Tea Leaves

I wake up every morning with the sunrise, and the first thought that springs to mind is, ‘What tea am I drinking today?’ When I’m in a mood to indulge myself there are the myriad thoughts of a possible breakfast drizzled with enough butter to keep Siberia warm. When I can make myself scrambled eggs with dollops of cheese, I’m the happiest. If I can manage ham, bacon or even Heinz' baked beans, then it’s a Sunday. But the tea?

Tea could be anything from the seemingly ordinary cup of Tata Life to the exotic sounding Blackcurrant with Ginseng and Vanilla, Darjeeling or even Jasmine tea. A mug filled to the brim with milky, sweet chai and I'm impy-dimpy-do with happiness. Then there are the days when it’s just Coffee or Hot Chocolate that I want but we shall not talk about those days today. The first stop for the day has to be at the tea cabinet.

Even as I toddle my way around the house trying to keep the sunlight from poking like needles in my eyes, I can smell the tea brewing. There is quite nothing like sitting with the newspaper in hand mulling over the cryptic crossword but we can’t always have what we want.

Ginger tea is always very invigorating, masala chai brings back fond memories of sitting in the balcony with friends as the cups of tea made their way from the kitchen. The everyday chai reminds me of Dad making that awesome cuppa during the weekends. Heady Jasmine is meant for those days when I want to wipe away memories in a moment of madness. Darjeeling is, of course, for those times when I want to be Holly Golightly in my own version of Noo Yawk- suave, sophisticated and unbearably charming. Then there is Numi Tea, Organic and beautiful. Numi Tea remains an expensive pleasure only indulged in when I have nothing but time at hand. Of late, Numi Tea has become a photographic memory. Who wouldn’t be fascinated when a flower blooms in the water only to infuse it with hints of chocolate and spices and other alchemical ingredients? 

These days tea is my morning indulgence and the occasional post-midnight cup of elixir. Gone are the days when I would drink cupfuls of tea by the hour and would reserve the coffee as my cup of nostalgia and all things dramatic. There was a time when the overcast skies and a light breeze blowing meant I would make myself a cup of coffee and sit back. These days it’s the tea that adds the drama and coffee that is quotidian.

Behind the ritual,
There is the spiritual

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.

Simplicity, Work and Enjoyment

“My secret for long life is simplicity, work and enjoyment.” – Maia Helles

I’m loving every bit of this video of Maia Helles by Julia Warr. Julia met Maia Helles a ballet dancer, who’s just turned 95, on a plane on 4 years ago.

Shot in Fire Island, New York, this film (4min. 23 sec) captures the secrets of eternal youth as Maia Helles, a Russian ballet dancer turns 95 but still remains resolutely independent, healthy and as fit as a forty year old. Made by Julia Warr, artist and film maker who met Maia on a plane 4 years ago and became utterly convinced by the benefits of her daily exercise routine, which Maia perfected together with her Mother, over 60 years ago, long before exercise classes were ever invented. Set to the music of Lola Perrin.(2011) Film by Julia Warr Music by Lola Perrin visit juliawarr.org visit lolaperrin.com

There is a beautiful cadence to the routine and the ritual: Maia watering her garden, Maia exercising (she’s been doing these exercises for over 60 years!), Maia preparing a meal. I love the bits of splashes of orange - the little flower printed orange pillow on her exercise mat, the bright orange pan hanging on the wall, the movement of the bluish curtain fluttering in the breeze; little things of joy, suspended staccatos in this opus. There’s tenderness in the moments between the rituals - as she gingerly ties her apron, as she fusses in front of the kitchen fluffing her hair, as she sips tea at her simply set dining table and as she smiles the wrinkles and lines carefully aligning themselves.

I’m thinking I should focus a little more on Maia’s philosophy of simplicity, work and enjoyment. I’m always multi-tasking: answering emails, biting into an apple, reading a cooking blog, planning dinner. I need to slow down, breathe and focus. Bite into the apple, answer an email, bookmark the cooking blog, postpone thinking about dinner. Make this a habit till it becomes second nature and then just who I am.

It’s nearing dinner time. I peel a couple of potatoes, dice and toss them into the pressure cooker with the lentils. While this cooks, I slice the onions, mince the garlic, julienne the ginger, slice the green chillies, count the curry leaves. I saute these sliced and diced veggies in some ghee with sizzling cumin seeds, throw in the powdered spices and roast till it smells like my mother’s kitchen. The tempering is ready, the lentils and potatoes are waiting. A bowl of rice with a heaping of dal, a glass of wine - simplicity, work and enjoyment have come together as dinner.  

