A Stupid Prayer

The figs in the yard are ripe and forever falling,
the moon has waxed many times and now it is waning,
the cigarettes are stale with a stench of an ogre’s tale
And I can hear my blog feebly calling.

Time is torn and is twisted around the clock,
a thinking head is shut shop lock, barrel and stock,
my mind is mostly idle or it bolts without a bridle,
Oh Lord deliver me from this proverbial block.

Found Objects

Look what I found in YouTube - a young and insane video of a promo.

On killing fish…

Indian cooks have this bad habit of overcooking seafood. They kill the fish. Kill it till the flavor is lost and the fish looses identity. I like my seafood coaxed into the pan, gently cooked and identifiably served – pretty and palatable.

I like Japanese food. But I am not a great fan of sushi and it has nothing to do with the food. Once long back as I was traipsing out of a tube station in London a Korean kid in a sushi brand t-shirt offered me a free (promotional) sushi from a blister pack and I took it. Yes I know. I should have thought twice about raw salmon on the roadside. That mouth size packet of the fashionable global delicacy slammed me to my bed in an attic in North London and kept me there for two days. It was a foul case of food poisoning. So no raw fish for me, thank you.

However I took to lightly cooked seafood from other Southeast Asian cuisine – Korean, Vietnamese and Thai. There are two Indian instances where I know my seafood order.

The masala-fried prawns in a local restaurant in Panjim called Anushka are to die for. Anushka is a restaurant in the car park of a house right after Miramar beach. This is a place where locals land up for Kingfisher stubbies and seafood munchies after a hard day at work. (How does one work hard in Goa?) The family that owns Anushka is from Salcette and Salcette cooking is imaginative – a bold mix of spices, vinegar and jaggery. The prawns in Recheado masala are large enough to hold by their unshelled tail and crunch into the juicy meat with vinegar packing the punch and jaggery soothing you all at once. The prawns are cooked right always. They are crunchy and not rubbery.

There is friend of mine in Mumbai who loves her seafood. We love going to a Gomantak (Goan non-christian) cuisine restaurant called Gazalee (means conversation in Konkini). Of course, we end up eating a significant part of the ocean food chain. But we never miss the steamed white Pomfret. Elsewhere, I am not a great fan of white Pomfret as a fish. It is a fish designed for the uninitiated. I prefer black. However, the steamed Pomfret here cannot be disregarded. This is filleted fish with a spicy paste of coriander leaves, mint leaves, green chillies and coconut generously applied across the de-boned split. Without much ado the fish is steamed. I guess it is very difficult to overcook when steaming (unless the chef has passed out or is watching a 70s candy floss love comedy on the tube).
When it comes to the table the fish is intact in little bit of soupy sauce all ready with a squeeze of lemon on top. The fork (always) flakes the fish into pristine white bites of heaven.

Next time you cook fish, coax it and cook light. Enjoy!

Indian Chinese – The invasion of a hybrid cuisine

Long back when I went to visit my brother in Dallas he took me to a restaurant called Bombay Chinese – Bangladeshis serving horrendous food. Till then I did not believe that there was cuisine that the non-residents yearned for called Indian Chinese. This is what we Indians living in India know as Chinese food – the peppery, fiery, double schezwan style cooking with powdered coriander and sometimes garam masala. Indian Chinese is the cheaper version of the Chinese cuisine available at mid range hotels in downtown India.

Gobi Manchurian, as the name suggests, is an epitome and a cherub offspring of such a cultural culinary merger. I know places in hinterland Karnataka where Gobi Manchurian is a form of entertainment than a food. Ask a guy from Mysore what he does in the evenings, he will proudly proclaim ‘I go to Ashoka Road and eat Gobi Manchurian’. For an Indian this cuisine is as easy as understanding ‘cauliflower pakodas in sauce’.

The geographical variations of Indian Chinese are astounding with additions of ajwain and mustard oil in the north, vegetarian fervor with sweet and chaat masala in the west, more sweet and poppy seeds in the east and coriander powder garnished with hair oil in the south. The penetration of this cuisine is deep and wide – weaker only to the behemoth Punjabi cuisine (that is another story). I know restaurants in Belgaum and Chingelput where the menu is generously sprinkled with haka, hunan and schezwan along with traditional local food. The best (?) such dish that I have come across in schezwan chilli idlis. Let me explain this here.

You dice a few idlis and throw them into a kadai (the Indian wok) along with generous portions of schezwan chilli sauce (yes, the one in conical bottle with fake Chinese fonts all over it), sautéed red chillies, a lot of tomato ketchup (preferably Kissan), sesame seeds and curry leaves. Let the edges of the idly crisp a little and it can be served on a square piece of plaintain leaf over a stainless steel plate along with a small cup of chutney. The locals think that this is departure and the visitors think that it is a local variant. It is a win-win.

Later when I was starved of spicy food I went to a vague Chinese restaurant in Charlotte and discovered the American version of Chinese – it was $8 buffet. All the dishes where cooked in fat, were heavy, bland, reeked of old fish, barbecue sauce and excess monosodium glutamate. I understand desis and their yearning now!

Freeing Willy

When you are out in cold weather for long there is a challenge that needs to be addressed. This is probably a design problem that is not solved yet.

When sleety wind stiffens your face the tips of your ears feel numb. They feel as if you can break them off like crackers to feed a carnivorous Polly. Given this circumstances you have to wear a lot of layers. I wore long johns, thermal vest that extended over the crotch, t-shirt, jeans, sweater, fleece and a windcheater. Now when you feel cold you also need to ‘drain your lizard’ as often as you can. And when it is cold your manhood is challenged and your willy shrinks.

Picture this. You run to the men’s room, find the urinal and frantically rummage through the layers to locate the diminishing appendage and ease yourself. This challenges motor coordination, accuracy, estimation of trajectory, performance in moments of stress and every possible skill that you have honed over the years to do a simple everyday task. Pee.

Mid West Mid Life

The room windows open out to the wrong side of downtown – open with a big sky. Small mounds of snow on terraces, a faraway belfry and the comfort of the room with outside temperature at 12 degrees below zero on the Celsius scale.


I was way too tired to keep awake in the United Airlines from Chicago to Minneapolis. I slept from Bangalore to Frankfurt and was unable to sleep on the spanking new A340-400 from Frankfurt to Chicago. I was pacing up and down, watched movies, read a book and was wondering about the dope that designed the toilets in that plane. (All the toilets are one flight of stairs down accessible through a narrow passage making it difficult for old people and parents with children to reach. What was Airbus thinking?)

Later I woke up for the landing at Minneapolis, had no mood to take the train and bought a shuttle ticket to the Hilton. The lobby was a typical Midwest overdone horror house of mirrors and the cat-threw-up marble. The rooms were good and I pass out. Woke up very early to see the brilliant view.



Breakfast at French Meadows – an organic breakfast bar little away from the downtown that serves Granola, yoghurt, organic farm eggs and good coffee. Pleased. I finished my morning meeting and met Brad at noon. Brad had been talking about this place called Bullwinkles and they serve the best Coney Island Hotdogs on this planet. And the place was a legacy, an institution that made people come back after years. A Coney Island Hotdog is a long sausage in warm fresh hot dog bun with Chili, hot sauce and onions. I loved it and washed it down with Bass Ale. We went straight into a meeting in a conference room at Pete’s office. This involved intense discussions. We were done late that evening and were due at Runyons.

