Food for thought

A lot of folks who are not at all happy with the current world order, the NGO types, think of the days before the British invaded us as good old days. Recently I met someone who thought that the though process of a civilization based on temperate culture would be very different from the thought process of a civilization based on a tropical climate. By nature the tropical climate has lot more diversity; in the Amazon there are insects which are endemic to a tree trunk! To handle this diversity, he claimed that the tropical civilizations never aspired for one size fit all solutions and instead found local solutions to local problems. Though the logic seems not entirely off the mark I am somehow not convinced that those were good old days for everybody. Anyway, there seemed to be a nostalgic vision of the days when global trade was not predominant and the new world was not found.

I was thinking about how the world would be now if Columbus had never set foot on the Americas and the natives there lived unmolested by the Europeans. The first and most frightening thought that came up was I would not be eating potatoes for dinner today! Life without potatoes is not worth living. For that matter, no chilly, no onions, no tomatoes. I really wonder what Indians (at least the vegetarians) ate before Columbus. Actually, you do get a taste of that food if you happen to be a orthodox Tamil Brahmin, or you belong to one such family and happen to like food in general. There is a day in the year which is devoted to the forefathers called shrardham (I am sure it would be the same several other Indian communities) and the meal that is cooked on that day does not contain any foreign vegetables and spices. There is black pepper as spice instead of chilly, moong dal (no toor dal), kothavarangai (I think it is called gavar in either Hindi or Marathi, I don’t know the English name), seppangkazhangu (arbi in Hindi), senakazhangu (yam I think) and such and of course lots of ghee. It excludes almost all the vegetables that we eat regularly like carrots, beans, cabbage (well it is doubtful if cabbage is eaten regularly by any self respecting foodie).

What kind of food people ate during the reign of Rajaraja Chola? Who made the first urulakazhangu curry/poriyal in Tamil Nadu and how did they make it? Did they cut it in small cubes, or did the boil it and peel or did they make it mashed? If only I had a time machine. Are there any food historians who have catalogued the menu at weddings that occurred in the last 300 years? When did the first restaurant start, are there menu cards preserved of a restaurant which was operating in the seventeenth century? Is there a special branch in history dealing with only food? If there is one I would relish it.

Forget the past; even now the sheer diversity of food is mind blowing. Every family has its own recipes and own ways of cooking. The tastes and flavors definitely vary caste to caste. Some of us foodies have thought of making a food documentary titled ‘enna samayal’ which would explore the different aspects of food in various communities and families in Chennai. Is there anyone willing to produce it?

You can guess, I am very hungry right now. I am waiting for Madhavi to get back from her long day at work so that we can eat our dinner. I have cooked kathirikkai kari (finely chopped onions, eggplant cut in small cubes, sautéed in oil with mustard seeds, urad dal, chilly powder and some salt), and masoor dal (I boiled the dal in a pressure cooker, sautéed garlic, green chilly, onions, jeera, kariveppalai (kadi paththa), turmeric powder and dhania powder. Added the dal to that and when cooked added some fresh cut tomatoes and simmered it for 5 minutes) and red rice as the starch. Yes, in honor of these important thought I did not cook potatoes today but I am all for globalization, at least when it comes to food.

Cornwall ho!

Last week Madhavi took a couple of days off from work and we made a road trip to Salisbury, Cotswolds and Cornwall. We decided we would rent a car and drive so that we have more flexibility on where we wanted to go and also explore the rural roads of England. My expectations were set by Market Blandings!

