now,no time 2 tell y,bye.

Bangalore

Why?

Whaaaaaaaaat why and all you ask da macha?lets put off one beer.

Delhi

Why?

Because the boss said so behenchodddddddddddddddd

OLIVE AT THE QUTUB

2010-10-13T19:01:00.001+05:30

Welcome to the museum of Contemporary art. In the shadow of the Qutub, large bright rooms are framed by flowing white curtains, and all the exhibits are exceptional and edible. Here a pecan pie marries Diwali with a topping of Cardamom ice cream. Ingredients put on costumes never seen before and staid dishes are demolished and glamourised by the wand of artistry. You start with breathing some Reconstructed Minestrone. A collage of tomato, onions, truffle oil and pasta with a whiff of parmesan ice cream, all like mousse, not soup. Warm bread (bread with soul, not New India multigrain bread) and you hand grind pesto with roasted vegetables with a mortar and pestle taking your time to ponder over a starter. Goat Cheese Souffle(`425) ,the robustness of goat cheese with the silk of a soufflé and then a fusion drama of caramelized pecan nuts, chilli jam around the main piece. We also picked the Mystic Salmon with Poached Organic Egg (`545)-salmon fresh as if caught an hour back an a Norwegian fjord,smoked in-house with apple wood and cured. Between sips of dreamy berry toned Chilean red wine, we were served mango sorbet with watermelon caviar to usher us into the main course. The Meditteranean (`525)Vegetable Filo Pie disappointed, relatively, a bit plebian like veg patty at the metro station although the tossed vegetables and honey sauce tossed around the main affair added a nice touch. The Cajun and Roasted Pecan Nut Basa (`695) was served on bed of thinly sliced potatoes with a creamy caper sauce, perfectly offset by vegetables and fresh Thai lemon. To end, try the Maple glazed pecan pie `395 with warm toffee sauce, fig and honey ice cream or Tiramisu (`325) reinterpreted somewhat, airy coffee and chocolate , not confined by cake like limitations. Here at Olive, the produce shines, speaks for itself and if we could give a ****1/2, we would.

Ambience:****

Meal for two: `4000

OLIVE AT THE QUTUB One style Mile, Behind, Mehrauli Ph: 29574444

Chef Saby's interview

Describe the Delhi customer.

Oh. Very refined. The reason that I have made Delhi home is that. Bombay of course has its charm and glamour and its Bollywood. Here I was cooking for the Bacchan family and the Ambani family and everything in between. If I have to do a dinner for Neeta Ambani who is having five ambassadors of different countries there is no question of experimentation, you know. This is my 17^th year of cooking and now I am trying to do little here and there. I feel that I have traveled enough, done enough; I understand basic flavours and recipes very well.

What cuisines are you most inspired by?

Internationally, food barriers have broken; there are not cuisine boundaries anymore. In London they will say new or contemporary, not Italian and Chinese. I personally am inspired by European, American as well as Eastern - Japanese and Chinese cuisines.

Food as art/philosophy

As I got into cooking, I realised I wanted to express myself and please people with art or music and that food was the best medium for me. As an artist you get inspired by landscapes and portraits and nature. I started taking my inspiration from fruits and vegetables and these are the basics. In art school, in the first few months they tell you to stick to drawing straight lines .If you are good at it; you can go to a circle in six months. I wanted to start copying Vincent Van Gogh on day one. No body wants to go through those steps anymore. Earlier we were fighting to get ingredients but now lots of the chefs get very confused with so much choice and it ends up being khichdi cuisine. I see a lot of people using Wasabi. If you don't know its background, its origin, what it is, and you loosely start using it, it just doesn't work. Today it is a very big world. You can do anything from anywhere I get lost at times. What do I cook with there is so much options. I am so worried, so scared -280 varieties of cheese in a grocery shop. , cuisine is lot about the culture, understanding the people the food, the ingredients, the philosophy. It's more than just cooking. Unless you understand that, food is not going to have soul.

Signature Dish

I don't have one. I give equal importance to every dish I make. But here's the recipe for Goat cheese soufflé.

What are the best wines to accompany European food?

To start with I will recommend some Indian wines. If you are looking at Indian wines, sula has some decent white wines, and Grover does lovely red wines.

Recently I was so upset with myself because I had two bottles of wine from London and I didn't keep them in the fridge because , you know wine vibrates , it isn't good but I discovered they were spoilt. You should take care of wines, make them breathe well, buy them from shops with air conditioned cellars.

What are food trends to look out for?

24 hour restaurants, not coffee shops but places that actually serve good food all night, not necessarily gourmet. Breakfast places like Balthazar in New York. There aren't any here. Parisian Style Cafes which serve coffees, paninis, sandwiches all day. I see a huge demand for quick Japanese takeaways.

What are the food trends in the art of cooking itself?

Ingredients. In France people want to know where the chicken is coming from, what it was fed, how many metres of space it got to roam around, Was it caged? We are coming out of the phase of the economic crisis, the idea of being a third world country, our outlook will change we will start demanding this knowledge here.

You are known for sourcing local ingredients and adapting it to the cuisines you cook, tell us ingredients you have discovered?

Many Many. I am always traveling and discovering. I discovered this sticky black rice in the North East which I use for sushi and it is not even known to the Delhi palette but it works beautifully. I pick up snails and oysters from the Indian Ocean. I use wild mushrooms picked by tribal women in the North East. They can never imagine why I'd want to buy them because it grows abundantly there. I get passion fruit which I am very proud of from there too. Fruits from Garwhal. I have Thai suppliers too.

An ingredient you can't live without?

Nothing. People have come up to me and said they want food without salt and I have done it. The most basic ingredient. Nowadays you can't say you need this particular ingredient or you can't cook.

What is your comfort food?

Indian food always. Kerala food. A Malabar Paratha with fish curry maybe.

Favourite restaurants in Delhi

I keep eating a lot of street food; you know during the whole Id season, I was at Purani Delhi. I love Food Chowk. They bring street food but it's the experts from Parathey Waley gulley, then the Nizams etc doing it. It is food with History and not just the regular mall food courts which can be soulless. I like these snacks, a Pav Bhaji, a Dabeli , a nice Dosa.

Hindi

2010-10-13T18:43:00.001+05:30

blooper of the day:

Mein ek patrika hun.

Nazar

2010-10-12T13:55:00.001+05:30

I put so much nazar on my immunity by

1)laughing at all fragile bellied white people

2)at people who don't do things-like drink cold water etc , because they WILL fall sick

3)hypochondriacs

4)people who think a 6 hour work day is bad

5)people who crib, who have weekends off

that God punished me by making me so ill,always.

Compulsive Decadence

2010-10-09T11:51:00.001+05:30

IT is quite alright to be practically decadent, to spend your money on a fridge, a closet full of shiny synthetic sarees you can drape

at weddings, a cupboard to keep books in , instead of piling them up on a floor. But I am the other kind of decadence, I invest in things that will ultimately be dispelled out as shit. Merde.

Yesterday, I went shopping, hoping to buy something decent to wear for a friend's wedding.I obviously do not , or more importantly, can not

afford a designer lehenga that costs a whole month's salary. So I thought I'll look for something cheaper and went to shopper's stop but every thing was too tacky for my taste so have started begging sufi slut, room mate etc to bail me out of this mess.

The point however is that, we decided to go to ai after failing at shopping. And ordered insanely expensive Japanese food. (I can never like Japanese food. I am vegetarian and I love veg sushi however uncool that makes me sound but nothing else.) And suddenly , it occurred to me.

If I actually gave up my expensive food addiction, I would have that much money every month with which to buy these fancy clothes.

That's how much I spend at expensive restaurants week after week. I need rehab. Fast.

Camel Back!

2010-10-05T10:58:00.001+05:30

Just got back from Jaipur and Pushkar. Jaipur dissapointed,crowded and slightly blah.Even the shopping wasn't gush-worthy.The last time I was in Jodhpur, I was 17 and I found myself in the godown of a shop amidst a mountain of bags, going utterly crazy. Either Rajasthan isn't still amazing or I have grown up so much that I buy crap only discerningly.

Anyhow, Pushkar was quiet, kaliyug and beautiful if in a dry decidous way.I took a camel safari hoping for Saharan sand dunes but only got patchy green stretches of land.Of course, I took pictures in the few patches of sand that were available,omitting the green. I will post pictures soon.But the camel ride and the bus ride that followed (with babies lining the aisles) has destroyed my back. I can't walk properly aaaaaaaah, it really hurts to be in office sitting all day in front of a computer.

Commonwealth obligatory post

2010-09-27T11:27:00.003+05:30

A bridge collapsed, so much maanam mariyadai gone for India no? I feel compelled to list off one list of stereotypes according to category of people and their opinion of the games.