Runyons is an old bar with dark woodwork, tall ceilings and walls full of framed pictures of the patrons wearing Runyons t-shirt all over the world. There were a few at the Taj, Agra. More Bass Ale and nuclear wings. We were supposed to meet Brad’s friend Jarvis there. Our parking time ran out. We went out to put some more coins into the parking meter and on our way back Jarvis is standing on the other side of the road. He locked his keys in the car with headlights on and the engine running. A small chaotic introduction, planning and Brad decides to wait at the car. Jarvis and I head out to his house to get the spare keys. Jarvis is a middle-aged friend of Brad who runs an energy management company in Minneapolis. In that short ride we talked about the similarities between Judaism and Hinduism. I already liked the man. Post reclaiming his car Jarvis takes us to The Yacht Club that is deep inland and has no indication of any water body around it. This is a seriously local bar with middle-aged regulars. A basic happy place with talkative dumpy bartender, lone neon sign on a white wall, a pinball machine at the far end, a pool table, wire mesh shutters on doors and plenty of bar stories. Very American and very warm.

One such story involved sumo wrestlers being invited to the bar by a regular and the whole place was filled with people wanting to see them perform. There was another guy called Big Frank – a massive native American who used to sit at a corner. Somebody decided that Big Frank would fight a sumo. There was an uncomfortable silence and somebody ordered a round for everybody. This made the air lighter and the tense mood slackened. Then there was party.

As I left Jarvis gave me a dollar bill and asked me to give that very bill to somebody who needs it back in India. I will carry that with me.

This was a good sample of a typical mid west local bar. I will remember this for long.

His & Hers – Part 2 - Surviving Malayalees

Read part one before you read this. Click here.

As an introverted brahmin boy with a poor complexion I lived in a room on the terrace of a three-storied building in small town Madurai – a surreal place with percussive music and rampant human emotions. My father was then a businessman selling laboratory appliances and chemicals to colleges around hinterland Tamilnadu. He had his shop on the first floor. My family lived on the second – my parents and my kid brother. My room was on the third floor on the terrace. My window overlooked the very tall ornate west tower of the temple, way higher than I was, against a streaked tumbling sky with flocks of birds.

If you climb right down to the ground floor, there was our garage with aluminium shutters that covered the twin door Herald parked amongst a lot of my father’s business stock. We were at the entrance of a small lane on the main road that led to the temple. Our lane was packed with buildings that housed people, a lot of tailor shops for some odd reason and a small eatery called Iyengar café (“Don’t eat there ever. Smoke comes from your rear”). The house right opposite ours was a small aqua green decrepit caving terracotta tiled structure with a flat wall and a shut window. Nobody lived there ever. This is where the late night drunkards, having lost their vigor to incessant dancing to temple drums, urinate in their merry stupor. The management of Imperial Cinema – a green colonial building near the north tower – thought this is the right audience to advertise their late night porn. They pasted posters for their Malayalam movies on the flaking aqua wall. These were bright duotone posters typically with a flat green or blue and black on low cost seeping rag paper. The picture was always of some kohl eyed, heavily bosomed quartertone girl with a ‘come hither’ look that pumped the inebriated libido of the drunk with an inclination. The text was in Malayalam and a raunchy misinterpretation, I learnt later, in Tamil. The poster boys who cycled down that lane during the hot afternoons of siesta mounted the suspense by pasting a small strip that said ‘Imperial - Now showing – noon and late night’ over her cleavage and related anatomical areas of attraction.

This was my initiation to Malayalees and effective graphic design. And for a long time after I thought Malayalees made movies with voluptuous women showing their wares.

The next enlightenment that shone upon me was when our aged maid took her daughter to a Malayalee witch doctor to cure her of goiter through black magic involving a cut up fowl, some ink, a lemon soaked in blood and eleven rupees in one rupee coins. I thought what an exciting tribe making blue films and practicing black magic.

Over the next decade between my initiations and vocational education I encountered quite a few Malayalees. My grandfather’s driver was Pillai - a lean old man smelling of rotten fruit and coconut on Monday mornings, the odor of hooch and hair oil. His young friend was my grandfather’s aide – Velayudhan who was always sent to the bank. My grandfather also had a partner whose family spoke a dialect of Tamil that sounded close to Malayalam – they were Brahmins from Palghat. This went on till I went to a design school up north and was culturally neutered to a label that read ‘young adult urban Indian’. This was late eighties.

In India, the late eighties brought about a huge change. Early that decade the color televisions happened and further the cable networks dumped hours of glorious imbecilic content onto unsuspecting middle class living rooms through sets adorned with a tasseled plastic cover and flowers. The intellectuals were challenged with the seeping mediocrity. They were all either Bengalis or Malayalees. The design school had a fair share of them with the majority of other ethnicities opting for engineering or medicine as a career. I was bad at math, fainted at the sight of any red fluid and was good at forging signature on my report cards. I had to join a creative school. So there I was, by default, fitting with the fellow south Indians – Malayalees.

There was an unwritten rule about looking a Malayalee intellectual. They wore colorless colors – khakis, browns and greys – coordinated to blend with the background. They sported facial hair with pride. I am not talking about tufts of fungus that shaded your lip or jaw – that is what I had. I am talking about magnificent growth that put the likes of Marx and WG Grace to utter shame. It made Malayalees look mature and almost prophetic. My friends also looked worried and always carried yellowing books that questioned life, existence or any welfare state. Camus and Sartre, Baudelaire and Beckett, Kafka and Dostoevsky – drearier the better – was all staple. If I had to belong I had to read similar. I brandished my Lorca and hid my Ludlum.

I had to learn Malayalam. The general discourses, arguments, disagreements and banter were all in Malayalam. It was not difficult to learn. Malayalam, as they spoke, was a lot of phonetics and mumbling that approximately emoted the thought. Altogether for me it was lot of guttural noises loosely strung together with intense silences in between. It was like watching parallel cinema involving people looking out of windows talking two syllables at a time. I picked up fast and moved in. It was an ecosystem where the interpretation of common life, as we know now, was written differently. There was always a running popularity list of top five art movements, literary styles, books, philosophical concepts, ways to kill oneself and cinema. You keep up. You learn.

All Malayalees were not intellectuals. There were also the notorious men and women who were Malayalees from elsewhere, not Kerala. Or if they are from Kerala they had traveled enough to be culturally neutered. But there was an indigenous pervasive madness that squealed on their roots. A case in point was a curiously likeable gentleman who happened to be my roommate for a semester. He was a self-proclaimed prince and wore a sparkling diamond stud. He moved in with a menagerie of a pet rat snake (non venomous) and an eagle chick he stole from its nest. He had worn a motorcycle helmet to defend him from the angry mother eagle, scaled a tall tree and picked the chick in a wicket-keeping glove in the campus. The snake he had bought for thirty rupees from a shepherd on a dry riverbed. I have seen him and his girlfriend on moonlit nights wearing socks on their hands to pick gullible toads for the snake’s supper. The snake was not particularly hospitable. I have entered the room to find the reptile coiled on my bed ready to spring on me. The eagle chick crapped all over and squawked us awake through many nights. I survived till the warden personally supervised the removal of these creatures. A classmate of ours happened to see the snake in the shower stall and had an asthma attack. He went to the warden and painted a diabolical picture of poisonous creatures that were enthusiastically nestling in our room. The snake went to the riverbed and the eagle vanished. There are stories about my roommate hunting one of the campus peacocks and cooking it over a spit for a protein depleted pack of students. These Malayalees are unusual.