First Salisbury. I had always doubted the fact that it was England that would have invented the game of cricket. How was it possible for someone to stand still in the first slip in this cold and clammy weather? Wouldn’t he be frozen stiff? I can understand football being invented here. Fast, brisk activity for an hour and a half and that’s it. But five days of slip fielding in this weather, only someone insane would have invented this game in England. But after our recent road trip this doubt has been cleared. There has been a weather change. In the distant past England was not always like this. It was sunny and the evidence of that more or less strikes you at your face in the Salisbury plains. With the current English weather all the theory about the stones being arranged to act as a solar calendar for folks of that time would be just hogwash. It would have been possible only if it was sunnier then. Considering that the pre-historics carted large sized boulders from great distances to build a calendar I guess they would have given enough thought about how much sun is actually seen around that place. Stonehenge is visible from A303. A303, by the way, is not a motorway (a.k.a. freeway) but a dual carriage way but people still drive 70 mph. When we took M3 (a motorway) there were no speed limits posted, so I cruised along with rest of the traffic which was driving at least 75 mph. It is a bit surprising. I would think that the US would have higher speed limits. Even in Texas with wide open spaces the speed limit was 75 mph, otherwise it has always been 65 or lower. So we reached Stonehenge much earlier than I expected. Also, why do they still have speeds listed in miles? I thought all countries other than the US have gone metric.

Trying a Sivaji Ganesan expression next to Stonehenge

From there we went to Salisbury (pronounced saulsbury) town to have a look at the cathedral there. The cathedral was fabulous. Inside it was breathtaking, high ceilings and a huge organ which someone was playing. The arches and perpendiculars were truly breathtaking. How did they manage to build such high structures so long back? What was the architectural tricks did they employ? Of course, none of these questions were answered. As in Oxford, there is really no clear mention of the history of the place and how it was built and that kind of stuff. I am still not reconciled to this aspect of tourism in UK. I know they have a general culture of downplaying stuff here but this is stretching that a bit far.

Salisbury Cathedral

The next plan was to spend a day in Cotswolds. Not in the usual patel point route map but Cotswolds is where you expect to encounter the real English country side. And we did indeed. Due the exceptional navigational skills of my co-passenger we managed to get terribly lost in the small and winding country roads (the kinds you would expect Galahad Threepwod cycling back after having half a dozen pints in the local Inn). The navigator, though, claimed that the entire exercise was deliberate and well thought out. Thanks to this we got to see some really outstanding rural scenes, with whitewashed thatched cottages among undulating meadows, stone mansions and lots of sheep. It looks like most of land is used as meadow land for sheep. Actually, since the roman times England has been know for its wool export and it is an activity that is still continuing. Since this is end of summer most of the grass was getting harvested for hay which would tide the sheep over during the long winter months. We were pleasantly surprised to see the thatched cottages, very cute with their little flower beds on window sills. We also visited a very cute town, The Slaughters (lower and upper).

No, this is not a painting. It is a picture perfect Cotswolds village!

We had an interesting experience in one of the small towns in Cotswold. Overall, in this trip to the UK I have found the people even in the London area exceedingly friendly. I don’t remember if I mentioned this before but I found this very refreshing. I was expecting a stiff upper lip but what I notice is a very mid-western conviviality combined with north-east intellect. Well, take this incident for instance. We were totally lost (again) when we planned to take a long walk in the country side from one of the smaller towns (well this time it was my navigation skills and it was not at all intentional) and we landed up only in the other end of the town. We saw this middle aged lady walking down the street and we walked up to her to ask for directions. She took a lot of trouble explaining the way and then decided we were hopelessly lost for the original trail and recommended a different path which was supposed to be equally scenic and which runs right behind her house. We were walking down the street and Madhavi remarked how pretty some of the gardens were in the houses we passed. The lady invited us to her house to see her garden and I am sure if we appeared to have had more time she would have even invited for a cup of tea with some scones and clotted cream. It was really a nice experience. This is not one-off, I have consistently found warmth and at the same time lot of more knowledge. You don’t get the vague look here when you mention you are from India. I did not even have to spell out my name so many times when I had to book for the B&Bs.