Intellectual jhola wearer The politicians are greedy.khel nahin khana do.Journalists are dumb sell outs, people are starving and I cannot invite them into my south Delhi home because the carpet will be stained.Profession: Employed by an NGO

European Non British I don't care about anything except the football world cup, I haven't even heard of these games. (fashionable voice.)

British: Looks at India like a paapa nerdy boy in class who was only noticed when math scores were read out and laughs at him trying to hit on the hottest girls in class by wearing clothes that he went UNFASHIONABLY out of the way to get.
Sarkari Man: India is superpower, no question ,no answer.
South Indian: Why Delhi Why Delhi? They are only in a mess because they are in Delhi. Chennai or namma Bengaluru are wayyyyyyy better as potential hosts.
American: Man,why would the US report on the Commonwealth games unless there is a terror attack.
Labourer 1: Apparently something is happening, big where they will build palaces for white people so they are throwing me out of myh ouse to godknowswhere.
Labourer2: I made much more money digging roads here than I would in my godforsakenmonsoonlesslandlordinfestedvillage where it is polluting to touch me.
Jaya Jaitley: "I don;t know why we have to break already normal pavements and make them better to impress our colonizers who probably won't notice them anyway. (At a protest against the alleged killing of stray dogs in preparation for the games.)
Italian intern: Delhi is nice the way it is, it cannot be a 'world class city' and its nicer this way anyway. You know what'll teach them a lesson; if there is a terror attack.
@Jama Masjid : There are enough cops to give you a sense that there is war. But when you enter, they peep into your bag, don't feel you up for bombs and I don't get how it is difficult to shoot there again.
(Plus auto driver, markets the chandni chowk wala gate as the gate to go by because the firing happened there.)

@Sam's Cafe: Gunshots heard outside.English woman wiggles in her flowery skirt as do her ears ,mouth and hands. Other goras stand up in Guardianstyle terrorism enthusiasm and rush to take photos. I am sitting there eating spoilt omellete and fearing the worst.Bloody hell, it was firecrackers.

Stand up Comedy or what?

2010-09-25T13:48:00.001+05:30

There was this time at The Edinburgh festival, when I went for one of the Fringe shows in a little den underground. The audience consisted of a couple of staid, skirted , lipsticked brits, some cricket lovers and maybe seven Europeans. So comedy boy talks about this strange phenomenon of American accent epidemics. America is the only country you come back from with a guaranteed accent apparently. I myself have lost many friends to that drawl. The comedian began to wonder, in order to humour us, why people don't ever come back fromIndia with an accent…and he did a stereotypical Indian accent. It was actually pretty funny, truth is funny.No one laughed. 30 odd brits and 7 Europeans with frozen upper lips.Comedy boy, edges them on… "Everyone is wondering whether to laugh or whether that is racist."

Yikes. I was the only Indian in the room feeling major responsibility for killing laughter. It was awful and this man came and apologized to me after the show although I still didn't get what the fuss was about.

According to Vidur Kapur, New York based comedian who performed a couple of weeks back at the Park told me about how one just can't do accents inBritain. they are too "politically correct." I guess the problem with these types is that they are constantly taking notes in their head, stealing jokes, situations. And especially because you know how everyone loves to laugh at the Indian media (quite understandably), I was slightly intimidated to meet him. Vidur talked about this expressionless woman who interviewed him and he just wanted her to LEAVE! Yeah, but it was ok although it brought back this memory of some stand up show I'd been to in Bombay where the comedian tastelessly went on and on about some Aromita Paromita from Horny 24/7.

Another thing I wonder about is how people can use their personal lives with so much ease. Vidur loves making fun of his parents and his grandmother in particular."My grandmother mainly cares about how much money I make. I told her I want to be a prostitute.When I told her how much I would earn she thought it would be great.." Apparently, though, most times he lifts things straight out of real life." Oh yeah, my mother and grandmother would get really sensitive. I would tell them that I am not just picking on them. I am picking on everyone, including myself so they shouldn't take things so literally, you know?"

So, the ability to laugh at things means you are comfortable with it right? Because if you can't it means you think there is something wrong but you have been taught to be politically correct about it.

There was this time when Vidur asks us, the audience, if we have had phone sex. An aunty responds saying she has. "Aunty, you have had phone sex?" he asks in his special 'for aunties' tone. . Aunty tells him she thought she heard it as phone set!!

Hmm... so another wonder point is how much of this 'audience spontaneity' is rehearsed. This particular instance, I think was coincidence. But,a colleague said he knows people who were given a bottle of whisky at a Russel Peter's event just to be bakra..

Cross posted on firstcitydelhi.blogspot.com

Celebrating Delhi

2010-09-23T12:48:00.001+05:30

Edited by Maya Dalal

Penguin, Rs.350

With time, landscapes get sedimented over with new meanings and new maps of movement; but the submerged Histories resonate at the sound of a place, says Narayani Gupta on the History that gets lost when names of streets are changed to adhere to the politics of the time. We learn stories about the curious mix of names in Lutyens Delhi for instance. Kasturba Gandhi had to step into Lord Curzon's seven league boots, and Copernicus was randomly chosen to replace Lytton in the naming of that road that we now associate with Mandi House. In Celebrating Delhi, a compilation of eleven lectures that were delivered at The India International Centre in 2006, we are treated to an intelligent digging into Delhi's past and present, it's streets, its music and even it's first foundation stone.

In My father, the builder, Khuswant Singh writes in a warm, humourous style about how his father Sir Sobha Singh transported secretly, the foundation stones of Delhi in the middle of the night and how he watched the birth of New Delhi, brick by brick . Going back to the First War of Independence, William Darymple critically examines the religious rhetoric around it and why what mattered most then was the threat that the Company posed to religion. Dunu Roy brings us back into independent India's Delhi, questioning who makes a city, who breaks it and in the course of History, who is completely excluded. The city of Delhi, he says, was claimed for the elites, with the acquisition of the Southern basin and then the approval of the slum clearance project in 1924.Roy outlines what he calls selective inclusion and systematic exclusion - a history from Independence to the Commonwealth games.

The book then shifts from politics to food with Priti Narain talking about the asli khana of Delhi. She traces the eating habits of the Mughals (Apparently many were vegetarian and Akbar started his meal with curd and rice).We learn how colonisers influenced our food. It is the Europeans who first brought chilies, tomatoes and potatoes ,now such an integral part of Indian cuisine. In the last piece, Ravi Dayal concludes that there is thus no such thing as a Dilliwallah anymore and this absence seems to be part of the present, amorphous identity.

If the question is whether the collection is comphrehensive, the question itself is not valid because comprehensiveness can only be attempted for a subject as varied as Delhi with its many histories. As a cohesive whole, you can sense that these are words written(spoken?) with love and from a point of belonging and knowledge. Celebration , in its true sense and for the average reader, the best moments are the "Oh really? I never knew that.." ones. When you pick up the book, attractive cover design apart, you get the sense that you are in for some drab Historical non - fiction but in fact the prose leads you in and makes for a breezy informative read. We would have liked some photos! A good introduction to understanding the capital and its many facets- some glorious, others just dubious.

The last of the Tonga.

2010-09-18T11:08:00.005+05:30

This might be our last tonga ride in Delhi what with the proposed ban on the traditional
mode of transport. We decided to take it with Veeren Singh who has been riding on the ancient roads of this part of town for forty years.

Where are you from?
I was born and brought up in Delhi. I have been riding this tonga for forty years now.

Did you go to school?
You think that if I went to school, I’d be a tongawallah?

Where in Delhi do you live?
I live here (near the Old Delhi Railway Station). This is our area.

Who all are in your family?
I have a wife and two children.

Do you like Delhi ?
Well, I’ve lived here forever.

Do you like your job?

What can I say? Suddenly they say I can’t ride this tonga anymore, do they want me to die of hunger? I don’t know anything else.

How much do you earn in a day?
I earn Rs.200 to Rs.300 a day and spend Rs.150 on feeding the horse everyday.

What do you in the free time?
Ghode ka kaam karte hain. (After work, I take care of the horse)

Do you watch television or films?
I never watch tv/cinema.

Which actors and actresses do you like?
I don’t know any film actors.

Are you interested in politics?
I don’t know anything about politics.

Do you know the name of our Prime Minister?

First it was Nehru then Indira Gandhi. Bahut pehle tha, tab bahut badiya tha. (It was long back, it was a good time then.) Now things are so expensive and Desh ki sharam chali gayi. (The nation has no shame now.)
Do you believe in God?
Yes
Do you know about Aids?