One more such Malayalee was a young girl who had lived all over the country. She was as mad as a hatter and I fell in love with her. We courted for over a decade and got married in Chennai. It was a pre-negotiated ceremony between the twelve-minute Nair wedding and the two days Tamil Brahmin one. A half-day that was short and sweet for the Tamils and delightfully long for the Malayalees.

I probably moved way too close to my subject. But the next few years were revealing.

This is becoming an epic. There is more to come.

Life is precious

When I saw Medha and Jags being dragged into the deep, helpless and tired it was a rude reminder that fragility is the very core of existence. Because, dear reader, life is like those stupid mint gums with jelly in the middle. It feels like it will endure the cruel intent of the molars of external forces. But effortlessly cave in, be chewed and spat out on sand to be discarded as an inessential atom of a future landfill.

On our outbound at Cherai before we visited Jose’s wedding we landed late, drank a few beers to numb the journey and retired early. Some of us woke up early to see the sunrise over the backwaters and headed to the beach. Medha and Jags were in those few. The sea was hard with the waves breaking like a stand-alone woofer playing drum and bass in a small car. I always hated getting into the sea. I keep complaining that I feel like a pickle in brine. So I was walking along the beach line not far from the swimmers.

M and J are probably the best swimmers that we have in the team. They are the ones who look and behave confidently in the water. They rode or ducked with delight, the way one should, making it all look easy. As they moved deeper, Medha later said, they suddenly could not feel the land beneath their legs. They swam lightly and realized they were being dragged in. We at the beach could see them losing control and of course the humor. They swam harder towards us and seemed to go farther. I was sure that I had lost them. One of us ran towards some fishermen to call for help. A passerby jumped in and helped them ashore. The sea had ravaged and returned them.

As they curled on the sand and brought up all the seawater that they had ingested I was consumed with a feeling of innate responsibility and relief. I felt grateful that the sea restored their existence back on land.

They rested, dried, washed and were back as before.

Medha and Jags, if you are reading this post, a note I want to share. Our lives are a network of weak threads. Weak threads of emotions, relationships and decisive moments that feel significant then. These webs of life could be effaced with ease. They are delicate and precious. Look at this as a shot to create one anew. Depart from the usual and try a new thought, an action or a connection.

Ride and duck with this earned mettle.

Leaving London

Water scalded me as I was deciphering the shower system (looks like those things Schwarzenegger blasts to bile and steel in movies) in the hotel after they made me wait for over four hours to give me a room.

I flew with a flu, through Delhi, was jetlagged, hungry, scalded and further got a mail from Brad that he is stranded on the tarmac in DC. His plane never took off as there was a tornado scare in Denver and he went back home. Three days in London with four meetings, creative workshops. I just landed and I was already beat. This was not bound to be a good trip.

I used to live in London for a while six years back. I used to work for a multinational interaction design and dotcom rainmaker, under a racist Director Creative Delivery with loveable warm English and Australian graphic designers. I remember wet and cold days living in a comfortable attic of a very fancy house in the northern suburb of Hampstead, walking through Jaguars in cold mornings to the tube station, reach Bank station with Armani clad Japanese land sharks and tall well kempt Englishmen all in black. Weekends used to be for making off-peak tube passes for cheap, a visit to a Korean laundrette, cold Hefeweizen draught and ultra-long walks in central London. I loved being there.

I am back here staying on Regent Street at Langham Place, overlooking the rather severe spire of All Souls Church and a vast part of the city. I had this urge to aimlessly walk. Walking on the shopping streets for lunch on a summer day is like a tropical carnival with well-endowed summer birds in lingerie and plumage. The streets have a fever of personalized fashion, creative freedom and the general sunshine for your mind. Belgian confectioners’ caramelized air, middle eastern women in tight fitting trousers and nothing much else, lanky locals in fancy spectacles, suits and thin leather portfolio cases, ambling big flowery ladies with flitting shaggy dogs, shaded Bangaladeshis in brown trousers and striped shirts, Indian kids with spiked hair and hip-hop pimp roll, huge Keira staring from the bus sides, advertisements for a Kerala Restaurant, African bike messengers with sling bags and trunked radio and I was way hungry. I landed at this small Italian bistro called Strada with a pavement band serving Peroni Nastro Azzuro wth fantastic fare including wood fired gourmet pizzas. I had a beans and pasta soup with a salami pizza washed down with Peroni. I had to hit the tube soon.

Londoners love excessive information. The steel alien staring at me in the bathroom had a graduated scale, 20 30 40 50 60, written around a knob that turns if you press a sinister red button on its side. I turned it all the way around. While I was screaming as I was rendered impotent, I reckoned that it was the celcius scale. In the same vein I saw plenty of Asian tourist staring at the Tubemap in crowded stations. The key for the map took a huge estate of your mind space and along with inane information on minding the gaps between the train and the platform; spreading along the platform and not crowding at the entrance etcetera left you tired to plot your route. However, if you have the time and penchant for excess information, which I did, you will love the tube. The time I landed in London was a busy one – summer sale was on, World Cup on telly and so was Wimbledon. The trains were running full all the time. The tube is filled with characters that can pale a PG Wodehouse. Finished my meetings, met friends, downed some Grolsch (lovely bottle, bad beer) and headed for supper.

A huge soup pot of Kare Lomen at Wagamama with Ramen noodles, shrimp paste and grilled prawns in it was supper. Sitting next to a bunch of cackling teenage schoolgirls from America was not particularly appetizing. But Wag stood good. The sunset was at 10pm.

The dawn was at 4am. Long days. At five I was getting scorched in my bed. We had a meeting that morning and afternoon was free before I catch a flight back that night. At noon I was heading to the Design Museum on Butler’s Wharf near the Tower Bridge. Nothing interesting. I decided to walk the Thames to Tate Modern. This was the most exciting thing I had done for sometime. I found alleyways through glass and concrete, found hidden markets with vendors making spice rice, and heard England vs. Ecuador from quaint pubs with adobe walls, drank lemonade at an old prison and reached tired at Tate. Took a break, drank Lucozade, crossed the Millennium Bridge, visited St Pauls and burrowed into the Tube again. Resurfaced at Paddington to claim my left luggage and head to Heathrow.
Tate Modern was a thermo electric power station called Riverbank that was converted into this astounding temple as a homage to modern art and its patrons. On a sunny afternoon. The play of light on the main platform leaves you speechless. The carefully lit glazed elevator chutes and the backdrop of sheer brick walls, steel structures and space creates an ambience of a place of worship.

Talking about places of worship, St Paul is getting renovated. Londoners as always thought up of something smart to do while it is being repaired. The facade has been meticulously rendered as a pen and ink illustration on huge pieces of sheet screens that cover the front of the church. The eventual effect is authentic and interesting. Click on the photograph to see the facade better.

The structure till the circular cupola on top is a drawing. If you walk closer you can also notice that it is a precisely done cross hatch pattern that has been blown up. Interestingly the entire print has been grey-ed down to sepia to make it less stark.

