One Evening at Colaba Causeway....

Great cities are melting pots - of people, cultures, cuisines. In this megapolis, Bombay, Colaba Causeway is truly an indicator of what the city had been - a true melting pot!

Proximity to the Sassoon Docks gets Colaba Causeway a good mix of races - whites, Jews, Arabs, Orientals, of varying backgrounds - sailors, tourists, hippies, businessmen, traders and prostitutes.

A lot of these people, are probably in the country for the first time, eager to experience India and what it hasd to offer. That gives enterprising locals a lot of business opportunities - some genuine and some on the seamier side.

We have cloned "I Love NY" tee-shirts here. "Om" and vedic chants on tee-shirts are other popular themes for the street-side vendors...

The glitter, the colour, of these bangles bowl the belles over, irrespective of background and ethnicity!

While Neeti was haggling around for her "good" deal on trinkets and faux jewelry, I was trigger happy with her camera phone.... and these ornaments just had to be shot!

I swear, women, of all ages, can spend hours beating away their blues, with this kind of "retail therapy"

Cafe Mondegar, or Mondys, as we in Bombay, call it, is a landmark of sorts - it tansforms into a smoke-filled cafe by evening, where office-goers and tourists chill with a beer and a bite or two!!!!
Mario Miranda's artwork on the walls, make the place all the more special! The busty Miss Fonseca and Miss Nimbupani remind of the old times!!!

Reminds me of Imelda Marcos!!!

Mariners' clocks - reminiscent of the old days!

This family managed to finally strike a hard bargain with this vendor - all after an effort of 15 minutes!

Leopold Cafe - a pretty average but snooty place - its fame courtesy, Lonely Planet!
This where the barbaric Pakistanis struck first on November 26, 2008!

Do I look good in these shades?"

Bombayites are openly scornful of Delhi, but have no qualms crowding up at Delhi Darbar!!!

Said to be an iconic institution - that's where I had my first bheja fry! Pretty average, though anything would taste palatable after a 45 minute wait in the aromas wafting in the sea breeze!

Living for Others is the Rule of Nature

I came across this short and sweet post on the internet, which is so very true! I had to share it here. It goes as follows:

Nothing in the "Nature" lives for itself. "Rivers" don't drink their own waters. "Trees" don't eat their own fruits. "Sun" doesn't give heat for itself. "Flowers" don't spread fragrance for themselves.
Moral of the story: "Living for Others is the Rule of Nature."

This is so very true - the world would be a very different place if most of us start thinking this way!

Food .... What's Beyond The Taste?

There are habits, traditions, styles and numerous other cultural aspects that we treasure as being our own, do we know where they really came from?

I just could not help but think about this, when I, recently, re-read about the discovery of the New World, the Americas, way back in 1492.

I wondered what would have our treasured Panjabi food been without corn, or potatoes, or chilli peppers? We are so used to the makki di rotiyan and the sarson daa saag and the aloo de parathey and the rajmah and the bharey hue shimla mirch (capsicum stuffed with spicy mashed potatoes) that living our lives without them would seem unimaginable. How many of us would have realised that the basic ingredients of these rustic Panjabi flavors have their humble origins in the New World.

We call the "time pass" roasted peanuts sold in local trains or in the "roadways" buses our own! Are they really ours?

Can you imagine a masala dosa without the spicy potato filling? Or a vada-pav, sold outside every suburban railway station in Bombay, without the batata-vada and the Portuguese Pão? Or the ubiquitous Indian snack, the samosa, without its filling of mashed potatoes and peas?

The New World gave the world, bounties of potatoes, tomatoes, chilli peppers, peanuts, tapioca, chocolate, vanilla, kidney-beans and pumpkins. We have, over the last 500 or so years, concocted our cuisines around these "adopted" flavours, and we call them our own today.

I would not be biased towards the Americas - the Middle East gave us chick peas - imagine not having chholey bhaturey on the menu? The Chinese gave us tea - would you ever hear shrill cries of "chai-i-chay-ae" on railway platforms and bus termini if we did not adapt to the incoming Chinese imports? And how can you ever think of a South Indian meal without the stimulating bitter-sweet filter coffee? Now that was an adapted taste from Ethiopia, that found its way to South India through the Arabs and then the Europeans - French and British!

But then India gave the world a condiment that was worth fighting wars for - pepper. It is believed, though the thought may seem controversial to some, that the Crusades were fought to secure trade routes to India - the place where pepper originated from. Then, as years went by, the desperation of the Europeans for pepper, led the Spaniards to venture westwards in the quest for spice - they ended up discovering the New World, that ultimately gave all these foods that we relish today! Legend has it that Columbus and his followers to the Americas christened the native American chillies as "peppers" in desperation!

That was all because of India! I thump my chest as I say this!

Our contribution the world goes beyond pepper. We gave the world the aromatic basmati rice, turmeric, and possibly saffron(?).

The role of religion in food cannot be discounted at all. Venison, or deer meat, which was a part of the popular cuisine in ancient Vedic India was taken off the plates by the advent of the Ashokan missionary style of Buddhism. Pork in Indian cuisine suffered a pitiable fate with the barbaric Islamic incursions into northern India. And in purely my opinion, beef was taken off ancient Indian menus, primarily as a religious edict, to conserve nutrition. A milk-giving animal consumed as meat, would be wasteful when compared to the wealth of nutrition that one could get from it - milk, butter, ghee (clarified butter), curd and butter milk! There's no better way to enforce all this than get religion to do it!
Rationally speaking, I guess that is what kosher is all about - not mixing milk and meat products is the rational way in a nutrition-scarce desert. If I am wrong here, I would love to hear from my Jewish friends!