I am a Hindu, I do not know about Id. (We clarify our meaning.) No, I haven’t heard of it.

The Swan Thieves

2010-09-18T11:06:00.000+05:30

The Swan Thieves
Hachette India
Rs.595

‘The Swan Thieves’ promises to be a saga about love, obsession, art and history, similar to Kostova’s bestselling debut, The Historian. The characters in the present are irresistibly drawn to the past and history manifests in their own lives in tangible, life altering forms. Robert Oliver is the genius artist we romanticise, love and hate. When he attacks a painting at the National Gallery of Art, he is taken into psychiatric care and becomes the patient of Dr. Marlow, also a hobbyist painter. Marlow is drawn into the mysteries behind Robert’s obsessions with French impressionism and in particular the artist Beatrice De Clerval, whose letters to her artist uncle Olivier Vignot, Robert possesses and is obsessed by.
Kostova treats us to the cinema of a painter’s mind, lush watercolours, nuanced
brushstrokes ,every detail in place .There is a gradual, layered and intelligent build up. You feel like you are in New York of the eighties when Robert and his lover (later wife) navigate the art world. You empathise with artist Beatrice living in 19th century France who lives ahead of her time, when her intense genius is suppressed by the need to conform. With Kate keeping her dignity intact even though Robert has wrecked it without explanations of the coherent kind. There is Marlow who crosses all professional boundaries to understand Robert even if out of a personal fascination for an extreme pursuing of art that he himself hasn’t done in his comparatively sane psychiatric practice. Robert himself never speaks much during the period of his treatment and that’s probably why you never get an authentic insight into his tormented mind throughout the book.
Kostova takes us into the mind of love, into the staid atmosphere of its remnants, of Robert’s girlfriend Mary, the then scandalous relationship between a young Beatrice and her aging uncle who she knows will die leaving her to hold their secret for life. Marlow lets love cross the forbidden line of professionalism. Lush prose and a handholding into the geography of these characters, painting by the French Channel, teaching in a suburban art school in Virginia. You are there, almost, but you would want this to be offset by mastery of plot. The narrative pace is mostly competent; the beginning of the book turns out to be a page-turner. However, Kostova falters in the end when you sense a sudden constructed-ness. Letters as narrative devices? Sure. But Marlow imagines a letter that Olivier Vignot might have written to his niece. Suspension of disbelief suspended. The plot comes together as a quick tying together of the mysteries which after 500 hundred odd pages of lush prose and crazed expectation disappoints.

Historical mystery, love stories, and the obsessive ness that accompanies the transcending of the ordinary, anchored by bright, engaging prose.

Rating: ***

From a press release

2010-09-13T17:29:00.001+05:30

"create an air of internationalisation of India's corporate sector, ushering in holistic western food values."

Chuma. hamburger vitamins or what.

Sorry about the nazar

2010-09-13T15:30:00.001+05:30

Dude, Sometimes I worry that this nazar thing works .All through June and July I whined about the absence of a decent monsoon.Now it looks like we'll all drown.Storm threatening my balcony, aiyo!

Also quote of the day.

A friend's friend is in Kashmir, under house(boat) arrest. She asked "How bad is the flood situation in Delhi? You think it is advisable to leave Kashmir and come to Delhi."

War or Flood?Flood or War?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

2010-09-10T15:07:00.001+05:30

C is always complaining about the absence of Swiss perfection in India.(Understandably.) The more I think about it, the more I realise that India can never compete in the most basic things.

Just for instance, the whole process of house hunting.It turned out that I found a house. The landlord agreed to rent it to us, we met him on two occasions (please take into account the time , the auto fare, the office hours off) and finally on a third to pay the token amount and move in!. At this point, he tells us that we cannot move in because the house will take 20 days to be ready.By this point,I have moved out of my previous house and am homeless in the big bad city. Thanks to Sou's generous generous hospitality though, I managed. Who backs out last minute? What about professionalism? How can you completely disregard your customers/tenants situation.

It's got , in this case , to do with power games.If I own this place, I can order everyone around.I love Delhi for many reasons but what I hate it most for is this sense of entitlement some people have.You can see a stark difference of tone when they talk to their servants and their guests. I really think the mark of a person's character is in his behavior towards people supposedly "inferior" to him. You have to respect people, no matter what their class is right?You cannot scream at someone twenty years older than you for no reason at all apart from your feudal inherited sense of entitlement.

It is an already understood fact that getting an internet, a gas connection will involve hours of red tape.

But who has the time?It's unfortunate that we have to run our own lives behind schedule because people can't be professional because we really have better things to do than spend 5 days getting a gas connection , right?

I am dying of dizzy fainting syndrome now for instance, because I haven't eaten in 24 hours. I ordered food two hours ago and it isn't here even though I called this person three times in between.

Then what's even worse is when people commit to you because they are afraid of disappointing you.

But I'd rather be dissapointed than wait hours at some place expecting someone to turn up.I could have met a friend for a drink in that time, filed a story,cleaned my wardrobe,repaired my camera,read my book something.

Where else can people get away with this.I know this is a rant but I am sick of flakiness, the inability to carry out anything with some sense of commitment and responsibility. the bureaucracy,complacency and how my life is constantly on hold because I am waiting.

It is really uncharacteristic of me to write like this but I am just angry.

Ambarsari

2010-09-06T17:51:00.002+05:30

Dhaba but chic and no, not the variety that has a rusty tractor set up in a corner. Ambarsari, the newest eatery that’s opened up in Sikh hub in Kailash colony is a pleasant surprise for many reasons. Cow dung roof (simulation , we aren’t quite transporting a Punjabi village here), colourful but suffused lighting and understated décor. Punjabi and understated, you ask? The only hint of any loudness, were the T shirts , quietly framed in a corner with slogans like “Mighty Sikh”.Bhangra music too, but soft enough to hear the crunch of tandoori chicken.

Apparently,Lawrence Road Tandoori Chicken(Rs159- half and Rs.289-full) is famous in Amritsar so that’s what we tried first and each bite is spiced to the very end - no surface spicing here.
The Veg Sheekh (Rs.139) with the crunch of peanuts and cashews was a satisfying starter.
The Tandoori Aloo was aloo mush (which could have been more firm) with a sesame crust (which was interesting with the aloo.)All this, we washed down with the mildly chatpata Namkeen Lassi and the complimentary Jaljeera in shot glasses.

For the main course, we couldn’t help but order the Butter Chicken of course. It was too much like Kissan Tomato puree with Amul butter but we would definitely recommend the Chicken Kali Mirch-creamy gravy with a sharp attack of a peppery after taste. The Dal Ambarsari (Like Dal Makhni but with tadka, onion and tomato), any Punjabi will tell you that aDal well done has an orange tinge to it and not just boring brown. The aroma was convincing enough of its star status. Another Amritsari specialty was the Gobi Adraki aur Anardani, crispy spiced cauliflower with the pinch of ginger and the tang of pomegranate - expertly prepared since we know how hard it is to keep the gobi srisp and still uniformly spiced. The Ambarsari Kulcha (Rs.59) was over stuffed and falling apart but the Kali Mirch paratha (Rs.25) added new zing to the good old paratha.
We ended with the refreshing and surprisingly light Paan Kulfi. (Rs.49). For the price,
the Punjabi- ness and the quiet, we had a ball(e)!

AMBARSARI HS-17, Kailash Colony Market, Greater Kailash Part I. Ph: 46535672/79.
Meal for two: Rs.700 - Rs.1000
Food: ***1/2
Ambience: ***1/2

P'tit Bar

2010-09-03T10:09:00.002+05:30

The European street style café is an experience that is over sold and extremely elusive.
Flavors, Delhi’s legendary park edged Italian restaurant, gets close and now across the park is a p’tit delight.
You enter to a formal ground floor and a nice looking bar but since the monsoons have bestowed on us a gentle breeze you walk up to the little terrace overlooking the park and settle down in one corner. Women in cotton dresses and the typical expats in shorts and long kurtas are all gushing over the real Cheese Platter (Rs.450) before ordering food.

French food without the fuss and snobbery. P’tit bar is a cheery bistro with a small but interesting menu of dishes you would imagine a French mother making. We started with a Cheese Platter, a Tomato and Mozzarella Quiche ( Rs.300) and some Chardonnay(Rs.250 a glass) .The Wine list includes French and Italian wines at an average price of Rs.1400, a bottle. (They have a selection of Belgian and French beers and the usual suspects among the cocktails.)
The quiche was creamy, soft and “just like in France” according to my European companion. Encouraged by the stamp of authenticity, we ordered a plate of excellent cured meats, specially sourced from a French organic farm in the hills (The Emperor’s platter, Rs.500) and Goat cheese salad -French baguette, (as authentic as the humidity will allow, says chef) with goat cheese and salad leaves with French dressing. At Rs.250, it is divine, divine.