As always I was running to the airport. London was and is the most charming place on earth. Feels like home!

Please excuse the quality of these pictures. They have all been shot on my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone 2.0 megapixel camera. I did not carry my other cameras and the quality suffers. I will make up for this mishap soon!

His & Hers – A comparative analysis of idiosyncratic neighbors. Part 1

I fell in love with a malayalee. When I was younger, probably less wise and way too brash I fell for a lass from a strip of land tucked between the sea and self importance.

I am a Tamil Brahmin - Tambram for short. I was an epitome of the motor mouth clan of white dhoti clad counsels for everybody’s general well-being may it be Sivaraman from the next street or the President of the United States. I remember my uncles, when they sat around chewing betel leaves and tobacco cured in rose water in the ceremony of rites for a dead grand aunt, always had a piece of advice for the captain of the Indian team, Governor of Tripura, Boutros Boutros Ghali, local legislator and the cook in the smoke kitchen. My clan was curiously deviant in there ways. They debauched in the early part of the night with popular Scotch, rum or viscous strong beer that guaranteed far reaches of inebria within a short span of time. Later they held their breath, walked to their leaves of dinner and their waiting wives. Tucked in a substantial amount of rice, lentils, flavored with heart stopping quantities of clarified butter and rounded off with double fat buffalo yoghurt and passed out.

Early morning was an alter-world. The house resonated with the nasal din of a humble turntable with an elderly lady doyen of carnatic music singing a popular rendition of the Lord’s thousand names. The uncle in question looked shaved (Swish blade), scrubbed and squeaky clean. He was clad in a wet dhoti and offered his daily prayers for over an hour. We kids were woken up to the smell of jasmine, pungently sweet joss sticks, asafetida from the kitchen and the names of the lord in the two hundreds. My uncle was closure to salvation. He had cleansed himself of the demon he was the previous night. He was ready to tackle the day and offer free suggestions to World leaders and passersby. This was planned redemption through extended exposure to moisture. He eventually contracted a disease that cursed him with swollen scrotums that were as big as melons. The doctor reasoned; the groin region was subjected to prolonged wetness.

My family’s lineage is apparently from sage Atri – one of the seven sages who eventually became a star in the constellation Orion or Great Bear. Later the lineage was subjected to temple work and farming in the paddy fields of the Cauvery delta in Thanjavur district – the granary of the south. Further the kings gave them land for their temple work or apparently wise counseling and they employed the lower caste lesser mortals to plough, till and reap the rice. The Brahmins of Thanjavur sat at their smoke flavored houses (the kitchen smoke was trapped between the tiles and cured the beams), drank endless amounts of buttermilk or coffee and the rice reached home. The idle men learnt vices yet did not lose their religion. Much later on a Sunday a bit after midnight I was born as the symbol of mutant values from the days of Atri.

When I grew up and fell in love I talked to my parents. They were happy that she was not a distant tribe like a Khasi or even better an Inuit. A malayalee was of a familiar clan. Familiarity is also the birthplace of contempt. My uncles and aunts who always knew everything better were the official harbingers of doom. They predicted a manipulative evil bunch of people who will charm their ward to submission and leave him helpless.

When I say malayalees I am talking about the Nairs or the Menons. Not the Palakkad Brahmins or the Namboodiris for that will be an endless thesis of vile games of cheap revenge and cynicism. While we are there I should shamelessly define the class too. I am not discussing the Dubai romancing working class here. They are probably busy trying to get a footing and define a paved path for their families. I am talking about the descent of well-respected civil servants, royalties, doctors and engineers - the people who built the post-independence Kerala and their descendants who dropped the torch along the way.

I have been married for ten years now. I have been the silent voyeur with a dedication of an anthropologist in observing malayalees. It has its fair share of idiosyncrasies, lunacy, Parkinsons and wisdom.

As a rule there are very few malayalees who agree with you on anything. Including the next part.

Click here to read Part 2.

A Slice of Life

I, apparently am shortlisted to the second stage of oktatabyebye.com. They wanted me to send them a 150 words travelogue. I quote "The next step requires you to share with us a 100-150 word write-up on your most relished travel experience. Please email this to priya@oktatabyebye.com within next week." I sent the piece below. You decide!

A Slice of Life

Traveling in trains through terrains and towns is like watching avant-garde theatre. The grilled window reveals a slice in the lives of people outside as it moves swiftly.

My early train journeys were predominantly across the baked Deccan to reach Gujarat. I have watched the shadow of the train quiver over sands of dry river beds, farmers in an argument on a red landscape, boys being slapped by grandfathers in white turbans, vacant wait of cyclists at the crossing and dust clouds of a distant bus with cargo on top.

Recently I had to visit a leather and sugarcane town at the northern corner of Karnataka on a photography assignment for a Flemish magazine. The town drunkards and smell of dead buffaloes being tanned drove me out of Athani. I fled on a bus to Belgaum.

It was that ethereal red flat landscape again. We stopped for a break and there were people with me who looked like the slapping grandfather and waiting cyclists.

There was a train at the horizon. Somebody was watching this slice of my life.

Transit

I am sitting at this teeming terminal of the Mumbai airport, worn and inspired. I have been a lot in airports this month. These are vacant times like in an elevator where you pretend to be in a state of being that other passengers will not comprehend. These are dead times. There is no specific thought, unless you are alone in the elevator with a bomb of woman. It is strange if you are alone. You do things that you do not do in public places. Probably not what George Michael did. But it could be a jig or funny faces in a strip mirror - as if the closed doors deem you to be the king of the formica kingdom on winch.

I was in Dallas, Minneapolis, Washington, Chicago and Frankfurt airports. I was in transit with no agenda but to spend a lay over entertained and sated. It is like being in a crowded island of sleepwalkers with baggage tags. I have been back and am traveling to Mumbai now. I will be home with my daughters soon.

I will write again.

The days of good food karma

Work demanded a recent visit to Ahmedabad. I was back with money in my pocket and that was a change. I did my design education there and was pretty much a pauper right through the stint.

Design education was not a standard academic option that South Indian middle-class youngsters would choose those days. It is not like my father dreamt that I would grow up and be a graphic designer. The truth is, till date, he does not know what I do for a living. Our design school campus was in Ahmedabad, a dusty quasi-capital of Gujarat where short-frocked milkmen flirted with camels. The campus however was self-sufficient fortified dream capital with clean air, love and bad food available in plenty. Other than structured courses that demanded us to go out and document through conversation and drawings, we students were immune to the grime and grit of the city. The proverbial ivory tower of the self proclaimed cerebral knights.

I had a hand written boarding pass and clambered over seven software engineers, two media women with black lipstick, a vegetable dyed NGO lady, a gaggle of clipped cackling British guys and an unattended Samsonite to identify my lonely blue bag on the windy tarmac – the systems were down. It is needless to say that I had no friends in that flight to Mumbai. I gate crashed at Vivek and Monisha’s house, ate up all their food and subjected them to Woody Allen banter further bored-down with my own. It is a miracle that Monisha was still willing to join us in Ahmedabad the next morning. But her pursuit was more epicurean and less camaraderie.

That night I slept with Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and dreamt of samurai sword carved lamb in a strange seaside restaurant.

