Sambar by gora? Thanks, but no thanks!

Remember the time when there was talk of Sonia Gandhi becoming Prime Minister and everyone was angry about why a 5000 year old culture, a country with one billion people needs a foreign prime minister? Indians have pretty much the same attitude about food – we’ll eat all types but we don’t want the goras and the expats messing with our culinary traditions, do we?

I mean, I don’t mind.
I love it when the food boundaries splinter and you can have a khichdi that’s sort of a ‘’ non-syrupy Indian basmati risotto’’ or ‘’Gul-aam- gulab jamun with aam ki kheer’’, scallop brochettes with raw mango and black lentil khichdi.
I love it when cuisines blend like water colours ever so harmoniously. Obviously my first experiments in blending unlikely flavours began in boarding school when we’d crush boiled egg into sambar or put jam in the porridge. For a while after though, I was fated to eat only boxed cuisine like paneer butter masala and butter naan or adai with avial. There is the occasional paneer dosa, the concept of which I abhor, Schezwan idly which can be nice and since I am a pizza purist- paneer on pizza is blasphemy.

There is this fashionable vegetarian restaurant in Edinburgh – David Bann where for instance you can have Chilli with sweet potato and chocolate sauce-
A chilli of butterbean, kidney bean and tomato with roasted sweet potato and corn cake. Served with green beans, guacamole, chocolate and chilli sauce with crème fraiche
Now, in Switzerland I went to Restaurant Hirscheneck, the rebel among restaurants – the only place in Basel where you will find more than one woman with a nose stud and a long colourful skirt.
Bright, informal and loud in a welcoming way, the chefs here pick elements from Asian and European styles of cooking and come up with a different menu every day. Locals say it was a hotspot during the student protests of the 70s and 80s and it seems like a relic from that time and spirit.
But the menu is as new age globalization as ever – Sweet potatoes served with a Thai sauce and Swiss cheese. (This was divine). These two restaurants were my first experiences of creative food, of food as an art, as a representation of the world we live in where we’ve learnt to adopt each other’s cultures in some parts of our life – culinary or otherwise.
C is an expert at inventing recipes although cooking is relatively new to me.
As he says one of the yummiest ’fusion’ things he makes is a roll made of Mexican chapatti(tortilla), sugo all'arrabiata (tomato sauce with herbs and chilli) , Asiago cheese and lots of fresh rocket leaves – essentially Italian and Mexican influences. But it worked- the sharp flavour of rocket and the rich full bodied spiciness of the sauce nicely balanced by the mild cheese.
He just put these things together and it worked.
Now getting to my point about experimental Indian cooking, this article talks about why India is the toughest market for modern Indian food. A part of the reason they say is the attitude that foreigners can’t do better what we’ve been doing for hundreds of years.
We don’t want someone from Dover to reinvent Dal Makhni for us but apparently that’s what expat celebrity Chef Vineet Bhatia does in Delhi.’’ Dal Makhani that’s first scorched and then scolded in a liquid grinder into a thin, intense buttery sauce, and finally laced with truffle oil to give it shine’’ And spicy foie gras that even Bikki Oberoi admires.
There is this restaurant I remember in Belfast (out of all places) that did Indian tapas. Even I laughed. The first time I heard of Tapas is when I ate at Zara in Chennai but Indian Tapas seemed like a strange idea to me. Not anymore.


Ofcourse, only when food types accquire snob value do they make it to magazines.
Because oppossite the World Trade Centre in Cuffe Parade,Bombay, 5 enterprising men set up a makeshift stall every evening and sell the most magical invention ever - Mongolian pasta. This costs hundred bucks but we know that only South Bombay people would pay that much for street food, that is if they ever eat it at all.
Come on guys, Puritanism in food is passé.


(Photos from Tehelka)
1)Gul-aam
2)Patti aloo with beetroot khichdi
3)Roast lobster with brocolli khichdi
You might like to read about ME and the art of cooking.

This Bombay

On the local from VT to Kanjurmarg , the general compartment, crowded with people of many kinds, a paralyzed man, a woman with child etc
I squeeze through the crowd , three stops before my stop so I can reach the door . My plastic bag scrapes against the face of a woman. I smile and say sorry.She flashes a warm smile.
It's the end of a long day for most of them. 10:30 PM. Yet no one loses their temper. Everyone smiles. Everyone helps trying to make space for a child on a ledge.
I don't want to exoticize or romanticize.
This is not always so but 80% of the time, everyone is nice. At a time when everyone is angry about everything, I can't help admiring this Bombay.And smiling.

Haji Ali

 

 

 

 

Tonight I could write the saddest lines ( with apologies to Pablo Neruda, the great poet)

Tonight I could write the saddest lines


Write for instance that

‘’The smog is shattered and the orange haze hangs heavily above

the hoardings selling insurance’’





The beedi smoke spreads , the autos cough out

some soot





Tonight , I can write the saddest lines.