Indian food has evolved into a richer form, never got decimated, with the incoming flavours, over the centuries! The intercourse of food habits and ingredients is not bastardisation of food, as the adaption in India has shown. Certainly McDonaldization is not going to kill our rich culinary traditions. Neither is the Indo-Chinese brand of food popularised by the likes of Mainland China. The interplay will only make our cuisine richer.

And lets not lose sight of what we have to offer the world - we need strategic thought - say a government fund to encourage export of food chains - that would take the biryanis, chicken tikkas, chholey bhaturey, samosas, vada-pav, masala dosas into the world, with Indian brands. (I am told Ugandans have already taken to samosas and chapattis as their own cuisine!)

Adaptation of Indian food around the world would give India immense soft power!

Interconnectedness....

There are so many lessons to be learnt from nature, from life around us. We need to realise life and nature are vast interconnected systems - our actions, what we do can have a deep and profound impacts, the magnitude of which could be unimaginable today. I came across this interesting story of a Nebraskan farmer that shows the interconnectedness that we so often ignore. Read on!

There was a Nebraska farmer who grew award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won a blue ribbon... One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it.

The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors. "How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" the reporter asked.

"Why sir," said the farmer, "didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn."

He is very much aware of the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor's corn also improves. So it is in other dimensions.

Those who choose to be at peace must help their neighbors to be at peace.

Those who choose to live well must help others to live well, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches.

And those who choose to be happy must help others to find happiness for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all.

The lesson for each of us is this: if we are to grow good corn, we must help our neighbors grow good corn.

Enchanting Pacific!

These days the idyllic Pacific islands seem to be having quite a lot of action ever since the late 1990s or so.

But being in India has its disadvantages, all news is West-centric. Besides the usual neighbourhood focus, we love to know what's happening in the United States and the United Kingdom. The Pacific seems like a galaxy a couple of light years away from India!

The only time the India media focused attention on the Pacific was Fiji has political unrest - the numerous coups and political battles between the indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.

But little does one know that the Pacific has several interesting things going. Living on scarce natural and economic resources can be interesting. For instance, the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu has licensed its internet domain ".tv" to a VeriSign affiliate, dotTV, which further sells domains to .tv to television and media sites. Now Tuvalu gets 20% of dotTV's earnings as royalty - that's estimated to gross USD 50 million! Now how many of us would have realised that .tv belongs to a tiny Pacific realm called Tuvalu? How many of us would have even heard of Tuvalu, in the first place?

Now things get even more interesting. There is a small island nation in the Pacific called the Samoa. Governed by the Germans before the World War I, the island state came under indirect British control through a League of Nations trusteeship awarded to New Zealand. But unlike other Commonwealth nations, Samoa drove on the right. Much recently, in 2009, Samoa took a decision to switch sides on the road and like us, in India, Samoans now drive on the right. Samoa had the distinction of being the first nation since the 1970s to switchover. A two day holiday was announced to ease traffic woes! The economic rationale for this was sound - Samoa imports most of its vehicles from Australia and New Zealand - being right hand drives, these cheap imports were unsuitable for use on Samoan roads!

Samoa is even more interesting. It became the only nation in modern nation to schedule a "time travel" to December 29, 2011! Yes, to move the calender ahead by a day. The Samoan islands, that lie just eastward off the International Date Line, are a day behind their closest neig

hbour, Tonga. So if it is Monday in Tonga (or even its largest trading partners - Australia and New Zealand, Samoa enjoys its Sunday fun. This was cited as an economic dampner. And hence the decision to shift to the westward from the International Date Line.

Samoa's eastern neighbour Tonga has a dubious distinction, shared with another Pacific isle, Nauru, of having a significant obese population - 70% plus of their population. It isn't funny that the late King of Tonga, Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV, was the heaviest monarch in the world, weighing in at over 200 kg at one point of time! I wonder if these mind boggling statistics can be attributed to genetics? That would be good for medical scientists to study!

Besides obesity, Nauru also has a dubious record of stripping natural resources without developing the economy. Rich in phosphates, Nauru mined its resources at a feverish pace for exports without building economic infrastructure. Today when the phosphates have run out, the economy is in shambles and unemployment is high at 90%. The country was forced to become a tax haven to survive!

The island nation of Palau, east of the Philippines, served host to terror suspects, in anticipation of closure of Guantanamo Bay by the Obama administration. Isn't that taking terror to the idyllic Pacific?

The Pacific nations enter the big bad world of global diplomacy when they smartly play off China against Taiwan in the game of diplomatic recognition in return for aid! Tonga, Kiribati and a whole host of Pacific nations have done that to their benefit.

Despite its natural beauty, the Pacific remains a fragile ecosystem, that faces a serious threat of decimation from rising sea levels and global warming. Nations like Tuvalu would be wiped off the globe if climate change is not arrested, its not funny if you are a Tuvaluan. Already, the Pacific waters are turning acidic and sea life is getting scarcer by the day.

Natural beauty aside, the Pacific is a vexillilogist's delight. The joy of seeing flags of Kiribati or Vanuatu is matchless. Fiji is also unique in the sense that despite not being a Commonwealth Realm, it flies Union Jack ensign!

But the images in my mind are crystal clear. As kid browsing through National Geographic magazine's articles on the Pacific, I was enchanted by the beauty and remoteness of the Pacific! To me, the Pacific is an ideal combination of being with oneself and being with nature. And someday, I would love to go there, to the Pacific, its emerald isles, to the atolls and azure lagoons and soak in nature, before it is lost forever.