Vivek and I took a ruthlessly early flight to Ahmedabad with foul coffee and no breakfast. I have this nasty habit of growing hair all over my face, incessantly drooling and tearing through my shirt when I do not have breakfast. But I held on. The early morning Ahmedabad air hit me with deep nostalgia and a mild hay fever. We were driven to a guesthouse, an apartment with late Victorian Gujarati baroque décor where chartered accountants and mills men were dished out custom breakfast of upma, cereal and tea. The cook was good and he baled us out. But we did miss the coffee. We had factory visits the entire day and I was dreading the lunch. But that was not bad either with an unnecessarily spiced spinach soup, cottage cheese in get-as-fat-as-you-can gravy, high calorie rotis and a thimble full of rice. More of factories and I reached my threshold - breaking point. I almost skipped a fantastic dinner at this highway restaurant done up like a supposedly rustic charming village for visitors from faraway land called Vishala.

Monisha had flown in later with the sole purpose of eating at Vishala and Lisa accompanied to join us for the factory visit. Winter darkness arrived before you can say ‘jamvamaté jaun chu!’ – ‘I am going to eat’ in Gujarati. We landed at this oil lamp lit walkway of Vishala village bumping into each other in darkness. A turbaned young man, who in broad daylight could be an ex-collector’s son from Srirangam working in Ahmedabad for a living, ushered us in. (Later I should tell you this story about Palaniappan who wears Pathan suits and serves in an Afghani restaurant called Kabul in Amsterdam.)

We started with jaljeera. I hated this drink in my earlier days in Ahmedabad. I could not understand how a drink that tastes like dilute cough syrup and smells like acute flatulence in livestock could be refreshing. I learnt to like it over years and I had a few glasses now. I also learnt that the cattle flatulence ingredient was rock salt or ‘kala namak’ as it is popularly known. We were walked further into the village and were seated on mud washed floor against a low table in a thatched roof cupola. Then it all started. It was as if their leader did a strong propaganda speech around the corner in militant Gujarati and the gist of it was ‘FEED THEM! SHOW NO MERCY!’ The turbaned youth brigade got into action. They brought leaves and pre-formed cups made of dried lotus leaves. First there was a sea of salads with sprouted chickpeas, peanuts, sweetened cucumber pickled, tomatoes in limejuice and more. Then they brought the vegetables – bataka nu shak (semi-dry potatoes with turmeric, cumin seeds and a little tomatoes to make it moist), mind-blowing undhyo (an amazing, tasty oily dark gravy with unrecognizable vegetables in it), and lots of deep fried fritters, thin rotis, butter and gooey jaggery to go with it. All this served with so much love and persistence that I ate too much, my legs went off to sleep and I needed help to get off the ground. It was wish fulfillment, manna from Amdavadi quarters of heaven, a nostalgic awakening, culinary excellence that surpasses a Gujarati invoked Bull Run – I was satiated and had a dreamless sleep that night. It was not over yet.

The next morning and I was still craving for coffee. The ignorant cook at the guesthouse showed me a bottle of Nescafé. He did not know that instant coffee is not kosher among people in Bangalore. Alternatively he offered milky white ginger tea that can launch lactose intolerance in R2D2. I realized that coffee is not necessarily a core competence in this part of the world. I had a fleeting glimpse of a café as we drove in the previous night. This is one of those places where very nubile young things and very young thugs courting nubile young things are draped on chairs looking vacant (read cool). I walked across middle-aged Gujarati men riding scooters sidesaddle and located the café. I asked the man at the counter for two double espressos, little milk no foam, to go. He looked at me as if I just ordered the 1952 version of Clark’s Logarithmic Table in Hebrew. I slowly deconstructed my order and drove it home. He was a slow barista and that is an understatement. The wait at the café felt longer than it was. There was an impervious early morning Roman orgy well underway in one sunlit corner involving a lot of thugs and things. If this coffee was not happening I was planning to go intravenous, sent right where it matters. Finally I was violently sucking at a paper cup filled with my coffee and took a couple back to the guesthouse. Then there was a boring breakfast and more factories to visit before our noon flight.

We boarded. Vivek had an epiphany somewhere over Surat. We were going to Highway Gomantak for lunch. Highway Gomantak is a small restaurant on the service road in Bandra that promises a good seafood meal. They somehow manage to gently coax every living creature in the sea to convert to a delectable curry dish or a rava fry on my plate. I let Monisha and Lisa decide between a hoard of dishes with names that sound like the entire process of cooking – ‘slowly twist the head and pull the inerds out as you sing an upbeat excerpt from a Konkani song’ could pretty much be a name of a dish. The place was teeming with inspiring eaters who with a sleight of hand could devour a crab with a lot of rice and sunset yellow gravy in coconut sauce. I probably had a significant part of an underwater food chain that afternoon – clams, mussels, silver fish, shrimps, pomfret in their many styles. I loved the food and hated the fact that I was going to work and Monisha to sleep at home.

I was back in Bangalore that night. This trip was an epicurean deliverance. Thanks to Vivek, Monisha and Lisa who brought in the good food karma.

Deconstructing a Svengali – Advertising voyeurism

In America Television is God. It is the all-pervasive omnipresence. When the people are saying their little prayer at their table a small television is on and watching them. The channels are vying the spot on their mind luring them with grand promises while doing mundane things like predicting weather. American television commercials are probably the best keyhole to peep, to conjure up an intelligent voyeuristic opinion on the country that is otherwise uninteresting. In this post I have tried to deconstruct this Uncle svengali Sam through a set of advertisements caught on a Friday from noon to evening central time.

TGI Fridays
Americans are cursed with a countrywide eating disorder. There is the morning meal with bacon eggs grease-fest plus lots of coffee, a couple of demented hi-sugar snacks, a loaded lunch with half an angus (you can hear it moo) in it with a super-size soda, then a few more snacks that range between packed candies to salted cheese fries and then there is supper with lots more things that are dead and unhealthy. They eat varied meats, an assortment of fowls, soda and sugar in bowls. TGI Fridays is an all-American institution (Does anybody know what this actually means? Can you call me?) that promotes overt consumption of a gastronomical nature. They have juicy (read bloody) steaks beautifully rendered in all its pristine glory while being cut and dipped in a sweet sauce and there is an entire family playing hooky to eat at TGI Fridays. There are more such advertisements – Papa Johns, Red Lobster, Taco Bell, Olive Garden and it goes on. They have to feed 295,734,134 people with similar disorder and I do not blame the chains. They are making their bread.

Thyrin ATC
This is a derivative of the earlier paragraph – obesity. Let me feed you with some statistics first. New statistics reveal that a startling 64.5% of American adults, or more than 120 million people, are overweight or obese. The numbers probably will mean an explosion of diabetes and heart disease cases if things don’t improve, top U.S. obesity experts say. The number of Americans who are overweight is at the highest level ever recorded. 31%, or about 59 million adults older than 20, are obese. Obese is defined as 30 or more pounds over a healthy body weight; overweight is roughly 10 to 30 pounds over a healthy weight. 33% of adult women are obese, compared with 28% of men. 50% of black women are obese compared with 40% of Mexican-American women and 30% of white women. (The survey doesn't have a category labeled Hispanics.) There is virtually no difference in obesity among men based on race. 5% of people overall are extremely obese. That's up from about 3% in the early 1990s. But 15% of black women are extremely obese. About 15% of children ages 6 to 19, or about 9 million children, are overweight.

