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....

Railgadi

On a train from Bangalore to Pune I find myself in an compartment with three men constantly on the phone as if bounded by duty, hmming and occassionally smiling slightly BUT NEVER saying anything . They talk for more than an hour..if I can use the word talk at all.

They are all talking to women ..I can hear the giggles and the enthusiastic narrating of stories.

In other news, man oppossite me, old, wobbly, beaten and yet not well over 50 or anything brags about having shot tigers in Thane when it was still a forest and says that he shot a python in the head and saved its fat because it heals wounds.
Random.

Gokarna

 

 

 

 

sea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fairy tales

 

 

 

 

In search of Dan Mein- the tale of a wannabe gourmet girl and current glutton

I admit it .I was one of those people who believed food is not food if it is not brightly coloured, in an oily gravy and very spicy. Five years ago, if you had served me mildly spiced cous cous with freshly roasted vegetables, I would have had it sent to the sick at Apollo Hospital.
When my dad brought some expensive blue cheese that he absent mindedly picked form the nilgiris fridge, the smell haunted my year. Today , what wouldn't I do for some conchiglie with gorgonzola , leeks and cream.
I loved and still love Indian Chinese food- it is in my top ten list of favourite regional cuisines but enjoyable Chinese to me a few years ago was blood red manchurian and sichuan fried rice from Popsies or vegetable fraid rice from the Chinese Bandis (carts) on Hyderabad streets. While I reiterate that some of the best food in the world can be found in such bandis, my Romance with Real Chinese food is the most beautiful of all.

And Yes, I Am Vegetarian.

If I ever write a book on my culinary obsessions, it would be titled 'In search of Dan Mein- one woman's journey around the Orient if you please in search of her beloved Street Noodles.
Dan Dan Mein means noodles carried on a pole.

On the streets of Lhasa, women carry two baskets tied to a pole on either side .It is simple noodles with the rightest amounts of seasame paste, chilli oil, some peanuts , ginger , garlic and Sichuan peppercorns but it's light, mild and the perfect street snack.

Dan Dan Mein to me is the real epiphany of Chinese food but other simple dishes like stir fried Chinese greens with steamed rice, Sweet Potato noodles and a variety of noodle soups are
my favourites. I have never found real real Chinese food in India.The closest you can get to it is the Royal China restaurant in Bandra, Bombay .

After the Dan Dan Mein comes the Dolmades. Spiced rice wrapped in vine leaves is served soaked in olive oil. A Greek starter , or mezze, it is a dish that I have walked around the streets of London at midnight in search for.

The only place in India where I know you get it is at Moshes' on Cuffe Parade in Bombay but it is quite sub standard.
Rosemary is a herb whose magic I have only discovered now. It works well by itself. Thrown in with some salt and potatoes or marrow and baked for 20-30 minutes it makes a fragrant and tasty side dish.
While most things that I like including Rosemary, Sage ..okay parsley and thyme are available in my dear city Bluru, I haven't met rocket anywhere.

The Irish family I lived with said most Irish people find it too spicy. We Indians will love it.
It's green with the mildest peppery sting and can work simply tossed with some cherry tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. It is also brilliant on pizzas and warm breads. Rocket pesto is available on the life saving Food World gourmet store on MG road but I can't tell you I've tried it.

It amazes me , the newest addition to humans who can sort of cook that the simplest

of processes leads to the yummiest of tastes. Take the example of toast, yeah just

regular bread toast from the bakery down the road. Now spread some goat cheese

on it and a little bit of honey. It tastes marvelous and I wouldn’t have guessed the two

worked together if I hadn’t tried it at this delightful French restaurant in the Ashwem beach in Goa called La/Le(?) Plage.

Forget gourmet for a while .I am going to list five basic dishes that are easy to make and don’t taste like they possibly could be.