The vegetarians have more options in the entrées, soups and salads. (The French Onion soup, Rs.150) is competent.) For the main course (all dishes priced at Rs.500), we had Chicken Cordon Bleu, the quintessential French meal- chicken grilled to perfection with ham, cheese and a trickle of mushrooms. Hacchis Permentier is potatoes baked with organic vegetables and cheese served with ratatouille - herbed tomato stew with aubergines and peppers. Not the star of the vegetarian menu but no one can pretend that French food was made for vegetarians, anyway.
Clafoutis of Peach (Rs 150) , freshly baked peach pie of sorts ze good ending! Bon appetite. Good for a sparkling evening out and Bacchus’ dream. As far, as foreign food in Delhi goes, it is a French revolution, this one.

Kostova interview

2010-09-01T16:34:00.003+05:30

Elizabeth Kostova, bestselling author of The Historian and now, The Swan Thieves in an email interview talks to FCBOOKS about the "parallels (in)the way past and present can echo each other in real life, or the way history holds information we can use somehow in the present" , her involvement with the making of the movie The Historian and why no one really resolves the conflict between art and responsibility in …

THE SWAN THIEVES

The crossing of boundaries, of youth and old age, of professional and personal, of real life as we know it and of being drawn to impossible geniuses. The ones who we know will never settle into the sober atmosphere of domesticity and then the obsession of those who want to create art; this is the core of Elizabeth Kostova's second novel The Swan Thieves.

Kostova who has a degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan says "

As a child and teenager I loved to paint and draw, but that was a very long time ago; for The Swan Thieves I was careful to interview and observe several painters at their work. Their knowledge and perspectives were incredibly helpful to me."

Robert Oliver is the brilliant artist who attacks a painting Leda by French artist Gilbert Thomas at the National Gallery. Dr. Marlow, also an amateur painter is on his case. Robert himself has stopped talking except to tell Marlow that (he) did it for her..the woman (he) loved. Dr. Marlow's need to understand his patient leads him bang into the intimate space of Robert's life-his women, his contemporaries in the art world and the men who hold the secrets of History and also across continents , picking up fragments from the past to piece together coherently. The most fascinating of Roberts's works is a series of paintings featuring an intense dark haired woman. Mystery surrounds the exchange of letters between French Impressionists Beatrice De Clerval and her uncle, artist Olivier Vignot both fictional characters created by Kostova. Robert possesses these letters which are given to us as snippets of their life in nineteenth century France and the stories they tell emerge, stark and disturbing, in Robert's paintings.

Kostova's debut novel, The Historian was a spooky Historical thriller where a young girl gets drawn into the story of Vlad the Impaler, Wallachia's dreaded ruler who later became associated with the legend of Dracula. Kostova's characters in this novel dig out evidence of the real life inspiration of the Dracula myth traveling across Europe. In Swan Thieves, you have these nineteenth century artists and the substance of their life finds resonance in the life of Robert and those associated with him in America of the eighties. "Yes, those situations are all deliberately constructed parallels for the structure of the novel, but I also wanted to show in those parallels the way past and present can echo each other in real life, or the way history holds information we can use somehow in the present."

Does she view her books as Historical fiction then? "I think my novels are literary fiction that deals with history, but I'm much more interested in writing about the way we modern people interact with the past than in producing classic standard historical fiction. For me, the voice, style, and structure of a book are as important as its historical subjects, although I also work very hard to make my presentation of history as factually accurate as possible." The novel takes us through America, to Normandy in France and to Paris and shifts seamlessly between the nineteenth and twentieth century as though everything really belonged together and the core of the past cannot be separated from that of the present as one can't separate the sound from the echo. "I've always loved the study of history, myself—I see it as simply the greatest human story we tell and retell—and so I find it natural to write about characters who have the same obsession! For The Swan Thieves, I had the various pleasures of reading about French art history, looking at great Impressionist paintings in person in every museum I could reach, and of visiting some of the French locations in which my characters De Clerval and Vignot find themselves. It was a wonderful experience."

In this novel, we learn the story of Robert through first person narratives from Kate-his ex wife, lover Mary and Dr. Marlow. Many voices make a story but at times one wishes, one could really get into the mind of Robert's tormented genius which somehow can be only through him but Kostova has her reasons. "I love all those nineteenth-century novels in which voices from various perspectives of a story reach the reader through letters, journals, oral histories, even police reports. To me, history is a collection of voices—we don't have much more to go on for the truth than those voices, in the end—that often tell different versions of one event. I also love the art of storytelling, and for storytelling in the classic sense you need a storyteller (or two, or five)."

We have Kate,Robert's ex wife, holding together the pieces of her life that was somehow never whole despite her forgiving, stoic love for Robert. She herself was a practicing artist but becoming a single mother with children to support doesn't leave much time for art. The people in Robert's life make space for him and often excuse him in exchange for little empathy or understanding. I could see the skin of his face and neck beginning to age, the lines under his eyes the deep brown green of his gaze, …the angelic curls threaded with silver, his largeness, his distance, his self sufficiency, his loneliness. I wanted to jump up and throw myself at him, but that was what he should have been doing for me. Instead I sat where I was, feeling smaller than ever, framed in a frame -a little straight haired, too clean person he had forgotten to look after in his big quest for art- an essential nobody. You wonder if the novel romanticises genius or is it a true exploration of it. "I don't think the novel makes a moral case for supporting geniuses no matter what kind of mess they make of their lives; it's really an exploration of why other people sometimes love them and consent to do that, and what the results are for those people. Some of the characters justify Robert's mode de vie, loving his work and him as they do, and some revile it—I tried to have a balance of voices on that subject."

All the female characters, as far as the practice of art is concerned are somehow overshadowed by their need to conform to social norms or simply to domestic responsibility. Robert on the other hand is let loose; he retreats into his own sphere of obsession and art. Nineteenth century Beatrice De Clerval for instance is told by her husband the he wouldn't want her to know too much about life-nature is a fine subject but life is grimmer than she can understand. Is the conflict ever really resolved? "I'm not sure anyone with any sense of responsibility ever resolves that conflict! It's an especially difficult one for many female artists, and I wrestle with it daily myself. I do think each of those spheres of life can enrich the others and that no artist really lives and works in a personal or societal void. What would be the point?"

To write a dense paced Historical thriller needs discipline and much more than mulling over yellowed pages in old libraries. "I simply try to write as much as I can in whatever part of each day I can carve out for that. I'm wary of developing habits and rituals, since life always interrupts them! Writing takes discipline but it also takes a kind of habit of going at it again and again. A dose of joy in the work helps, too. I wrote The Historian over 10 very busy years, working much more than full time at other jobs and domestic; I often wrote in 20 minute bursts because I had so little time. It was an escape from daily life, among other things."

Talking about her influences, Kostova says she is really influenced by nineteenth century and early twentieth century Literature. "I've been deeply influenced by some of the important writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, especially Henry James, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, and E. M. Forster. For The Historian, I learned a great deal from early mystery writer Wilkie Collins and from the ghost stories of Henry James—and of course from Bram Stoker's Dracula."The books and authors she admires are "too numerous to put down here in any adequate way!" She continues to write that she likes the work of her American contemporaries. "I admire such British writers as A. S. Byatt and John Banville, I read widely in the "classics," and I try to become acquainted with the rest of the world by reading plenty of translations. At the moment, I'm reading all the translated work of poet Czeslaw Milosz, as well as a fantastic novel, Solo, by Rana Dasgupta."

Extracts in Italics , published in First City Magazine

Home+Alone.

2010-08-27T18:17:00.001+05:30

I guess the burden that is relieved when magazine goes to press
translates to verbal diahorrea. (The shift from a daily news channel
to a monthly magazine was once refreshing but am completely spoiled
now and all the other stresses in my life plus working on Saturdays
doesn't help.)

Anyway,one thing is to write on the blog but another thing is to write
in my journal to scrape out all those little thoughts and ideas from
deep within and find vent. When one doesn't do it, thoughts reproduce
and blend and merge when ultimately all you have is a tangled mess
that you quickly wrap and put in the closet so you can have guests
over, have a daily life, come to work,sip cocktails sociably etc. Yet,
there are so many questions, so many unforumulated plans for living
that are stifled in the process just because they haven't had the
chance to be privately and shamelessly vomitted on anonymous paper.

I miss paper and being alone .
What would really help though
is having a home.

:Want to have nothing on my mind.