There are equally staggering amounts of prescription-less cure for obesity for a lot of money. One such product is Thyrin aimed at the larger ladies. The advertisement is a boring set of facts with typical before and after scenarios. Thyrin cures - as the tagline suggests - ‘weightloss plus thyroid support’. I sometimes wonder, can this be ever reversed?

Bowflex – Delivers Results
This obesity and eating disorder issues are discharging a more health and fitness oriented culture. I personally think, unhealthiness is associated with a class that the upcoming urban America does not associate itself with. This is why they need regimens of diet and fitness. Low fat, low sugar, good carb, bad carb (like in a culinary film noir whodunit), high fiber, bran, light beer, with a promise of a six pack abs and plasticky looking people who are on Red Bull to do the commercials –this is the overall scenario. Bowflex is a home gym product with pumped up men and women working out. You can get one for $19 a month and it apparently delivers results. I am happy about this. This is probably the tip of the reversal.

Coca Cola Zero
I think cola commercials have gone beyond the standard message to generic banter. It is more about recurrence and so a recall. This commercial is for a zero calorie Coke that is focused at the health conscious American. It has a man from the Coca Cola Company who claims that they have nailed it – they have discovered the Zero Calorie Coke. As he says that he wants to share the formula he gets hit in the neck by a blow dart and faints. You see an executive hiding in the next room with the dart pipe. Can anybody decipher this masterpiece from Madison Avenue? For some odd reason you do not see desis drinking Coke. I am not sure whether this is about staying healthy or saving money.

Dell Dimension
Talking about saving money Dell is whipping out deals before Thanksgiving to lure families to own a new desktop. They are cutting costs – moving more jobs to Bangalore. Dell has been a pioneer in this call center outsourcing bandwagon. The other day I called United Airlines to change my flight and my call landed on a table in Pune. I had meetings that were more pro outsourcing than before. So Dell Dimension can sell at $399 to a suburban kid playing games.

Gameboy Donkey Kong
Hip-hop is an irreverent culture that is prevalent among young adults. For the uninitiated this is about wearing clothes that are a few sizes larger, showing underwear that include boxers, tshirts that look like they have been vandalized, jargons and groupie moves that others cannot understand, general demeanor of disrespect to anything other than fellow hip-hoppers. This has left quite a few parents worried. Gameboy is a mobile gaming product that promotes this culture. The commercial has a bunch of kids driving an old car with one playing a Gameboy and the car is slowly getting filled with cartoon-ish surf culture tattoo-ish florals and characters that jump out of it. Everything about this commercial including ’77 automobile is worrisome.

Mazda 6
Car advertisements have gone desi in America. Everybody is promising mileage. The fuel prices have been bad after the country got made by the three witches of the south – Katrina, Wilma and Rita. It was close to $6 a gallon at one point and America has suddenly been shaken into understanding moderation and fuel efficiency. All car companies are taking about the mileage or hybrid cars that run on electricity or ethanol. Mazda is one of those few old school car companies still talking about an exciting new car – not boring as the other sedans. The commercial has people sleeping in their cars in a typical downtown street while Mazda 6 zips past.

Geico – Different Tastes. Different Personality. Same Insurance Company
In corporate America the next best thing to compare among men after the size of manliness blessed upon thee is what you paid for your automobile insurance. I have always heard desis harp a lot about paying a brown limb for their insurance. Geico has been the most visible of the companies. This advertisement is actually for motorcycles with members of a strange looking suburban family driving different vehicles including a scooter. Ends with the proverbial 800-number that you can call.

The Cochran Firm
America knows how to sue. You can bite into a beef jerky and your teeth comes off you can sue; you can keep a coffee cup between your legs and it mars your ability to exercise other things between your legs you can very well sue; you can sue for injury, for somebody’s error, for pain and for prayers not of your belief. The Cochran Firm is a couple of legals in Dallas area who will help you with your injury claim. They advertise with these suited guys standing back to back like the Starsky and Hutch to save you from evils of injury of any kind.

There are more – upside down Christmas trees, holiday vacation plans, more food, a lot of odd beverages and snacks.

And a dumb president.

Immigrant Angels – Four cabbie stories

I flew an Embraer 170 jet across the United States from Dallas Fortworth to Chicago O’Hare. A small thing to take care of in Chicago and I took another such flight to Washington Dulles.

This is probably the perfect time to visit the capital area – fall. The State of Virginia looks like a young media professional from London when shades of reds are the color of the season – wearing red silks, fluffy boa, dyed hair, bright red demented eye wear, jewelry and more. (After I paint the picture I realize how bad it is.) Virginia looks beautiful, surely more attractive than that media girl.

The people from capital area are predominantly occupied in governance or working for agencies that are government parasites. Of what I hear from friends who work in defense contracting companies the bureaucrats are a bunch of frustrated sods warming chairs and acting pricey for the mere fact that they are sitting on government money. I got a fantastic deal at the Hyatt Dulles right next to the airport (and I almost missed the flight back to Dallas Fortworth and that is another story). I got a well-appointed room overlooking a terrace garden with a lounge area and a sleep area for $80 a night all inclusive and it otherwise costs $354 and taxes (Priceline.com rocks!). This is like a pauper placed in a palace. I was sharing elevators and waiting for cabs with bureaucrats wearing arrogance on their two thousand dollar suit sleeves. They threw loaded glances at this strange Asian guy wearing jeans and an Eddie Bauer corduroy jacket – ‘is he staying here. I need to get Cindy to change my reservations next time’.

There is a pleasant comfort in meeting immigrants in the capital area. Like New York City, Washington DC has always attracted immigrant population driving cabs or working at Delis. They are legal immigrants polite, confident and engaging. This posting is about four cab drivers who in their own way made a difference to my otherwise sober trip.


Flare of existence - Kelly Zhu
The first morning at Hyatt and I was worried about calling a cab from the hotel. I thought they would send me a gleaming Merc and fleece the daylights out of my meager travel budget. However, I decided to go with them and a Lexus GS440 lands up. I had to share the ride with another Asian girl from California. She was going to Reston, VA and I was going across the bridge to McLean, VA. Kelly Zhu, a Japanese lady in her thirties, was the cab driver.

The champagne silver Lexus was a fantastic car with a Magellan GPS (the type that constantly talks to you - ‘you missed the exit you dumb ass’). Kelly maneuvered the car with great ease and skill. She was a silent woman with a pleasant smile; unlike the ones in Ozu movies. I pictured her in a small town home that smells of fish in Maryland with her Pokemon daughter, eating small portions of clean food on a perfectly square plates on perfectly square low table. She dropped me at McLean, VA, handed me her card and left.

After I finished my meeting I get a cab driven by Siraj Khan and we got stuck on the beltway. The radio said that there was a rather bad accident on the beltway. We crawled for over a mile and saw those flashing lights up ahead. We had to skirt around a tow truck and a couple of police cars blocking the accident and one of the lanes. Then I saw it through those flashing lights in my eye – the ravaged hood of champagne silver Lexus awkwardly pulled up at the shoulder. The airbags flopped over the front windows. It cannot be Kelly’s car. But since then, I had grit in my mind about Kelly and the visual of the mangled car filled my vacant afternoons. Kelly Zhu if you ever read this show me a sign – send up the flare of existence.