1. The bland , cool comfort of curd rice with the feiry rudeness of avvakai or garlic pickle
2. Sunny Side up, salted,peppered.
3. Dal.Rice
4. Idly.Chutney.
5. Warm fresh bread. Nice cheese/butter

That said, I am a food desperado. Next post on restaurants .

Post Man World

Business channel anchor transcript:

A story rolls about how online shopping for high end brands has just gotten easier in India.

The anchors, presumably are told by the producer to continue chatting as they still have time on the show.

A: I, for one would never shop online because I'd be scared the postman will steal my Dolce and Gabbana glasses .

B: Yeah, imagine what a sight that would be on the street - a postman with Dolce and Gabbana .

A: I wouldn't risk that- I'd prefer to buy things off the store.

The chicken and the egg

Today , I ate an egg that I collected- the freshest egg I have ever eaten.

IT feels nothing like the fresh eggs off super market shelves.The yolk is almost orange, it is difficult to remove the shell and it is the best egg I have ever eaten.

Happy free range chickens give tastier eggs? The hens in this farm are bloody bold. They don't run away at the sight of humans like the hens I've met before. When I am digging up something , they are always around waiting to eat the worms that surface. Chicken hearted?

Not really.

Imagine a human being brought up in a factory of other human beings, caged in a certain space , fed certain foods with chemicals in them. Reminds me of some schools. What can come of a human being like that? I am not quite suggesting that free range chickens grow up in an intellectually stimulating environment - roaming around at thier free will and hence lay better eggs. I just made an association that I felt that I had to write down .

I am random like that. Ever wondered where the expression ' getting laid' came from?

See, I told you.I am random .

On the source of food

Picking peas, strawberries, blackcurrants and other such fruits that were once only ice-cream flavours
Or packed in supermarket shelves at best is what I have been doing.
I am working on a farm in Ireland for some time.
It is amazing how we have been convinced that we can only survive with a supermarket.
And it feels incredible to go into a smelly hen house and collect fresh eggs. Even if for a short period, it gives a sense of perspective to be connected to the source of where our food comes from.
Children growing up in cities rarely have an understanding of where food comes from.
I spent last weekend with my cousins in England. While we were watching TV, an ad was telecast that showed a potato being dug up from the earth , all the brown mud bursting out.
My little cousin said ‘That’s disgusting’. Her parents tried to tell her that the potatoes she eats at home are harvested like that. She didn’t believe it.

Perhaps , that’s more so in the West. Meat is cut up and packaged in supermarkets. In India, no matter where you live, you are not spared the sight of the corpses of goats and cows hanging from hooks in small butcher shops.Two incidents convinced me that I could never eat meat again .

The first was when I was seven years old. It was Bakrid. A man brought three screaming goats and their screaming caught my attention.
I went to our garden to look at what was happening. He slaughtered those goats one by one, painfully and their blood flowed down the veranda creating a little stream of blood on the street.
That image stuck with me.Forever.

The second was much later. I was in college and passing through a narrow street in an auto
I suddenly saw a goat twitching his legs ever so slowly. He was barely moving and you wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t see carefully.
When I looked at his head, it was half off and a man was holding it with a vessel of blood that dripped slowly underneath.

I am not per se against the consumption of meat. It’s natural to eat meat and my vegetarianism is a personal choice. I still think that two things are important. One, that we kill animals in the most humane way possible. Factory farming is not just inhumane, large scale factory farming if ill managed can have terrible consequences.
When I was in Singapore many years ago, I was chatting with a taxi driver. He said that his son had been asked to draw a a chicken in school. He drew a packet of fried chicken being sold in a take away joint.

Picnic with the atlantic

Bruised , battered in Belfast

Before being enticed - you voyeuristic bitch -about why I am bruised and battered in Northern Ireland, curious to know what my Troubles are and eager to participate in an sms poll,
I am at a beautiful backpacker's hostel with a church outside my window.
Belfast is at times quiet,restrained,removed and at others bursting into giggles.
Think good Christians walking in grey dresses to church.Think loud drunks enjoying Irish live music n the pubs.

