Usha has tagged me to do a post on questions pertaining to food & the like. While I prefer eating food more than writing about it, I'll do this post regardless, because like Anatole, aunt Dahlia's cook, " I am cool as a few cucumbers." :)
What’s your favourite table?
Ok, I know that I'm not very smart, but is that a trick question? It simply does not matter as long as what is on it is good. I like tables with tableclothes on them, but that is about as much attention as I pay to tables. Furniture...haah!
What would you have for your last supper?
This is why knowing the future is such a bad idea. If I knew this was my last supper, I won't feel a whole lot like eating. So I guess I'll have a jittery Hilsa, a shaky Hefeweizen, & a nerve-wracking Black Forest gateau. Or at least those are the things I could think of in my panic-stricken state.
What’s your poison?
Usha says tea; I'd say the same. Though I'd probably have the second flush Darjeeling with a nonchalant spot of milk, & a few friends with a little conversation for sweetener.
Name your three desert island ingredients.
1. Water
2. Very sudden & strong beginnings of faith in an almighty God.
3. Can I take my wife, or no other animals are allowed?
What would you put in Room 101?
Apologies, but could you ask that question in English again? Apologies again, I was born like this.
Which book gets you cooking?
It is rather hard to get me cooking. But one time I did read a book & got cooking & made, I believe, one of the the better biriyanis that I have had during my short but colourful career as a carnivore. Those of you who do not read my Amazon reviews should go & check out Lizzie Collingham's "Curry: A tale of cooks & conquerors". It has the biriyani recipe right from Akbar's kitchen. What a great king was he, nahin? :)
What’s your dream dinner party line-up?
Lambs, swines, wines, tobacco, dashes of garlic & pepper. Serving sizes, apart from the wine, should be rather frugal. The wine would preferably be heavy, dry, & red. The furniture should be cherry, & the people on the table should be chatty & funny.
What was your childhood teatime treat?
At the risk of losing your society forever - though it is rather pompous to presume that I had that privilege in the first place - I loved drinking raw eggs as a child. I don't know if i had a specific teatime treat.
What was your most memorable meal?
Even for a philistine like me, it is difficult to reduce the evenings I spent at Asha's to just food. They were memorable everything, meals inclusive, & free. :)
What was your biggest food disaster?
Back in Sangam, I made poha that you could hear yourself chewing.
What’s the worst meal you’ve ever had?
In Shanghai, we had an evening out to dine at the day time museum & the night time restaurant - some kind of an office of the erstwhile British empire. They served us certain organs of an octupus, I did not know octopuses had. It wasn't probably the worst meal ever, but certainly the biggest disappointment given the occasion.
Who’s your food hero/food villain?
No food villains, anti-heroes at the most. My wife & my father are among my favorite cooks.
Nigella or Delia?
Err... what?
Vegetarians: genius or madness?
If ever there was a rhetoric question...sigh...
Fast food or fresh food?
You crazy sexist; you had to ask a question showcasing gender-bias. Fast food, of course!
Who would you most like to cook for?
I promised baba that I'll make him the Akbari biriyani I mentioned above. But the emprire would not have been what it is if it kept its promises, right Usha?
What would you cook to impress a date?
I would not cook to impress a date. Success & failure are equally fraught with risks.
Make a wish.
I wish that people would experience their worlds with the same duality of intensity & serenity with which I experience a bratwurst.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Music & lights
Well, this again is Bangalore. It has been exactly 2 months since I was here last. And I'm here for just a week before I fly back to Minneapolis again for about 5 weeks - hopefully gorgeous as it can be.
Homecoming never loses its potency even if you're traveling all the time. A total of 6 or so months in the last 24 months in Bangalore still means Sangam Reunions - now with expanded families comprising spouses & children - still somehow awkwardly suspended between the Sangam years & the present. Homecoming means a return to a familiar routine & squabbles - nothing exceptionally celebratory, yet like an idiosyncratic way that you could not really do without. It means watching a little cricket on television, it means speaking an abominable mix of languages in one sentence, it is the juicy expletive you throw out at the auto rickshaw passing you by inches from your car, it is the dirt on your collars & cuffs, the phone you answer by saying "haan re".