2010-08-27T17:45:00.001+05:30

Photo by Mark Edwards

I haven't blogged in ever so long even though lines have been coming
to me in auto rides and most of my blog posts are actually never
posted, but imagined passionately, with the new enthu cutlet monsoon
blowing its nose on my clothes.It has been such an hectic month, and
now I am homeless soon in like three days with no confirmed place to
move into. As my friends say though, my life is always up in the air
and somehow I do , last minute, manage to scramble it all in one place
and grow root tips.Although, I feel like there are all these balls in
the air and if I miss one catch, it's all going to be in shambles ,
like this complicated dance sequence with lots of dancers. And the
need to be alert is so stressful.Better to eat Sambar Rice and lounge
in Banashankari.(I hope you heard my accent there.)

Anyway, as always, house hunting is a moral challenge in Delhi. More
about that later. Initially the plan was to live with pahadi phool and
stem. So we went to this super white fresh apartment, opposite the
lovely Hauz Khas monument and amidst a leaking, stinking slum.

Living in Hauz Khas Village was my aim actually but then, politics, or
not, I have to say living in that slum just wasn't given my psychotic
(and new )OCD. The apartment was modern , airy, had a good energy
except that there was a slaughter house behind. Waking up to the sound
of dying goats is not every vegetarian's dream. The owners tried
convincing me that the slums will be gone in while. That made my heart
flinch but also consider at the same time how long it will take.

Later at home, C , told me that it is because I am the market and the
world moves as the market wants.

Conspiracy Morning

2010-08-19T10:24:00.001+05:30

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/science-sense-and-sensation/662362/

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/medical-malpractice/662368/

List of possible conspiracy theories.

1)The piece was paid for by the government. (The Public Health Foundation of India is also represented by government officials)

2)The superbug was invented by these firangs who are threatened by the potential of medical tourism in India- no takers for Western specialty health care by 2020. Stuff of their nightmares but given the rat population in our average hospital, I can hardly imagine Sweden coming down to get their eyes largened or their bum cut and replaced.

3)Devi Shetty in article two is alarmed by the potential loss of revenue this could mean and is doing all that he can to say that he "sees a change in the way some companies perceive research."They use it as a means to "maximize profits."He thinks it should be about "alleviating suffering."

I most positively believe that the Swine Flu was over marketed and almost made up. Compare H1N1 global death tolls to number of people who die of hunger each day.

These pharma companies should find something else to do . Sell Teddy Bears maybe.

The point of this post actually was to illustrate my bad doubting mind.

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People who Cook.

2010-08-17T17:37:00.002+05:30

Anthony Bourdain

Bloomsbury, Rs. 599

Rating: **1/2

If you are a vegetarian animal lover, your introduction to taste Bourdain's Medium Raw is painful, but that's why you want to sort of devour masochistically. Why? It starts like a suspense novel, where the greatest chefs of America gather, shrouded, to eat an illegal meal of orlaton : sublime dribbles of varied and wondrous ancient flavours- figs, Armagnac, dark flesh slightly infused with the salty taste of ( the author's )own blood.(The hunting of the orlaton bird is banned.)

The thrill of all this exquisiteness wears off when you find Bourdain in the Caribbean

with his vulgarly rich drug addict girlfriend. A lot of personal mean rants-more appropriate as facebook statuses of exhibitionists. A pinch or two of gyan on spaghetti and we're done.

Thankfully, Bourdain the man of culinary excess, gastronomic bizarreness returns. In this sequel to much loved Kitchen Confidential, he's over heroin, has wandered the Caribbean and remarried. The world has changed personally and in culinary terms. Food to Bourdain alternates between unconditional love and raw sex, enlightenment and nirvana. Describing pho (Vietnamese noodles) as more like love than sex will be more appropriate…Sometimes I think I should feel guilty about writing stuff like the above. It's porn. Albeit food and travel porn. Apparently his parents taught him not to show off.

We assure you he slips and mostly we are glad he does. One day he is eating from the Taco lady in Puebla and on another he is gorging on roast goose in Hong Kong and then living it up in Paris with pearls of tapioca with oysters and caviar, you know.

Food of every imaginable kind remains his passion, not the show around it, just what's on the plate. In an interview to First City in December 2008, he said "Context is so important to the perfect meal. I think a Bombay Burger (Vada Pao) is just as likely to be a perfect meal as a meal at the best restaurant in Paris."

You learn that the recession made foodies of the world more equal. CEOs didn't want to be seen dining openly at fancy restaurants. Tables were suddenly freed for those who deemed it unthinkable to dine at a Masa or something equally intimidating. So, he is being analytical about the world that has changed since Kitchen Confidential, about how food is the new music for the young, on a quest for exceptional box sized eating joints in downtowns across the world. He is being weird in a fun way. He meanders too, sometimes too much. But it's Bourdain. We sort of forgive him.

First City Magazine, July 2010.

Today

2010-08-09T13:42:00.001+05:30

It is just one of those days when bright wounds resurface and every stimulus seems like an invitation to tears.

Rape,irony,etc.

2010-08-06T11:05:00.001+05:30

One doesn't know how tobe oblivious to irony. On the front page, of The Indian Express. the headlines tell us that after 49 deaths and much unrest, Omar Abdullah flew to visit the injured in hospital. And just there , below, is an ad that screams DHANTENAN , introducing Alto K 10.

Although, advertising is the bread and butter of journalism , I cannot help that jarring feeling I get.

Anyhow, everytime I read about a rape in Delhi, I am going to post it here. So here goes.

A 17-year-old Delhi University student was allegedly raped by a 50-year-old businessman in his car in West Delhi's Moti Nagar on Wednesday evening. The girl had accepted a lift from the accused, Mukesh Kumar, outside her college in Janakpuri, but the man took her to a secluded spot and forced himself on her, said the police. Mukesh was arrested after a passerby heard the girl's screams and informed a beat constable.

"She did not doubt his intentions as he was middle-aged and it was raining. He told her that he was going towards her locality," said an officer, adding that the accused, a resident of Ashok Vihar, runs a cardboard factory in Hari Nagar. Mukesh reportedly turned the car on to a secluded road near a petrol pump in Moti Nagar's Bali Nagar area. "The girl asked Kumar why he was stopping. He raped her despite her protests. Nobody could see inside the car as it had tinted glass," said the officer.

But a passerby heard the girl scream and informed a beat constable a few metres away. "When the policeman checked the car, he saw the girl crying," said the officer, adding that locals soon gathered at the spot and thrashed the accused.

The girl was taken to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital for a medical examination, which confirmed rape. Mukesh was placed under arrest and the girl's statement recorded.

DCP Sharad Aggarwal confirmed the arrest and said Mukesh has been booked under Section 376 for rape at the Moti Nagar police station.

Ambrosia - a new series on Delhi restaurants

2010-08-05T16:43:00.001+05:30

Ambrosia- the name means food for the gods. When you are in the Sunday evening clutter of the West Gate mall, you want to rush right in.

Dim lighting, grey comfortable chairs, beige wallpaper - décor that goes by the book but is still a relief from the migraine of the mall.

The menu promises Greek, Oriental and Indian. For starters, the murg malai kabab (Rs.280)-tender chicken pieces marinated with cheese and cashew nut paste was flavourful. The hara kabab

(Rs.180) is a good choice for vegetarians, paneer and spinach kababs with an almost reluctant undertone of dry fruits.

In the oriental section, the rice noodle salad with crunchy peppers was light and refreshing if you don't mind what tasted like off the shelf sweet chilly dressing.

We decided to take a Grecian turn with Tiropetes (Rs.180). It was supposed to be parcels with feta cheese, hung curd, jalapeno, bell pepper, parsley and lemon. . It tasted like cheese samosas with a hint of lemon. Excellent, but not particularly Greek.

They have a big selection of liqueurs and cocktails. Noteworthy are Rumtini (rum and sweet vermouth at Rs.230)

and Exotica (vodka, gin & tequila with pineapple and cranberry juice at Rs.250).

For the main course, try the sliced lamb with oyster sauce (Rs.350) with steamed rice, it is subtly spiced and makes for a hearty meal. If you insist on Greek, the chicken and tomato curry with red wine flavoured tomato sauce (Rs.310) is Arrabbiata well done but with the consistency of curry. Have it with steamed rice. The cucumber with hung yoghurt and herbs (Rs.120) is a good summer salad for the vegetarians. Avoid the Lahana Marinata (Rs.250) - grilled vegetables with barbeque sauce. Makes you feel like eating sides served as an afterthought with sandwiches.

The mutter mushroom and kaju (Rs.250) with sweet saffron gravy is a safe bet for a side dish.