Earlier today I went to an American diner. Yes. My standards are indirectly proportional to price of food.

So, this diner had recreated the real American diner with pictures of motels and clever American flag art , there are all these big bikes around .

Pray, tell me- why recreate America when Europe is outside with her churches and her grandeur.
America is fascinating , Yes . Don't jump at me for generalizing beloved epidemics.I am not really against Americanization.
All that I adored about America was its authentic (by my South Indian perception) Mexican,Chinese,Cuban, Soul food restaurants.And in a city of millions, I had one person who I had something in common with - the human interest in food. What else did I really like about America?The museums
Can't think of much actually.
Oh yes i am bruised and battered because of the enormous toll carrying around huge rucksack has taken on my shoulders, soul, and entire being . My now frail hands even broke the keys while attempting to open my room .

The tourist..

London

Are you the sort of person who builds and freezes cities in your imagination, stealing largely from all the literature/trash that was fed to you when you were a child.
Bombay is the city of dreams, Delhi - the majestic capital, New York- fast, snobbish and dizzyingly glamourous.
London is the city of old books, of History, the centre of the created or real past that I learnt .

London is the only city I've been to that has kept its promises. It is as if Dickens died yesterday and Enid Blyton had a huge tea including hard boiled eggs and strawberry shortbread with me just now. As i walk the (in my imagination) cobble stoned paths of this university in Central London, I can feel the ghosts of Literature walking with me.

As I sit in the library, I can hear loud thunder, it is pouring but NO. It is not gloomy and grey with old men in long grey coats walking around purposefully.

Londoners are fashionable in an easy unassuming sort of way. People smile at you on the street. In the neighbourhood where I am staying right now, old british men whistlle and sing as they walk with thier grand children on their shoulders.

And in betwen searching for lunches below £1 , Dickensian London and Real(not Indian) Chinese food..I will post more ..

The capitalist fashist genes

I am the sort of vulnerable person who gives in to conspiracy theories when the world seems to be more orderly than it should.

Is Bush really that dumb or did he put on a sweet Texan uncle act and pull down the twin towers, only to assure Americans that he will protect them from terror by declaring war against it.

If Americans can’t point out where Iraq is on a map, they aren’t going to ponder about where the tangible terrain of terror is on it, after all.

But before you, the gentle, fashionable reader loses interest, I will attempt writing about fashion.

Fashion ,like everything else is an industry meant to fuel all those words that financial dailies use and I am supposed to know-fuel domestic consumption make people buy things theyll never need .

Thanks to a huge fake industry and my ‘chinkyish’ figure, I can easily replicate looks suggested by the vogue magazine for really cheap with cheap Chinese clothes if I am not lazy.
Now , remember the time skinny jeans arrived in India. It was first worn by the rich, then the mid priced brands got it, then I went to new York to get my dream pair.
I even saw women at the Nepal – China border wrap many many skinny jeans around themselves and wear clothes over and smuggle jeans to the other side.

Now every girl worth her girlness on the local from churchgate to Andheri is in skinny jeans.

Some women have it from Guess, some have yellow sunflowers embroidered on the bottom,

Both pairs have an equal chance of costing above five thousand bucks irrespective of the class or aesthetic sensibility of the bum that owns the pair.
Time then to start another round of domestic consumption

Flares,Boyfriend jeans ,wide leg jeans are back.
Now, all the South Bombay/Delhi people (who else in India can afford that shit) buy the most expensive avatars of these jeans..till they get cheaper and millions of pairs are sold and these fashion capitalist fuckers think of introducing something else.
If fashion didn't keep changing, people would lose reason to buy new clothes so often.

Thank god I saved my pair from 2004.

Next:Did you KNOW/READ on supermarket shelves that CRICKET makes WOMEN beautiful?

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