A cottage with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls

From Cotswold we drove directly to our final destination Cornwall, to the famed Dauphne Du Maurier landscapes. We reached St. Ives, the supposed artists’ village on the west end of Cornwall and hated the sight of it. There was something pretentious about the whole place with pretty villas overlooking the bay, crowded with tacky souvenir shops and cafes. We took a short walk to a nearby beach and quickly departed from that town. Our final destination for the night was Penzance where I had booked a B&B. I did not expect much from that place since I did no planning, I ran through the Lonely Planet to find the first available B&B in west Cornwall and booked it. Thankfully all the ones in St. Ives were booked out. We decided to take the coast route and as usual Madhavi did some good planning on the route and we took a small detour and landed in this secluded cove with a small light house in the end. The place looked deadly with very gusty winds, cliffs, rocks and caves. Very much like what you would imagine when reading a Famous Five, pirates and all. We braved the winds and walked to almost the surf. There was no one around and we had the whole coast to ourselves. It was really fantastic. Penzance turned out to be a much better place than St. Ives. The next day the weather was expected to be sunny and Madhavi again did some good planning (again) to pick up an area in the coast with more spectacular scenery. We drove there straight and spent the whole day mostly lolling around on soft grass beds on cliff tops watching the surf pound the rocks. It was most satisfying when we saw two kestrels hovering over the cliff edges looking for something to munch. Madhavi spent a lot of time photographing waves, rocks and old abandoned tin mines in that area.

Breathtaking Cornwall coast

On the whole a very satisfying trip. I guess we will not venture out again for longer trips, only day trips from London. May be Canterbury and Devon and thats it!

Michael Wood

Michael Wood is this British historian who had made the two fantastic documentaries that I got to watch through PBS - In the footsteps of Alexander The Great and Conquistadores. It combines history with travel. Essentially he follows the route of Iskander and also Pizarro giving you historical information and anecdotes. Wonderfully done and his enthusiasm is infectious. I would say he is the equivalent of David Attenborough for history. Recently I read two books written by him. I was looking for some good book on English history and I landed upon Domesday: A search for the Roots of England written by him. Domesday was written circa 1050 AD under the instruction of William the Conqueror. It was essentially a record of all tax payers during that time and the record contains their wealth as well as a wealth of information when researched by Wood. Through that record he has speculated the life of ordinary people in England as well the structure of society. He goes back to Iron Age, Roman Empire, Viking Invasions, Normans and finally Anglo Saxons. Interesting read.

The second book I read by Michael Wood was Smile of Murugan. It is a kind of travelogue in Tamil Nadu with glimpses of history. For long I have been desperately looking for a readable history of Tamil Nadu and other south Indian states. The south, I feel, gets a step motherly treatment amongst all historians either Indian or otherwise. I can't imagine how terrible it must be for the north east. I have not seen any treatment at all (motherly or step motherly) of say Assam or Manipur in our history texts. Anyway, I think Smile... is a very sympathetic view of the Tamil culture (sometimes too sympathetic) but is well written except for a few glaring editorial glitches (IIT is refered to as ITT and Kamban sometimes as Kampan and sometimes as Kamban). Nevertheless it is a very charming rendition of Tamil Nadu, its temples and its peoples. Some of the less known temples mentioned in the book seems worth visiting. I am including that in my plans for late January/early February.

Music

The Royal Albert Hall organizes a program titled ignite in which budding artistes are provided a chance to display their wares during lunch time every Friday. I am now making it a routine to be in the South Kensington area during those times, check out the music going on the café and then head out to the museums. Last Friday it was a jazz performance by a group who call themselves Dom James and his Dixie Ticklers. It was a lively performance enjoyed by the audience whose average age must be over 70. Considering it is a working day afternoon I guess only those who have time (see previous post) on their hands have the privilege to enjoy this kind of stuff. I prefer to listen to live music in a café atmosphere rather than a stuffy concert hall. I am always too tense about clapping between movements! On the other end of the spectrum of reverence/irreverence we have these karnatic classic music performances during wedding receptions where the audience is busy jabbering away catching up on family gossip completely ignoring/insulting the artists. I would like it somewhere in between.