Through nights like this , I held him in my palms,

Pressing his many buttons, feeling every romance

he held , every new acquaintance that was pregnant with a impending friendship





I dialled 100. The Bangalore police cannot find him,

My Bombay boy.



He loved me, Sometimes I loved him too

I broke him, I repaired him too

How could one not love his great wealth of

Sentiments, of his contacts to reach ceos

Within seconds





To hear the distant wind in a now hostile city

And to know that in him he carried Bombay,

Its dirt , its trains , the goat cheese tarts at terror struck hotels



And to know that he is gone now,

He is another’s, perhaps a driver of an auto,

A college student.



What does it matter that my care could not keep him.

My memories have been dismantled and he is not with me.




In the distance, coolies are banging and a few birds left in Banashankari

sing . My soul is not satisfied that he is gone



Maybe he was meant to go, dismantle a metropolis,

Stray fucks, strayer press conferences on what the rich hold dear





The same asthmatic smog molesting the same green city

I of that time no longer am burdened.




It is good that he is gone, that is certain

But maybe, I want him.



He will be another’s. His teenage poetry sms,

The invitations to coffees , the chatter with prs in high heels





Phones last so short, forgetting is so long



Though this is the last pain my phone makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for him


I am sorry for the drama, though. I found him in my drawer..eventually....

Flash tales from work

Of pampered truths and corporate fancies.

‘’Okay, Congress says that we were involved in 2002.Okay.We say that Congress was involved in 1984’’
Nanu Vanani, a BJP MLA in Surat tells me.Some horrific truths are known, dressed up, hushed up,pampered and allowed to endure the dusty transcripts of law and Good.

Godhra 2002 is one of them.

Blue Frog Ghatkkopar Gay bombay ballot
My job involves pandering to rich people,occasionally I befriend them and find that corporate Bombay, which pretty much means most of corporate India’s richest and most influential people
Admires Narendra Modi for this autocratic effeciency, for the smooth paths he paves for industry,

I sometimes feel the liberal progressive India is only accessible to the elites.
The other day I attended this session with Meera Sanyal at Blue Frog.Blue Frog is a very yadayada rich urban space
She had come to agree that loving relationships don’t need the sanction of law.And gay men – lower class, corporate class, middle class clapped as did the few women present there amongst the drums and the seating that requires a minumum billing of 10,000 Rupees during busier hours

She was addressing the LGBT community and acknowledged that she may never become a politician and that the media called her a malabar hill memsahib.

Maybe she doesn’t have exposure but it feels good that there is some politician who acknowledges the realities of people like me

The Post Boy World

The Post Boy World is here,I told C ,while gently telling him to get inducted as fast as possible.
I paapa college girl from Southern India suddenly found myself in working world to learn that boys no longer live in crummy college apartment, with a mattress, a pile of porn,two pairs of jeans , broken coffee maker and some rotten milk in the fridge.Background music would be old school rock or heavy metal

The Post Boy World Boy PBW is clean, might even have a taste for art , keeps casual clothes and formal clothes in different closets, and has as many toileteries as I have clothes I bought without thinking, never to be worn again.

The PBW can express emotions, sometimes giving you an overdose .
The PBW lives a functional life,not like me in a gasless house, groggilly waking up dialing the nearest udipi retstaurant and ordering coffee every single day.
He buys Kellogs Corn Flakes believing the jazz they say about vitamins and drinks milk because its good for health,and thinks working out is very important.
He actually puts together an outfit and doesn't just wear the first thing he finds in his wadrobe.
And can actually give you fashion advice.

Which brings me to a coversation i had sometime back about how fun it would be to get a housewife for myself,someone to cook and functionate my life, when I am at work.

Anyhoo

Trident and other non triumphs

They briefed us , the media on their reopening yesterday.LA times and its cousins wanted to know
if the hotel management was aware of the threat,if such an attack can be prevented at all.
The first question - evaded , the second answered with a no.

Reporters from some TV channels did walkabouts in the lobby retracing the footsteps of the attackers and their moves.


We had a large lunch.I went back to office and wondered if I should mention something about the other poorer places which reopened the day after the attacks.I wondered if I should say that Pakistani nationals can't check in. I did only one of these.

Then I filed a story.I almost died trying to squeeze into the train where I had as much space to stand as the space I occupy existing on earth.

I wondered if I should eat pani puri near the station.I didn't .Then I came home.