No line of control - Siraj Khan
Irrespective of where you flag them in the United States, Pakistani cabbies have a consistent remark. They are out to prove that the hostility between people of our countries is a weak mirage conjured in the heads of the state for political advantage. The truth is we are one, like renegade Siamese twins.

Siraj’s illustration of this point was a bollywood-style drama of friendship. He is of Pakistani origin – a cricket player-like handsome man in his early thirties in a Walmart polo neck, jeans and wrap around dark glasses. He drives an unmentionably yellow cab with the CD player incessantly playing ‘Pretty woman dekko dekko na Pretty woman’, franchised for Falls Church Cab Service. His friend Raj, of Indian origin, drives a cab for the same company. (Raj – Siraj. Who said truth cannot be cheesy!) Raj threw a huge bash on Diwali day with booze and fanfare. There were three Indian families in attendance and about ten Pakistani ones. They had a ball, of course on a common ground of Hindi film songs, not to mention the inebriated sing-along and dancing.

Raj and Siraj do not eat lunch without each other. And they do this everyday. Last month was Ramadan and Siraj was fasting. Raj had these unhappy and lonely lunches that he ate to live. Yesterday was Id and Siraj organized a do and invited the same bunch – biryani, butter chicken and lots of beer to wash it down. A re-run of the song and dance routine and the bunch was elated. Now, Siraj’s fasting is over with Id and he can eat lunch again. He wanted to drop me of at Great Falls, VA as early as he can for the friends are uniting again for lunch after a month. Raj is buying Chinese and they are meeting at Tyson’s Corner.

I did call Siraj that afternoon for a drop back at Hyatt. He was at DC after lunch and he called back to say that Raj was tied-up too. I called the cab company and after couple of hours of wait they sent me Steven Mbwaza.

This was a typical establishing decoupage in a Hindi movie to illustrate friendship, with jumpy comic songs, heroes in colors that hurt, which the west will discard as something camp and not at all übersexual.

As corny as it may sound, it was earnest and I liked that.


From the fields of gold – Steven Mbwaza
Friday afternoon, I was working at Content Enablers at Great Falls, VA. Brad went early to convert eighty pounds of chicken simmering at home into enchiladas for a night party. Mathew came over, had a $9.99 Gyro dinner at Deli Italiano with me and left. I called for a cab and they sent me a thin, tall, articulate, deep voiced young African American who introduced himself as Steve.

Steven Mbwaza was from Ghana, Western Africa. His country was a colony of the British Empire and was declared independent ten years after India in 1957. Steven was 32, well read and well informed. He wanted to know my take on the Delhi bombs and was concerned that the Pakistani borders were not secure after the earthquake. He was all for democratic progress and India seemed to be his benchmark. ‘You guys are smart and we want to be there too.’

Ghana is a small and peaceful democracy of about 14 million people south of Sahara with rich metal resources. Appropriately christened Gold Coast by the British Empire, it traded that name for Ghana later. The unpronounceable President of Ghana is apparently a progressive man sending youngsters out to learn and bring back wisdom to make a difference in the economy and governance of this small country. Kofi Annan is a Ghanian and he supports this cause. Him being the UN Secretary General visible and influential has helped in Ghana getting noticed by the larger global community.

Steven, a dual citizen of US and Ghana, drives a cab, studies at the University of Maryland and runs a small acupuncture pads business back in Africa. ‘I want to go back home soon, like how you Indians are and make a difference to my land.’ I was impressed and inspired by this young man’s patriotism, drive and conviction.


My travel planner – Ahmed the Turk
Too many Sam Adams the earlier night and I woke up late. I had to catch a flight at 8.27 am and the front desk had told me that there is a shuttle every half hour. They did not tell me that they start at 7.45 am on a Saturday.

I had to call for a cab. Ahmed the Turk drives in and I politely told him to step on it. It is a short drive. Ahmed talks without a pause in an interesting mid eastern accent with guttural flourishes to an otherwise insipid monologue. I made the mistake of confessing that I am planning a week’s vacation in Istanbul. Ahmed quickly donned his cap of the knowledgeable guide set out to create my itinerary as I panic.

‘First day is at the bazaar Kapalıçari; next day is at the mosques Ahi Celibi, Selimiye, Al Sophia and Zeyrek; then the churches Anglikan and more. You get everything in Istanbul, the legit and the illicit. But you need to know the path. You should eat the fish, with what do you call that, lemon and olive oil at the bazaar. Ask them to make it hot and eat it slowly. Do not forget to take the ferry across the river between the European quarters and the Asian quarters. The sauce for the fish is an amazing combination of olive leaves and spices. Ask the guys to top it’. At this point we have been at the United gate for a few minutes and my flight will shut in about twenty. I can see that the airport is extremely crowded with weekend traffic. I am being polite and listening to him as I pull my wallet out. He continues with the color of the sea in Turkey, extended services in a Turkish bath (he winks), but does not tell me the fare. Another minute of his banter and I am about to excrete wire-cut house bricks. In between somewhere he said ‘Thirteen dollars’ and I stuffed a twenty dollar bill in his palm and shot out like a moor during crusade. I ran to the counter, inched nervously in the queue, get half naked through security check, dress up, reach gate C16 and as the lady is deciphering my last name to announce I slide to her, enter the gate and it shuts behind me. I was the last person to enter the plane and the vacation in Turkey was the last thought in my head.

I breathe as the Embraer taxis out on the runway. It lumbers up the sky and I ease into a comfortable content nap. I am going back to Dallas.

Left index finger, Right index finger

I am back here again. Sleep dazed afternoon after a 22-hour flight through Frankfurt with Warsteiner beer, chicken lunch, coffee and Baileys. This fancy new terminal with vast walk throughs and going down escalators that lead you down a deep chasm of a new promise of dawn for some and just a bunch of engagement marks, phone numbers on my calendar. A curt man behind the counter stamps my immigration with a St. Peter professionalism. Shiny new baggage claim carousel with the Germans on the banks cursing being there in there jagged lubricant spit-air tongue and beagles sniffing out African salted meat and Indian pickles. I just landed in Dallas-Fortworth, Texas.

I am in the land where there is an overdose of CNN, a similar serving of Public Broadcast and a plenty of stupidity in the governance to feed it all. I am here for the next fortnight and am hoping to post enough meat to collectively complain about this massive dysfunctional pretentious machine called United States of America.

I am back here again.

The Quintessential Hustler of Agra

I am writing this as we are headed back to Delhi from Agra. We braved a trip to the north for the junket – a fixed feature of Brad’s Indian trips. We met Prem at Agra.

Our travel agent had a package deal in a minivan to comfortably accommodate Brad’s girth and stature. Komal Singh, a sleepy driver from Garhwal with a pahadi ringtone, picked us up at the Delhi airport. After a few dusty stopovers to pay taxes from crossing state borders, taxes for drinking aerated water and taxes for general existence we were on a well-surfaced road towards Mathura and Agra. Somewhere on this road Komal slept at the wheel and we missed a disastrous camel cart accident that would have made us look like a bunch of kinky sex starved men trying a mangled bestiality maneuver with large animals. I pledged to keep Komal awake and engaged him in unnecessary conversation about everything other than quantum dynamics in a carefully cultivated chaste Delhi tongue. We crossed plenty of shantytowns, people, livestock, camels, three wheelers piled up with people and paraphernalia, dust devils and other accurate illustrations of mayhem (go Google Hieronymus Bosch). After a strenuous few hours we reached Agra.