If you happen to be in this side of town, try them out. North Indian and Chinese is what they do best. We know it now so it is not Greek to us.

AMBROSIA , West Gate Mall, 3^rd Floor, Rajouri Garden , Ph: 43742244

Meal for two: Rs. 1,500 to 2,500

Food and drinks : **1/2

Ambience: ***

(First published in First City Magazine)

Iran Film Festival

2010-07-31T13:49:00.003+05:30

TRANSIT TEHRAN
The Iran Film Festival will be held this month at the Iran Culture House. FC2 speaks with curator Supriya Suri on the films, censorship in Iran and why Iranian film has a universal appeal.

Iranian film director, Dariush Mehrjui once said “The closer you go, the deeper you go into your reality, the more universal it will be.” Supriya Suri, Artistic Director at film society, Cine Darbar and curator of the Iran film festival this month tells us, “Ever since the beginning of the Iranian New Wave, Iranian directors have been trying to look deeper into their social problems and have attempted to explore through cinema keeping their own people in mind which therefore catches global interest.”
Iranian cinema has generally been defined “as an antecedent of Italian neo realism with layers that predominately carried a social or a political subtext. Suri says that defining has its limitations and that to her Iranian film “symbolises a material truth that though constraint showed the realities of the world through mise en scene that clearly smelled, felt, and behaved just like Iranians- a realism that could not have been anything but Iranian.”

The festival in August at the Iran Culture House will screen four films. “The festival focuses on directors and films which are less popular among the Indian audiences. At the same time,they are combined with the popular names to have a wider reach among the audience.”

Baran by Majid Majidi was made in 2001 and set in Tehran is about a Kurdish construction worker Latif who is a complete slacker at his work till the arrival of Afghan refugee worker Rahmat. Rahmat turns out to be a woman, Baran in the disguise of a man. This revelation changes both their lives. Asghai Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday is about Rouhi whose first day at her job is on the Wednesday before the Persian New year when people traditionally set off fireworks. Rouhi finds herself amidst a domestic dispute between her new boss and his wife. Transit Café by Kambozia Partovi is about an Iranian widow who rebels against the expectations of traditions by re-opening her late husband’s Europe / Asia border café. In The Passengers, directed by Behram Beiyzai ,a young woman’s wedding day becomes a ritual of mourning when her sister and family die in an auto accident. The Wind will Carry Us directed by Abbas Kiarostami is about a city engineer Behzad who comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. The film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result. Suri says that they “tried to move away from Iranian New Wave films to understand the aesthetics of contemporary directors like Asghai Farhad and Kambozia Partovi.”

About curating in India, she says, “I feel the job of a film curator/programmer is yet to be understood and to be taken seriously in India, since they can be extremely crucial in shaping the cinema culture of our country. This a primary reason that in Delhi, every second week you will see a film screening but half of them would be empty or contain films that were simply shown for the sake of showing something. It’s not just about matter of loving a film; one needs the right reason, a solid discussion and a coherent team to push ideas beyond the established cannon.”

Does the global sidelining of Iran impact the reception or making of Iranian film, one wonders. Abbas Kiarostami was refused a visa when he had to attend the New York film festival as was Bahman Ghobadi for another festival. Suri thinks that geopolitical acts are condemned in the festival circuit. It has however created an interest in a “voyeuristic, curious or even a journalistic sense.” .

However, Iranian filmmakers work under the permanent shadow of censorship and this means their films have evolved in a constant attempt to sidestep the censors, to use metaphors, to tell childrens' stories. “Under the Islamic rule the restrictions were even more tightly compounded towards formulating a vision of the ‘Islamic state cinema’ that was guided with ethics and moral codes i.e. the freedom, expression and depiction of women onscreen. It’s due to such limitation that directors began shaping ideas on how to tackle problems of the society in a complete new aesthetic framework. Iranian directors have also potrayed children like no other country has. The innocence represented through Jafar Panahi’s White Balloon or through many of Abbas Kiarostami films cannot be outdone by any other director. Iran is a perfect example of how these limitations can give rise to masterpieces.”

(IRAN FILM FESTIVAL will be held at the Iran Culture House on August 5, 6 and 7.

The Sushma Seth interview

2010-07-31T13:46:00.003+05:30

You enter to meet the clatter of schoolrooms, children giggling over colourful textbooks, duster pounding, chalk particles flying and you search for the drama room.

A group of little girls in salwar kameezes with dupattas wrapped tightly around glide in gracefully and perform the surya namaskar. Krishna Sudama is a play performed by kids from the slums nearby, who take tuitions at the NGO Arpana on Mathura Road. This will be staged at The Shri Ram Centre this month. The girls burst into dance splitting in twos, many pairs of Krishnas and Radhas. The children enact the ancient tale of Krishna and Sudama’s friendship. Director Sushma Seth points out that a girl should be moved in front because she is tiny and yet so talented. With careful co-ordination of schedules, 80 children gather in this hall every other afternoon to become Gods and dancers, leaving other worlds behind.

They have been rehearsing this play for two years and have performed six times already.
“We use techniques of movement, action, reaction, and improvisation. I allow for spontaneity, for the children to develop ideas on their own. We wanted to write a lullaby that Sudama’s wife sings when the children are cold and hungry. I told the kids to come up with some lines so that we can construct something. The next day, a girl came with a few lines and said she wants to sing it to us.
She had written and composed a whole song. It turned out to be the most poignant part of the dance drama.”

One wonders if and how theatre has helped these children. “It is a gradual process. One doesn’t browbeat them. The minute you give them a speaking part, they are given an opportunity and develop a tremendous confidence that they can do it. Theatre is a facility for them because they dream of acting and singing. A lot of these children, when I met them first, they were extremely shy, deadpan. They wouldn’t open their mouths. But, I didn’t rush them to learn their lines. I don’t impose anything on them. I let it evolve. I want them to enjoy. Drama and elocution should be fun. After all the other lessons are so serious.”

Today they are pockets of energy, connecting, making drama, breaking walls.

Seth has reasons for choosing mythological scripts. She directed Shabari with the kids from Arpana before Krishna Sudama. “All the plays I have done here were written by the spiritual guru of Arpana. Also, I think mythology is about universal values. When you teach children, you have to do it subtly. You cannot say ‘Speak the Truth’ or ‘Make friends’, but when you enact it, the learning comes automatically.”

The script recorded by the children plays in the background and the characters lip sync perfectly.
(“We record because it is impractical to give so many children lapel mikes for performances.”)
Everyone knows everyone else’s line and if children are absent, which happens often because of the different schedules, someone is always there to replace the missing actor. Golu, who plays Sudama today, is spot on with his dialogues and theatrical expressions. Ask him if it is his role and he says no and that he is just filling in. “I love everything about drama. I recently started doing this. I am in class IX. Bahut mazaa aata hai.” He was one of the children who wouldn’t speak a word one year ago, but today he is the boss, the leader amongst these children. A bunch of girls echo his sentiment, but when I ask what they want to do after the 10th, they say 11th. “After that, college and then job lag gayee tho kaheen pey government, teacher aisa, accha hoga.”

Seth says, “The only disadvantage with acting is that it is difficult to take it up as a career. I never tell them that they should. I tell them studies are more important, they should get moving, learn a skill, and earn a living. I never tell them to go try in film schools or television school because they come from families where it is critical for every member to earn an income. Nowadays, even
graduates from drama schools don’t get jobs. There is absolutely no money in theatre. There is no theatre going habit, at least for Hindi theatre. A play has to run for at least 100 days continuously in order for the actors to be paid. When I acted on stage, we did weekend shows and could barely break even.”

Many of the students are passionate about making it professionally. A boy, an old student at Arpana, who looked about 20, came up to Seth and touched her feet. He told her he hasn’t found a job yet. She told him to meet her later to talk about the possibility of helping her with her theatre workshops. “He is a brilliant theatre person and has been working in television channels but they just don’t pay apprentices enough. Of course they all aspire but it is just not practical. When I do plays, I cast from their communities, their friends and older children.”

Seth, who has worked in Bollywood, television and theatre, says theatre is what she is most drawn to. Children’s theatre happened by accident. She needed to entertain her children during the summer vacations. Her friends wanted her to teach their children too. Workshops led to productions. She founded the Children’s Creative Theatre in 1971 and conducted workshops and directed plays for the group in Delhi and Mumbai till 1983. “Children’s theatre in India is mostly in the schools. I have been speaking to NCERT. They cannot introduce theatre in the syllabi simply because academic requirements are themselves so expansive, one cannot overburden the child. We, the promoters of the finer arts, are striving to have more space for the arts in schools, but it will take time. Parents want to push academics to the forefront. I want to tell parents and mentors that they should allow children at least an hour everyday to paint or pursue any other art that helps a child to explore his/her creative potential, to feel like she has achieved something even if it means sacrificing study time.”