Does the Indian music scene have this wide spectrum I wonder? Classical, jazz, rock, pop, grunge, rap, hip-hop and so on. I know we have very established traditions for classical music and on the light side we have ghazals and quawalis. And then we have the film music. But is there any real light music production not related to films these days? I also wonder about the creativity of our musicians. Even in the classical tradition there seems to be limited composers and compositions, the artist can only render those differently in each performance but the essential composition remains the same. The number of western classical composers is numerous and includes both religious and secular themes. Is there any secular karnatic composition? Also the modern western musicians are very multi-faceted. If you take Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (if you still consider him as modern and not Paleolithic), he composes music, writes the lyrics for the songs, plays instruments (flute among many) and also sings. And he is not alone, most of the serious musicians do that unless if they belong to a packaged boy-band or Britney Spears type group where the main artist is just a marketing front and a whole team is working behind this brand. How versatile are Indian artists?

Talking of Jethro Tull I was quite pleased to find his name in the science museum in the agriculture section. He had invented the seed drill which improved the productivity of wheat cropping by 8 times! The museum was just fantastic. I just spent whole two hours in the energy section and agriculture section. The energy section was all about steam engines and the various inventions related to them. Really ingenious! I will have to go back to the other sections later.

Talking of Ian Anderson, I found out that he had made more money out of Salmon farming, than through his music, in the Isle of Skye which we had visited a couple of weeks back! This goes to prove The Fundamental Interconnectedness of Things theory as proposed by Dirk Gently.

Talking of Dirk Gently, I know that a Douglas Fir was planted in memory of Douglas Adams. Do any of you know where? I would love to pay homage to that wonderful person.

Time – The Importance of Being Lazy

“… And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but its sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
Sun is the same in a relative way but you are older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time….”
- Roger Waters, Time

It was a glorious weekend in the London and we spent it most appropriately by doing nothing. A casual stroll along the Thames to Kingston, a heavy brunch at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, saunter back home and a long afternoon snooze. It was a perfect Saturday. On Sunday, glorious again, we walked all the way to Richmond Park and felt very martyred and had a softy ice-cream cone (it has really been eons since I have had one). The lazy weekend left me wondering about time and its value. In the current “go-go” culture one feels obliged to sound apologetic if the weekend plan is nothing!

I am totally enjoying this break. Doing nothing in general and giving myself time to think, ponder and mull over utterly insignificant stuff by which time it is time to go back to bed. Ah, seems perfect. Also, it gives me great opportunity to spend similar hours with Madhavi. We have not had these moments ever since she started working again 6 years back. She had taken a break when were in California and the time we used to spend with each other then was great! She used to finish all the house work by the time I was back from office and we would go biking on those long summer days. Now the roles have reversed and it is nice once again. I feel even more relaxed as my time is completely under my control.

My dad retired when I was in my 12th standard. My mom continued to work for another 3 years and then retired. They had only one year of relaxed time together before my dad died. Why do we waste this precious time and postpone the relaxation part to an uncertain end? Should we be enjoying life when we are in good health rather than wait for old age when we cannot take it for granted?

It is not just the time available for relaxation or vacation. The very definition of vacation seems to be changing to add pressure and not reduce it. This work-hard-play-hard stuff makes even vacations appear like work. I remember my dad spent most of his retirement sitting next to our front room window with folded arms watching the world go by. The peace and contentment he exuded is something I aspire to achieve. There is this Tamil saying “Summa iruppade sugam”, which translates to “Bliss, it is just hanging out”!

Rrrrighty Ho!