Prem was a forty-year-old motor mouth with a bad dental plan and a penchant for one-liners. He, over the twenty odd years as a guide, has mastered the unmatched art of the gab and seriously believes that he is Woody Allen of the dust planet. He behaves like a stand up artist with a well-practiced gig and oft-repeated punch lines, body language timing and all. Altogether he comes across as the quintessential hustler you would not trust. He is the ripper, the rogue, the gallant savior of the vulnerable visitors, the lord of the guide-land, the well-connected human compass for the lost backpacking souls and above all the book of knowledge on Mughals. All of this packed in about five feet nine with gravity defying moustache and a deep gash on his temple that looks like a bullet wound. He limps a bit and he says he met with a two-wheeler accident a month back that lamed him for life. He owns a restaurant called Indiana (he added that Brad would know where Indiana is and we desis would not) in the dust tracks of Agra serving Continental, Chinese, Mughlai and Tandoor. The food, he says, is better than what you get in star hotels. We did not believe him as usual.

His monologues on the Taj Mahal and the Agra fort were engaging. He spoke in a strange diction and accent – a mix of splayed-in-the-middle cow belt English peppered with nuances of American and unrecognizable other influences from faraway lands. His demeanor was that of a self-proclaimed authority on five centuries of kings. He almost made us believe that Aurungzeb had to request Prem for permission in triplicate before he went to pee. Additionally, he had the fondness for painting the Mughals as a bunch of sexual deviants who watched there harem bathe in the royal Turkish baths or even better, lustfully watched them shop at the strategically installed palace market called Mina Bazaar (What?). He proclaimed at the Taj with great flair that ‘Love is not blind, Love makes you blind’. He also taught us that Islam prescribes visiting a mosque before visiting a tomb, that the Mughals believed in symmetry and so does he – he has two sons, two daughters and one wife as he puts it, that Shah Jahan had dozens of other women in his harem while he was deeply in love with Mumtaz, that the emperor had also planned a black Taj on the other side of Yamuna as his tomb with a bridge connecting it – white for feminity and love, black for masculinity and sorrow. It was all interesting and smart till he repeated them twenty odd times over the four hours we spent with him.

After all this he persuaded Brad to visit a bunch of organized handicrafts hawkers who promised to send everything but the Taj, packed and marked to his doorstep at Great Falls, VA for an exorbitant price. He persisted on taking us to yet another carpet maker who made any old rug look like a custom design that could fly for a price. I guess we did not fall for this and ruined Prem’s addition to marry-his-daughters-off or more-star-cuisine-restaurants kitty.

If you are a cautious traveler your heart is too weak for Prem. But if you are willing to take that pinch of salt and ignore his antics he is entertaining and certainly useful. Call on him when you are in Agra. Have a ball!

Prem Prakash Upadhyay, Tour Escort, Indiana Multicuisine Restaurant, Behind Hotel Ratan Deep, Fatehabad Road, Agra. Phone: +91.562.2332508 Home: +91.562.2411667 Mobile: +91.98370.57277.

Going Downhill

Hill people are plain good. I have seen this in Himachal, Kumaon - otherwise set in a godforsaken state, and now in Wayanad, Kerala. Even the men smile with an attitude. But they smile. They are extremely helpful and cordial.



We had to leave Wayanad and go to Guruvayur in Central Kerala. The route is beautiful. Like a wise friend of us said Kerala is beautiful because the mountain has to meet the sea in about 40 kilometres. Vythiri to Thamarassery is a bunch of acute hairpin curves with considerate disciplined truckers helping you through. This is how you go downhill in Kerala.

You reach the plains and realise the attitude and the general demeanour of the people has also gone downhill along with the landscape. It is like God rented his country out to a bunch of beings who are too superior to pay heed to others. Sad and true.

Prince of Ramadan

Sultan's Battery is a small town right after the forest in Wayanad - Tipu Sultan's station for his foot warriors, artillery and ammunition during the Raj. We entered this town during lunch on a fateful Ramadan afternoon in search of a good place to eat lunch. 20 of the 24 eateries are shut for the month and they said Prince was the best of the lot that was open.

Prince is like a smelly public sector club with one huge powder blue hall, pink Formica tables that are faded at the chairs, upholstered chairs and an old wall clock with a still pendulum and quartz mechanism. We were hungry and we ordered for some specials - Malabar fish biryani, Malabar chicken biryani and curd rice for Uncle Krishnan's stomach in disagreement. If you are in Malabar and the menu has a Malabar prefix to its dishes, walk off. Get up and find another place. We were too hungry and my daughter was chewing on my hands to do that. The lunch was served late and was a complete disaster. The entire order were variations of the South Kerala ghee rice. A bit of Fish Molly and ghee rice over it was fish biryani, a few pieces of crumb fried grease fest chicken and ghee rice over it was the chicken variation and hold your breath, a strange dry mix of curd and ghee rice was the curd rice.

If you are in Sultan's Battery during Ramadan walk away from Prince. Better still, do not go there during Ramadan for there is a whole lot of good food you will miss.

Why not?

The pleasant man smiled at me and repeatedly said 'ok' as I was screaming at him waving my credit card with a continuous banter of Malayalam and English. I speak a bit of malayalam and I thought it was an advantage. Apparently not.

We decided to stopover at Kalpetta in the Wayanad District of North Kerala before we hit Guruvayoor. Wayanad, popularly known as 'whynotf' ( keep the 'f' and prounounce it by letting out air through your lips as they close - like air brakes in a bus), amid Malayalees. So, with some help from friends living around there we got a booking at a place called Haritagiri smack in the centre of Kalpetta - the district headquarters. Downtown Kalpetta is a little over 23 shops, a few houses and a lot of bearded Malayalee men with a serious attitude.

Haritagiri main building looked like a boring census office that got a recent makeover with clip-on tile roofs and pre-gummed terracotta murals. We got ourselves a non AC twin bedroom cottage for five adults and two kids next to the pool. The pool was dull green in colour and you could not see beyond the second row of small tiles on the pool wall. I would not jump into it unless the state sanitation department and the pollution control board sent a Nair each to personally talk me into it. The cottage was clean and the food was divine with 'Erachi Olathiyathu' (beef dry cooked with a lot of curry leaves and black pepper for the uninitiated) emerging a clear winner.

I loved the place till I tried to check out. I politely told the lady at the counter that we are checking out. She looked at for a few loaded seconds as if I asked her to explain the most crucial snitch in quantum dynamics. Then she composed herself and said 'ok' and smiled. From then the plot goes downhill. In short - they charge me for three extra beds for five adults over two double beds, they add that the children are not charged, the extra bed charges are for an AC room, their credit card machine does not work, the repair man is coming from a star in a galaxy far away, they call the manager - a pleasant man with a smile, he gives me a discount on the room tariff and the tax is on the old tariff and here as if on cueI break into a breathless banter.

Eventually I paid all the cash I had, the change I keep in the car, a bottle of dandruff shampoo, some bananas and ran before they routed for my kids.