Seth says working with underprivileged children has been different in some ways. “They are more disciplined, more enthusiastic. It is such a big opportunity for them. I have been doing this for ten years now.”

Talking about her book, Stage Play: The Journey of an Actor to be released later this month, Seth says that it is a book that evolved from the notes she took doing children’s theatre in the 70s. She did workshops at Prithvi and NCPA in Mumbai and NSD in Delhi. She was always conscious about being democratic, casting all the children in good roles and involving them in the decision making process. Theatre is not just for the extroverted ones. “Even the introverted children should be encouraged to
open up because they also can benefit from the creative process. There is a lot that I learnt all those years. When I went to America, (she studied drama at Carnegie Melon University at Pittsburg) , I saw that children’s theatre was given so much importance. I later put all my knowledge to practical use and wanted to compile everything into a book.”

After decades in theatre, the inevitable question is to ask her to look back and comment.
“The grass has risen for sure, but not as vertically as we hoped it would.” Seth says that theatre as a profession is still very difficult and there are a few exceptions like NSD, which is government aided. “We wish there were more corporates but the ones that do sponsor theatre are the alcohol and tobacco companies, and we don’t want such companies to sponsor children’s theatre!”

“Delhi is a spoilt city. All shows are by invitation. Nobody wants to pay. In the past, Maharajas patronized artists. For artists, it is difficult to combine the creative and the practical. Artists need support. I am unable to request anyone for funds, to say that these are underprivileged children, to even mouth these words.”
Krishna Sudama will be staged at The Shri Ram Centre on August 13. The book Stage Play will be launched before the performance

Bombay pace Delhi paced

2010-07-29T15:21:00.001+05:30

Romanticisation ahead so beware. And I've had to explain that this is to me , to me and to my life.

Anyhow so Bombay to me is a thriller, a page turner, yo are interested in what happens in the next page. It's all fast paced but when you are done, you are somewhat spent and you realise you had such a great time , and you did all these fabulous things, but you don't remember the details.You are kind of hungover and want to drink lemon juice and go to sleep under razai, over AC.Plot takes centre stage.

Delhi though , is more like literature , not nobel prize winning or anything but an amazing book on the fringes of great literature.

There are pauses and spaces where you can see that there are branches and birds and trees. There are experiments in metaphor.

And there are layers, there is ancient History that underlies many things.It is slow, and at disco like moments in life, you want to hit the speed button.When you are done, you remember the details, the anger, the pain , the joy but the plot does not take centre stage.

Ofcourse such a comparision can never be made in a wholesome way, because Literature cannot be defined .

But, this is a thought that came to my head when taking an auto.

I read a Vikram Seth quote recently. I am not quoting , but paraphrasing. There is no point, over fine tuning , editing sprucing up writing because life is messy and the messiness is lost in writing when you do that, some life is leached out of it.

dined at almost Italian trattoria , got robbed, filed an FIR.

2010-07-26T18:33:00.003+05:30

Most people know me as disaster queen. Such weird things happen to me. Touch wood. But I just have to have to document it here but before I get there I have to say it was just a sweet Sunday.

Anyhow, I have discovered Flavours in Def Col. It is a lovely restaurant , with an outdoor section facing a park that really reminded me of Rome.

The food was fairly authentic. C had pizza with goat cheese and grilled vegetables ,which was fabulous although they were a bit kunjoos with the goat cheese. I had Rigatone or whatever tube shaped pasta is called. Competent.

Tragedy unfolded though when we decided to go to the Red Fort. Bright old me decides to take the metro. I haven't used the damn thing in like two months.I get on at Mandi House and before the inevitable security check, I zip my bag shut feeling so proud of how careful I am. As usual, the train is really crowded. Just before i was about to get off, I notice that my zip is a wee bit open. My heart freezes but I courageously walk out anyway. MY wallet , which is a fat 2 year old stuffed with silver earrings, thousands of business cards, cash , old bank receipts, kajal, store membership cards ,driving license, PAN card, photos, free movie tickets to a cinema in Noida, memories is gone.

I have to gather myself. Just the previous day, I was admiring my lovely red wallet and marvelling at how long it had survived. Sufi slut dropped sambar on it I just really love this allet so I was thinking about keeping it till it really falls to shreds.

Now it was gone. I felt so sad and tried telling myself all sorts of LET GO , it is only material anyway lines but it didn't help. I called my dad and he asked me to go to the police station not because the Brilliant Delhi Police will find him but because the proof of loss will be one piece in the long Red Tape I have to sumbit to get a new license/pan card.

I vowed to do it later but I just needed a break from the crowds and since Red Fort was shut by this time, we made our way to Lodhi Gardens. I am continuously impressed by how SOME public parks are so well maintained in Delhi. It was great to see real wild life in abundance . Squirrels chasing each each other, parakeets at close quarters, parakeet pigeon wars for the perfect perch on that gorgeous mounument's window, the lush green and the picnic-ing families and making out couples.

I had to of course finally confront my fear of the police station. We decided then to go to the Paharganj police station. My mind filled up with stories of custodial violence, and of an interview I did some years back with a dalit man ,Deliraj, who was randomly accussed of murder and beaten mercilessly and left with life long injuries. You know , how police stations are, they are stagnant , pregnant with ineffeciency, lethargy, the smell of urine, and Torture.

I am instructed to write , with a pen , the details of my complaint.When I did so, I was escorted by the constable to meet the inspector. The constable asked me if the white boy with me was my companion(saathi), where I lived, what I was doing at Paharganj etc.

When I reached the inspectors' office, he asked me to wait and I waited in all for about an hour.

We were waiting in the waiting room which also doubled up as the office of fat , ununiformed constable,Parveen Chand, who in the whole duration of my stay there ( and I realise this in retrospect after C told me) didn't take his eyes off me. He kept asking me personal questions about where I live. I kept telling him that I live in South Delhi, not wanting to give details, obviously.

In between, I got into a long conversation with him about the 'atankhwadis'' photos pasted on the bulletin board, Abu Salem etc. I asked him so many questions that he asked me if I was a journalist.

He asked me again(in retrospect flirtatiously) where I live. I said that I live in South Delhi. He said "ok , ok , but here in Paharganj , where do you live? Which hotel?''

I was kind of exasperated now because none of this has anything to do with my FIR. I told him for the last time that I came to Paharganj to shop.

During this whole process, the inspector walked in and out with very minor questions on my CLEARLY filled out application form, each time, promising that I will get my report copy in ten minutes.

So this man , the fat constable, tells me that he will give me stories and that I should take his number. You never know when such a thing can be useful, so I agreed. This man, Parveen Chand,then told me a long elaborate story. " I found a coke bottle , sealed with flies in it." Confused look from me. " See , there was a seal , and there were two mosquitoes in it." Confused look.

"Haan so , I had gone to the Videocon building and I told them about it, " Confused look. " You know, the Aaj Tak office is there?"

So , that was his idea of a news scoop. But it was all getting really surreal for me now, coated with the commonwealth of dust from the Paharganj market, the silent Hindi less C next to me. (Yey Russian hain?)

"Give me your number , he said., Parveen Chand." I lied about not having enough balance to give a missed call. He insisted about 5 times that I give him my number anyway. I was so exhausted by this point that I had to will to fight. I said ok and read out number carefully like it was dictation at school . ( I don't remember my number, I have it saved as 'Me'.

At this point, C , starts screaming at me asking me why I gave him my number in front of Parveen Chand.

The Inspector finally walked in and asked me to write my address. I promptly wrote down my entire address, complete with landmarks , like for an invitation to tea. Half an hour passes and then the inspector walks in again to say that the computer isn't working so he cannot give me a FIR copy.

I instead write down my whole complaint with pen on paper and get him to stamp it.

Ultimately, the scariest thing, which C put in my head is this. The police know everything about me.

Images from Getty Images

Aunty Chronicles

2010-07-22T10:52:00.002+05:30

I take an auto as usual to work and am stopped by Aunty on way who wants a ride to Kalkaji. I tell her that I am not going there but she insists on coming with me to Nehru place. She is voluptuous , polyester kurta wearer who smiles a lot and instantly befriends autoboy.

Anyway, she asks me what I do. I tell her I work for a magazine and in TWO minutes she has asked me where I am from , who all are part of my family, who I live with in Delhi, whether I speak punjabi etc.

Her handbag is swollen.For some reason, my mistrusting soul starts getting really scared. On top of that she slightly opens swollen handbag and pulls out a white piece of paper. She asks me for my phone number so that we can bathcheet karo later. I tell her that

I don't have a phone. She asks me why. I come up with some weird explanation. Then she says " Why don't you give me your address?"