The Scottish highlands reminded me a lot of the Sahyadris in Maharashtra, especially during the monsoon. Only it was colder here and very few people around. We went on a 3 day tour to the Isle of Skye conducted by Rabbies. The tour was excellent and we would highly recommend it and also make sure your tour guide happens to be Shelby. She was very good, with frequent “Rrrighty Ho!”s in a strong Scottish accent. We drove in a mini coach through the Scottish highlands to the Isle of Skye and Shelby kept us informed about the history of the place which was mostly about wars with England, Mary of Scots and all that kind of stuff. She also gave out the significance of various castles that are peppered around in the most scenic spots of the country. Mostly war and bloodshed and a love hate relationship with England where the love is to fight with them, at least as express by our guide.
Fortunately we had good weather and that would mean that mostly cloudy, on several occasions rain and on very few occasions sunshine. The point is that it is considered to be a fantastic day if it is not totally washed out. If sunshine is at a premium in England, you can just forget about it in Scotland. In any case the landscape looks better and the castles look more ominous under heavy cloud cover.
The Scottish language, Gaelic, is almost dead but there are efforts to revive it. With the new devolution of power to the Scottish parliament (a crazy building in Edinburrah) there is some optimism on that front. It sounds very different but most people, even our guide don’t know it.
We were in Skye for two nights and a full day. We went walking around in crazy wind and rain and loved every moment of it. With the mist, rain and wind the place looks magical. Of course what I suspected was finally confirmed. My supposed water proof Gore-Tex jacket from REI was not waterproof after all. To make things worse it just soaks up water and refuses to dry for a day! So now I am looking for a good rain jacket (I want to spend next monsoon in the Sahyadris!), any recommendations?

The highlight of this tour, for me, was the streams. Don’t forget to taste the water there. That peaty, smooth taste is what provides the whiskey from these places that distinctive flavor. Of course I did not miss the whisky tasting trip and also picked up a bottle of Lagavulin (my favourite) and another one of some Islay single malt distilled at Ardbeg in 1996 (recommended by the guy who with his kilt and all looked a serious whiskey drinker). So folks, be nice to me when I get back to Bangalore and we can have a quiet drink. I think they should also bottle the water from there. I would like to freeze that water and use them for Scotch on rocks. What say?
We did end up in going on a boat ride on Loch Ness. No monster sighting though. Our guide tried terribly hard to convince that there is something indeed lurking in those deep waters. Loch Ness is deeper than the North Sea. This is due to some crazy geological quirk – a fault between two plates creating a deep valley and then a glazier coming into it during ice age. The boat had a cool sonar equipment fitted into the boat to track Nessy (as the monster is affectionately called in these parts) but that made the ride far more informative. We got to know the shape of the lake floor as well as the shoals of fishes around. There was some salt water fishes which got trapped in the lake when the glacier melted and in a matter of 15000 years have adapted to fresh water conditions. Pretty cool huh? Will we humans be able to adapt to climate change?
I was quite curious as to why in spite of so much rain it was mostly open grasslands and only small forests here and there in the Scottish highlands. Was it because of the peaty surface I wondered? Well no. As I suspected it was just plain deforestation over millennia of human habitation. It was covered with 98% forests before. And this started and probably was completed well before industrial revolution. So it is not this modern age which has caused all this but traditional agricultural and grazing practices. The jholawala types would always try to convince that ALL problems are due to modern methods. But impartial analysis would clearly indicate environment change and degradation started long back, albeit the rate of change might have been slower then. Read Collapse by Jared Diamond for more on this.
Edinburrah is a fantastic city. The old stone buildings look ominous in the cloudy weather there. We spent a whole day roaming around the town. The castle dominates the old town. We did the walk recommended by Lonely Planet and it turned out quite interesting. We also went to an exhibition titled ‘Peoples story’ which had display about the life of regular folks of Edinburrah, not the Dukes and Kings. There was a whole underground town in which the poor folks lived. The pretty buildings sat on top of these. They generally lead a miserable life and it was particularly bad during the times of plague. There was an interesting piece about domestic help, about how all of them were woman from rural areas and about their difficulties in Edinburrah. This was in 1850. I guess these are issues that we are facing now in Bangalore. The world is indeed flat!