Maybe this is where I start building the rituals and routines I’ll grow old with. Taking a moment to fluff my hair when I pass a mirror, putting away the laptop after 10 pm and picking up a book to read, meeting friends more often- living fully, staying engaged in the moment and being beautiful

My Favourite Short Story

I was introduced to Richard Brautigan years ago by way of this evocative piece on a man visiting his ex. I return to the sadness, the loneliness and the stubbornness in that piece quite often but in happier moments, I have another favourite. This one from Richard Brautigan’s Revenge of the Lawn

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone

I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don’t look like any girl I’ve ever seen before. I couldn’t say “Well she looks just like Jane Fonda, except that she’s got red hair, and her mouth is different and of course, she’s not a movie star…”

I couldn’t say that because you don’t look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or 42, somewhere in there. I think I was seven, or eight, or six.

It was a movie about rural electrification, a perfect 1930’s New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids. The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by at night, for sewing and reading, and they didn’t have any appliances like toasters or washing machines, and they couldn’t listen to the radio. They built a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures.

There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along. They looked ancient and modern at the same time.

Then the movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life. Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch, the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings. The farmer’s family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read the newspaper by.

It was really a fantastic movie and excited me like listening to the Star Spangled Banner, or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt, or hearing him on the radio “… the President of the United States… “

I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio….

And that’s how you look to me.

waiting for the cheque to clear

What an odd, romantic time it is,
if you remember not to panic.
How many times has money almost
driven you mad?
You only need spices to throw in the bowl
you only need flour to make some kind of bread and maybe somebody to
lie in the dark with. Somebody’s hands to touch.
- Yrsa Daley-Ward, bone

Found this beautiful gif via The Alipore Post.

Origin Myths

Christopher Hitchens detailing out the Virgin birth myths in various world religions and mythologies (what's the difference again?):

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise. When his mother, Mary, was espoused to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Yes, and the Greek demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter visited the virgin Danae as a shower of gold and got her with child.

The god Buddha was born through an opening in his mother's flank.

Catlicus the serpent-skirted caught a little ball of feathers from the sky and hid it in her bosom, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli was thus conceived.

The virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree watered by the blood of the slain Agdestris, and laid it in her bosom, and gave birth to the god Attis.

The virgin daughter of a Mongol king awoke one night and found herself bathed in a great light, which caused her to give birth to Genghis Khan.

Krishna was born of the virgin Devaka.

Horus was born of the virgin Isis.

Mercury was born of the virgin Maia.

Romulus was born of the virgin Rhea Sylvia.

For some reason, many religions forced themselves to think of the birth canal as a one-way street, and even the Koran treats the Virgin Mary with reverence.

- Chris Hitchens, God is Not Great

Finding Vivian Maier

I spent my Saturday afternoon watching the documentary 'Finding Vivian Maier' about the mysterious yet intriguing street photographer Vivian Maier. 

Mysterious because publicly she worked as a children’s nanny but this intensely private reclusive woman was a prolific street photographer or as she once explained to someone when asked what she did, “a kind of spy.” This ‘strange’ French-accented lady left behind over 100,000 photographs, hundreds of films of life from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s in Chicago, New York, a little village in France and of her 8 month tour around the world which took her all over S America, India, Egypt, etc. But here’s where all those adjectives begin to make sense: Almost none of her pictures had been exhibited or published during her lifetime.

Yes, everybody did see her walk around with a camera strung around her neck but almost all of her work was hidden away in storage till John Maloof, the director of the documentary, bought some negatives during an auction.

Most telling of all is the social attitude that the movie enshrines, and that you hear in the testimony of those who knew Maier in their youth. On the whole, they feel warmly disposed toward her, and all of them are pensive and polite, but none can quite believe that art, of a serious nature, was going on under their noses, and that the hired help, of all people, was responsible. They might almost be talking of a crime. The implication—and this was mid-twentieth-century America, not nineteenth-century Britain—is that Vivian Maier knew her mind, but somehow not her place. Near the start of the film, Maloof himself asks, “Why is a nanny”—he pauses for a brief laugh—“taking all these photos?” To which the only possible reply should be: Why not?
- Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

The rest, as they say, is history. 