My mistrusting heart flips but I manage the courage to say that I live near X block market with a huge conversation sealing smile.

She pinches my cheeks and the rest of the journey continued peacefully with me wondering when Aunty will get off.

When she finally did, I felt really silly. I just lost the opportunity to get lots of invitations to rajma chawal dinners. What was I thinking she could be? A serial killer!

Anyway colleague, Sufi slut at work said that aunty probably wanted me to befriend her daughter. On top of that Ms.Sufi said I look hot except my kajalless , ill looking , sleepy face. So far. So good.

Raw.

2010-07-13T10:27:00.000+05:30

Atleast for three weeks , I've been wanting to write about how raw I feel. And this doesn't really mean I am unhappy because actually for once my life seems in place and in a balanced way . It's just a feeling of fragility I have arrived at , the complete surrender and understanding of the fact that this too shall pass. And what next?

And I've tried my best to be centered , to access an inner silence if I feel weak or want to snap. I've understood that the strongest link is me and everything else will pass.

You know what the beautiful thing about this is? It is that I live in the moment , like really really , in an Oshoesque way. I am constantly in this haze of gratitude and touch wood because a day spent in the Hauz Khas monument smoking cigarettes when things are the way they are is a precious thing. Or spending a whole Sunday with friends at home.

Do I scare you? Do I sound self help? Listen, I am not but I just don't feel articulate enough to express this combination of distance and love that I feel.

P.Sainath and farmer suicides.

2010-07-02T13:43:00.008+05:30

There is an issue of Vogue lying on the floor. They took a long time to put it together , a year and a lot of international co-ordination to get Abhi and Ash to pose pretty in Istanbul. Let Vogue be your inspiration, the editorial says. Monsoon chic and all that.

My mind works in constant irony. But I will resist it now . You say you know hunger statistics already ask what can we do sitting here in an airconditioned room anyway.

I went for a talk by P.Sainath yesterday. He taught us in college and by now we know he repeats some of his jokes, his favourite statistics and he even presents them in a way that will have you shocked. At Wardha, a fellow journalist told Sainath that he believed the farmers in Maharashtra committed suicide because they were alcoholics.
Sainath said if alcoholism was a legitimate reason for suicide , then there will be no journalists left on the planet.

In the budget, there is evidence that the government wrote off Rs. 500,000 crores of corporate tax. Revenue forgone , the section was titled. Five hundred thousand crores. And a farmer commits suicide every thirty minutes , sorry thirty two because of debt.

A TV journalist shoved mike up nostril of Sainath's friend and asked " What is the dream of the Indian farmer? "

The friend answered promptly that the Indian farmer's dream was to be an European cow.
The subsidies that the European cow gets exceed the earnings of an Indian farmer, obviously.

The man shocks, but that is why I go there to hear him because it is so easy to get absorbed in your own life. I still remember this one line that he said in his speech at our graduation ceremony .He said that we must report on the ''important processes of our time'' which we overlook for cricket, business and bollywood. CEOs , bottomlines, travel, theatre stories later, I am still not there but I want to be.

As Sainath said , if he has been in journalism for thirty years, it means he has to be an optimist.

Some Ivy League type who announced that he is an academic asked Sainath if modernising was possible without injustice because somebody has to get screwed. He gave Historical examples.
Sainath simply said that the problem is that we , the rich have decided that it is clear, who gets screwed each and every time.

Delhi Delhi

2010-07-01T17:43:00.001+05:30

It is raining. Finally . I have been wandering in and out of Delhi since Feb. But this is the end of my first real month in this city. I was dreading it initially. My closest friends in Delhi were away. But (touch wood touch wood touch wood) it has been so great. Rediscovering all my old friends, new ones. Overdoing 4s and forgive me , Select City walk , eating bamboo shoot and spinach soup at home, Cafe turtle. C comes tomorrow. Hope Delhi does the same for C.

And the promise of more friends moving here although they are scared they will hate it. Why does Delhi have such a bad reputation?

So far. So good. Touch wood. :P

Choice

2010-06-28T11:59:00.004+05:30

The Art Of Choosing
Sheena Iyengar
Hachette India
Rs.499
Rating: ***1/2

An increasing number of people now assemble their life stories from narratives so disparate that the mind reels from trying to contain all that contradiction. Everything is overlapping with everything else.
It is in a world like this, we make choices every day. Husband, career, Pepsi , Nike etc. Part anecdotal, part research based, Columbia University Professor Sheena Iyengar writes in an engaging non-academic style.
If you are expecting self-help style bullet points on choosing well, stay away .You might, after reading, be stranded -abandoned by conditioned belief systems and forced to rethink why and how you choose. Iyengar questions choice using every possible framework through which we question- scientific, political, personal, economic, medical, religious, institutional, individual, and even astrological.
Iyengar demonstrates how the presence or lack of choice can have a profound impact on our health and sense of well being. How you choose to respond to looking at a diagram of an aquarium for five seconds may be determined by whether you are from a collectivist culture or an individualist one for instance.
She examines popular myths and stories from different cultures analysing them to determine how they demonstrate choice patterns, careful not to generalise but instead give nuanced detailed explanations. We get snapshots into brilliant psychology research such as the experiment where two groups of men, one on a hanging bridge, and the other on a regular one were introduced to attractive women who gave them their phone numbers. The study ultimately reveals that falling off a bridge is biologically similar to falling in love.
Most interestingly, she analyses fashion and why you didn’t actually choose what you are wearing but that a bunch of people sipping cappuccino in New York made that choice for you.
Why did coke buy over Christmas? Is there variety or did the market create that illusion? Is too much choice a bad thing?
We cannot opt out of choice but the best way is to continue studying our complex relationship with it. Science can assist us in becoming more skilful choosers but at its core, choice remains an art.
If you have the choice, read this.

Published in First City Magazine , July 2010 .

Searching for birds

2010-06-24T11:21:00.002+05:30

It's been a while since I slept a whole night . Sleep is denied to me because of reasons as oppressive as electricity or as exciting as alcohol but it is more often weather related, unfortunately.

But today, my mind is in a state of groggy shock because it has slept too much but it is too used to not sleeping and hence continues to act sleepy.

Either way, all is well.. I am in office. I bought a pair of sweet buns for breakfast and am waiting for chai to arrive. In the meanwhile, I just want to put my legs up on the chair and try my fusion meditation. It will be a mixture of a Japanese Buddhist mudra and stress release excercises I learnt at Rishi Valley to cope with ISC. As if ISC is stress.

Anyway, the idea is to quieten your mind so much till you can hear the last sound. At RV (Rishi Valley) , it was a pampered excercise, babblers and hoopoes fought for attention from your ears and parakeets screeched like naughty children wanting food. You searched and you quietened and you found so much and in the process arrived at a sense of complete calm.

I tried the same today searching , throwing my ears out into the vacuous (no beauty, only truth ) Delhi summer. I searched desperately losing myself in the sound of the last automobile but there were no birds except, if I were honest , the fat pigeons flirting in the balcony.

I achieved a sense of calm sure but yeah.

I was having a conversation with my colleagues about the point of blogging. I think the most important reason is to share and to write with discipline , to sort of put yourself out there.

I started because I read a lot of blogs and connected with a lot of especially female bloggers.There is always this question of writing to an audience, writing self consciously. At some level, even in the most personal writing , in diaries etc , there is an awareness of the world albeit at different levels in a blog , a story , a diary entry or whatever.

I haven't really thought too much about why I write this blog. Most of my writing is very journalisty and that's not really a good thing.

I started blogging a lot when I lived in Anoopshahr because I really wanted to share everything about living in a village and report , in some sense as well.

Anyhow Cq (look I wrote about you) thinks my blog has no focus.(not that you say this negatively) Neither do I. What is this post about? I don't really care about a focus. I just write whatever and that's not likely to interest too many people because I just write random things I guess. Food, development , silliness, books - some of the things that interest me but none of these can be a specialized blog if I am writing that is.

Random rant.

I am 23. I am 23. I am 23 years old.

2010-06-21T01:44:00.002+05:30

I am a little tipsy. But I will write anyway because you know what- I won't be 23 again in very soon. Because when I was 19, I worried too as you will see here.

I've lived some pipe dreams I think- worked on a farm on Scotland, traveled to Tibet, appeared on national television ( this vaguely counts right, though I cribbed every day then),

more things not all of which i want to say here. But is my title too negative. Not all my dreams are pipe ya. And my blog is 6 years old .

it's ok na?

I think the label silly girl should be still a silly girl.