Overheard in a secular newsroom

'''secularism and democracy are words thrown around by page 3 people like you , they mean nothing, the muslims will eat up hindus if not for people like Modi and Bal Thackeray


''So , Hindus demolished babri masjid but the muslims lifted the sword first , they deserve everything they get''


''but narendra modi has done so much for development of gujrat''

rape a couple of muslims, rip out foetuses from muslim vaginas and burn them, build bridges, bring the nano to gujrat and hug ratan at a press conference , the press will then concentrate on the better aspects of you mr modi. :)

Weed and wine (HuMONEYING my work- a series on stories i can't tell at work

that morning cup of coffee you see drip down from the vending machine
you grab it careless when you walk in grumpily on a tuesday afternoon
on a way to a press conference at the hilton

that will have 14 cheesecakes for dessert that the journos might not even notice
waiting for soundbytes

from the man
now surrounded by a mob of reporters
with boom mikes

From the graying man who
‘s casual tuesday dinner with his annorexic fuckbuddy(my age) bottle of wine costs half my salary

that morning cup of coffee is blackened by the
black leathery hands of a lower caste man
Who picked the weeds
on the pesticide rich soil
on which the coffee grew

Blackened by the pesticide
That slowly coursed in through his veins


To die
because the 200 Rupees
He earned for picking weeds
in the pesticide Rich soil
with his leathery black
67 year old hands

didn’t pay for his
treatment

and the nearest shiny glass walled hospital
needed registration
Before he was warded to the ward
so he went straight
and Free to the morgue


(inspired by a coffee plantation worker I met in Coorg when travelling on work)

Sion

My neighbourgood in Sion in bombay reminds me of the India that i grew out of. Barring the stray
dominoes pizza, the coke ads and the vodafone ads that are like bombays skin now anyway, it has little evidence of the India i grew into.It has old Kirana shops, aunties in saris who think the only 24/7 job ust be for a brothel, melody toffees, old tailor shops, general stores whatnot




I cover retail for some business stories I do
Now , it some times makes me sad that even fab India has fallen into the 'retail trap'and has started looking more and more like west side type places with instore advertising.

Retail when I was young was a Tripti oil store in Bangalore where my mother had a montly account and I went there occassionally , five year old, alone only because it was so close to my house
it required no crossing.

And bought maggi pockets.
Once I crossed the road oppossite and a scooter hit me.
I had an Accident. There are two types of accidents
One:When some thing hits u
Two: When something runs over u

I am sure I have a memory of a scooter running over me but my mother shut me up and said i wouldn't even have been alive had a scooter run over me.



Anyway Part two of the India I was growing into was the Trinethra supermarket in Hyderabad. I then thought I could indulge in things aa long as they were below 20 Rupees. bags, chocolates whatever



And then my dad got a fancy job, we moved cities and gorged on foregn products in super markets, I'd pick up whatever i fancied and put it in the trolley,we'd travel abroad,



And then I kept moving for studies , to work

But then it's amazing because I finally moved back to bangalore after 12 years and NOTHING in the city reminded me of what it used to be.It was almost like a new ccity except Cubbon park and lal bagh.

And for someone who generally has a good memory its'sad, this change

Bombay

In the clinical confines of a news room being told that

if the blasts were in a slum area and only 3 people died ...why cover it?

And

One farmer committed suicide feeling sad for Ratan.He after all took his land and paid him back for it.

One out of ----

Reporting is fun sometimes

Marine drive is nice and my little cozy apartment crammed with 5 girls who can't afford bombay's crazy rents

Zenzi/ big town/things open late/everything so far

grown up and working

CAPYOUCHENNAI MUMBAI BANGALORE

My dad is in a different city every other day and sometimes in diffferent countries. In my head there are no boundaries and it seems no big deal to me to just keep moving. I did the usual train journeys from Chennai to Bangalore saying a brief bye to Filter coffee, exploiting cheap booze and good weather in Bangalore and returning to weekdays and humidity. In between I'd speak Kannada to the Chennai auto drivers and each time, each time , feel relieved when I remember that in Bangalore , they use metres!

It is easy and even fashionable to hate Chennai. WHen I left two blog posts ago I was determined to hate it. It has the worst weather in the world, it is conserative, people are sleazy, clubs shut early, good booze is hard to get...etc are the many truths, hatruths, stereotypes about Chennai.

Hatruths are half truths are subjective statements.

Yet , I grew to love the city and to discover that you can fall in love with any damn place except some are faster infatuable with - Bangalore ( oops...will somebody agree please it has the best weather in the world for a traffic jam) , (NewYorkParisydneylondonice) .

INFATUABLE: Ability to get infatuated. Infatuation potential.

ANyhow , in the year I spent in CHennai I discovered more than the heavenliest coffee on earth at Saravanas, the Beasant Nagar beach in the evenings , the best South Indian food, carnatic music etc etc.

People in Chennai are so humble and helpful almost like a flashback from an old world when the market didn't rule us.

Anyhow so even though I am slightly afraid of this bizzare decision to go to mumbai for a job i have little expertise in , I know I can return to Bangalore , to gudang garam cigarettes sold lo(o?)se,to old friends in an old bar.

Moving again

This feels alien. Writing on this blog. But then I suddenly felt a wave of affection for my old self and decided to ressurect it. I tried approving the comments I got but rejected them all by m istake. Anyhoo, I am moving again to Bombay to work for a news channel. Will write more here maybe.