What I’m Lovin’ This Week ~ Waterlogue, the watercoloring app

Madly, deeply in love with a new app called Waterlogue. 

Waterlogue for the iPhone (and iPad) turns your photos into water-colour masterpieces. Plain and simple. If you’ve tried the water-colour filter on Photoshop but wished there was something with more nuance, you ought to try this. 

Select a photo, apply a filter and the water-colour painted-photo(?) is ready. The hook, though, is the water colouring process. After you’ve selected a photograph to be watercolored the app goes through the various stages of painting a picture. It’s strangely addictive watching the ‘painting’: the picture being drawn, colours being selected, the wetting of the brushes and then the shadows and hues slowly being layered on before the final water-colour emerges.

I thought I’d stick to just a few photos for my 2014 album on Facebook but ended up painting half the photos on my phone. The landscapes turned out gorgeous. K even exclaimed “Does this mean we can now print these out and put ‘em up?”

My selfie from the bathroom mirror didn’t turn out all that great - I turned into a giant polka dot with multiple rainbowy polka dots all over. Here’s why (according to Waterlogue): 

Waterlogue turns your photographs into watercolors by selectively removing information from your image. When working with faces that take up only a small part of the frame Waterlogue may treat the two sides of a face slightly differently. Unfortunately the human visual system is exquisitely tuned to recognize human faces. Slight anomalies in a picture of a face are much more noticeable than similar anomalies in pictures of other things. 

Waterlogue is available in the iOS/iTunes App Store for Rs 170. Please buy, beautify your life? :)

I am 20

A film made in 1967 of the hopes and ambitions of Midnight’s Children when they turned 20. 

Young men and women born on Independence Day in 1947 were selected from different parts of India and interviewed to discover their hopes, desires, ambitions and fears. They spoke about love, they spoke about their heroes and they spoke about their frustrations. The result is this unique film. 

40 years since the movie, there is still an India, there is a Bharat and now a Hindustan…and these shall never meet? Indians then and now speak of similar frustrations- bribes to be paid for “seats in a college or school”, security and stability in the form of a government job, sitting in a comfortable chair in an air-conditioned room, a desire to “be a cog in the machine." 

It seems the more things change, the more they remain the same. "We have a hopeful tomorrow but our today is very precarious” as one wise PN Subramaniam says in the film.

Advice to Little Girls - Mark Twain

“Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.“

A quirky and mischievous little story by Mark Twain. Here’s what the Amazon description for an illustrated version of the book says:

When Mark Twain wrote the sparky short story “Advice to Little Girls” in 1865, he probably didn’t mean for it to be shown to them. Or maybe he did, since we all know Twain was a rascal."

Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.

If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it.

You ought never to take your little brother’s “chewing-gum” away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.

If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud–never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots.

If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won’t. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.

You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much.

Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. You ought never to “sass” old people unless they “sass” you first.

Found it here.

Grandma Food

Gabriele Galimberti pays homage to all the grandmothers in the world and to their love for good cooking, starting from his own grandma Marisa who, before the departure for his tour around the world by couchsurfing, took care to prepare her renowned ravioli. She was not so concerned about the possible risks or mishaps her grandson might face in his adventurous travelling worldwide, but her major worry was, “what will he eat?”. That is because only at home you can eat well and healthily. And above all, only your grandma (and sometimes mum) knows what is best for you.  

Aside: Why isn't Grandma Food a cuisine in itself?

With the taste of his grandma’s ravioli in his mouth, Gabriele travelled around the world and, next to thousands of other adventures, turned into a curious and hungry grandson for the grannies of all the countries he visited.  Appealing to their natural cooking care and their inevitable pride in their best recipe, common factors to all grandmothers in the world, Gabriele persuaded them to do their best in the kitchen. This means moose stake in Alaska and caterpillars in Malawi, delicious, but ferociously hot, ten-spice-curry in India and sharks soup in the Philippines. 

Chikmagalur, Belur and Halebidu, A Roadtrip Part 1

K & I have been working almost every weekend and every weekday for a year now. It was time to take stock of our stress levels and leave behind the maddening city for a break in the hills. 

The birthday weekend combined with a holiday for Gandhi Jayanti was the perfect excuse for a longish-short break to Chikmagalur.