It is a tall lamp in your living room; & a little jazz in the air. It is the uplifting strumming of an unknown raga, unshapely rotis & something delectable about the potatoes.
Homecoming never loses its potency even if you're traveling all the time. A total of 6 or so months in the last 24 months in Bangalore still means Sangam Reunions - now with expanded families comprising spouses & children - still somehow awkwardly suspended between the Sangam years & the present. Homecoming means a return to a familiar routine & squabbles - nothing exceptionally celebratory, yet like an idiosyncratic way that you could not really do without. It means watching a little cricket on television, it means speaking an abominable mix of languages in one sentence, it is the juicy expletive you throw out at the auto rickshaw passing you by inches from your car, it is the dirt on your collars & cuffs, the phone you answer by saying "haan re".
It is a tall lamp in your living room; & a little jazz in the air. It is the uplifting strumming of an unknown raga, unshapely rotis & something delectable about the potatoes.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The ends of love - Dance Drama
The Ends of love is a dance drama commissioned by the the Stuat Pimsler Dance & Theater group. Staged at The Ritz, across the Mississippi, on University & 13th Ave NE, what amused me to start with was the composition of the audience. With the exception of me, it was all white. And there were two distinct age groups in there. One, college students. And the other, elderly people. You could count the number the people between ages 25 to 45 on your fingers.
Having said that, the performers were actually a wonderful mix of people - mostly white, but it did have a couple black artists, & a Brazilian. The story, if you do not follow the theater scene to all its nuances, is broadly about the various aspects of being in & out of love - rejection, possession, tiffs, battle-of-the-sexes & all such ways that love manifests in. Nothing all that new there. What really made the show worth the time & money (22 USD, general seating), were the dances, & the trifle arrhythmic & somehow still temporal music.
If you're interested in the aesthetics of human movement, you'll not be disappointed. Some of the movements were absolutely feline, some a byword on levitation, a reversals of roles where women carried the men, a climbing upon some two silken apparels that hung from the ceiling, tangling & disentangling, & then a fall back to the stage - with the two strands of silken apparel twining around the falling man.
The separation of men & women & the futile attempts to become again a part of a cogent whole was probably the best piece of the show. It goes from a classic one man show to a frenzy of arms, legs & bodies- together but not united; they each had their own singular focus, they all moved together, they all moved the same way but they could not form a communion - & the consequent pain of not being part of a more meaningful whole came across wonderfully.
It is a very difficult medium to tell a story, & my own cultural distance made it even more difficult to grab the nuances; however, the wonderful thing about all of this is that across the world the broad commonalities of expression & feeling are about the same - & a dance, more than text, falls back on such shared & very basic commonalities.
Having said that, the performers were actually a wonderful mix of people - mostly white, but it did have a couple black artists, & a Brazilian. The story, if you do not follow the theater scene to all its nuances, is broadly about the various aspects of being in & out of love - rejection, possession, tiffs, battle-of-the-sexes & all such ways that love manifests in. Nothing all that new there. What really made the show worth the time & money (22 USD, general seating), were the dances, & the trifle arrhythmic & somehow still temporal music.
If you're interested in the aesthetics of human movement, you'll not be disappointed. Some of the movements were absolutely feline, some a byword on levitation, a reversals of roles where women carried the men, a climbing upon some two silken apparels that hung from the ceiling, tangling & disentangling, & then a fall back to the stage - with the two strands of silken apparel twining around the falling man.
The separation of men & women & the futile attempts to become again a part of a cogent whole was probably the best piece of the show. It goes from a classic one man show to a frenzy of arms, legs & bodies- together but not united; they each had their own singular focus, they all moved together, they all moved the same way but they could not form a communion - & the consequent pain of not being part of a more meaningful whole came across wonderfully.
It is a very difficult medium to tell a story, & my own cultural distance made it even more difficult to grab the nuances; however, the wonderful thing about all of this is that across the world the broad commonalities of expression & feeling are about the same - & a dance, more than text, falls back on such shared & very basic commonalities.
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