Where to Stay in Chikmagalur

I didn’t want to rough it out in a homestay - I didn’t have enough time to research, I didn’t want to stay at a resort that was filled with families and had kids running all over the place and, I didn’t want to stay at an overpriced “honeymoon” resort. 

My long list of what I didn’t want and drawing a blank at what I want, notwithstanding, there were two clear choices: Taj Gateway and Flameback Lodges. A quick check of the bank balance, credit card bills and the long wishlists on a hundred and one e-commerce sites later, we settled on the Taj Gateway.

Chikmagalur is a 260 km drive away from Bangalore. We set off not so early in the morning on Saturday at 9 am, stopped at a Kamat that had lady servers (I haven’t seen this in Bangalore), drove through potholed Hassan, wondered aloud why an “international boarding school” was located just on the outskirts of dirty grimy Hassan (City?) and finally made it to Chikmagalur just in time for lunch.

Lunch was perfectly circular mini akki rotis and mamsa curry, home style. I don’t have a single food picture from this trip - that should be testimony enough to how delicious the food was.

-

When we drive through these sleepy touristy towns, I always wonder about their equally sleepy seasonal economies. It’s disconcerting to drive on highways that meander through sleepy little villages and see the local people waiting for hours together for a bus to come by. There are almost always no rickshaws in sight beyond a 2km radius of the city centres. Whether it’s Coorg or Chikmagalur or hamlets on the way to Calicut, there are always these people just trudging along - to work, from work - on potholed roads with no streetlights as we zip down in our fast city cars. What do they make of all these contradictions abounding in their backyards? I’ll never know.

I was chuffed to learn that Kamat now hires local women as servers in their highway restaurants. I asked around at the Taj about the other worldly mamsa curry and found out that the hotels now have homemakers on their payrolls. So much win!

Taj Gateway

Powder blue skies, cups of coffee and mouthfuls of sky are my idea of a perfect vacation and Chikmagalur didn’t disappoint. Or maybe there wasn’t much of an expectation to begin with: I wake up all sneezes and sniffles in Bangalore and spend an hour every morning re-orienting myself to the pollution. 

The added bonus was the morning entertainment via a monkey family that came by to raid our coffee leftovers aka sugar packets.

Post their regular sugar binge, there was some sugar spilled on the table and this li’l monkey had come back to lick it off.

So disgusting.

It then went swinging on the trees and fell off a branch.

So cute.

I liked that the hotel is located just off the major highways that pass through Chikmagalur. The buildings that house the rooms are reminiscent of the colonial architecture one sees in these parts. The trail around the property lead to miniature coffee plantations interspersed with pepper vines and chikoo trees.

When I walk around these lush properties and serendipitously find fruit trees, veggie patches and spices I’m instantly reminded of summer holidays at my Grandma’s house in Mangalore. 

 We used to even have coffee plants as hedges at my grandma’s. Now I act like a city bumpkin every time I see these plants - “ZOMG! Look, Coffee! Such much coffee!”       

(Then my grandparents became greedy capitalists and sold away my childhood memories for lumps of money.) 

Taj also had these hibiscus plants at the entrance. Each flower was as big as my face - I should have posed next to it to give you a better idea. Next time.

Then there was this pool that we didn’t swim in. Because we forgot to pack swim wear, of course. It overlooks the misty hills of Bababudangiri and I think its only purpose was to distract us from the seemingly treacherous trek.

What we did instead was sit by the pool and dig into the sumptuous breakfast buffet spread. The breakfast was a good mix of Continental and South Indian with a dismal pastry + bakery selection. I don’t know if there is any breakfast item that’s intrinsically Chikamagalurian but there wasn’t any in the spread.

Sunday was the birthday and all I wanted to do was drive down to the temple towns of Belur & Halebeedu. K obliged and off we went: Belur is 30 km away from Chikmagalur and Halebeedu another 15 kms ahead of Belur.

Don't Touch - Borders & Walls To Keep Us In

msgopal:

Don t touch. Goa. When they were buiding the konkan railway the goans made a big hue and cry about the track going through population centres. They were afraid tha people from all over india will come and settle down in goa. Or I guess its because some people didn’t want to partt with land. Thats the reason you have to get off a tivim for north goa. Luckily the tracks pass through madgoan where I found this map. At the station

This reminds me of Los Angeles where the subway tracks don’t go through predominantly white neighborhoods.