Met a man on a flight. Small flight, all of forty-five minutes and we managed to discuss the herculean work-pressures of aircraft-controllers at Atlanta airport, and insidious ways of wiring the phone so that callers are met with an engaged tone, within those forty-five minutes. Make no mistake, most of it was led by him.
He was one of those old men, who travel the world, picking up languages (he knew fifteen!), acquaintances, and a way of chatting up strangers.
At one point, he said -
A lizard stuck on the ceiling probably thinks it is holding the roof up. You young mbas have the same weird notion of yourselves. You'll think the company would go kaput were you to take an off-day. So, stop being a lizard.
The moral of this story is that old men have character, confidence. Young men? Are like investments. A man at twenty-five has just started to be what he really will be. A man at fifty has lived and even his scars have stories to tell.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Gourmet or Glutton?
Cooking is a bit like art. First of all, you are creating something. And more importantly, no two people can end up making something that tastes exactly alike. You put a bit of yourself - your sense of proportion, what should go in first, what should go in at all.
Great cooks have an incomprehensible passion for their art. Unlike conventional art, it starts to pay well from early on if you take it up professionally. Everybody needs to eat, not everybody needs to read or buy a painting.
While artists in our midst are praised and encouraged, cooking is seen more as a hygiene skill for women and customer delight kinda thing for the men. (Today times are changing, and these extremities are moving towards each other, slowly but surely. Men at times, need to be able to cook to survive, and women don't.)
Art has an inessential quality about it. We don't really need it. Whereas food is - well, is fuel. That makes its preparation more mundane - one of the reasons why cooking misses the high-art train. Art has more of the snob-value.
Also, the body does not need art. Art is on a higher spiritual plane - catering to the mind, the soul, the spirit. Whereas cooking satiates that primal instinct of man - hunger. The paapi pet. Centuries of conditioning through spiritual and religious philosophies and texts have led us to believe that anything that provides corporal pleasure cannot be entirely free of sin. Few would sit in a gathering of socially accepted intellectuals and proclaim proudly to be a student of food and cooking, just for the sake of.
Exploring another aspect - a lot of people claim to be fond of eating, they have little interest in preparing it. Whereas, it has been seen that most ardent readers are also closet-writers. This divide between the host and parasite varies across art forms - depending perhaps on the degree of difficulty of the art form or how much fun it is.
I enjoy reading accounts of cooks, history of food and the like. Not that I have read a lot, just a couple of articles on Gayatri Devi's book and some stuff from Padmalakshmi. But I feel that in spite of fulfilling such a basic need, cooking hogs very little of our cultural mind-space.
So for all you great artists whose talent is as priceless as the cardamoms, cloves and chillies of the Malabar coasts - If food be the music of life, stir away!
Great cooks have an incomprehensible passion for their art. Unlike conventional art, it starts to pay well from early on if you take it up professionally. Everybody needs to eat, not everybody needs to read or buy a painting.
While artists in our midst are praised and encouraged, cooking is seen more as a hygiene skill for women and customer delight kinda thing for the men. (Today times are changing, and these extremities are moving towards each other, slowly but surely. Men at times, need to be able to cook to survive, and women don't.)
Art has an inessential quality about it. We don't really need it. Whereas food is - well, is fuel. That makes its preparation more mundane - one of the reasons why cooking misses the high-art train. Art has more of the snob-value.
Also, the body does not need art. Art is on a higher spiritual plane - catering to the mind, the soul, the spirit. Whereas cooking satiates that primal instinct of man - hunger. The paapi pet. Centuries of conditioning through spiritual and religious philosophies and texts have led us to believe that anything that provides corporal pleasure cannot be entirely free of sin. Few would sit in a gathering of socially accepted intellectuals and proclaim proudly to be a student of food and cooking, just for the sake of.
Exploring another aspect - a lot of people claim to be fond of eating, they have little interest in preparing it. Whereas, it has been seen that most ardent readers are also closet-writers. This divide between the host and parasite varies across art forms - depending perhaps on the degree of difficulty of the art form or how much fun it is.
I enjoy reading accounts of cooks, history of food and the like. Not that I have read a lot, just a couple of articles on Gayatri Devi's book and some stuff from Padmalakshmi. But I feel that in spite of fulfilling such a basic need, cooking hogs very little of our cultural mind-space.
So for all you great artists whose talent is as priceless as the cardamoms, cloves and chillies of the Malabar coasts - If food be the music of life, stir away!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A song
When I shake my head
You give a toothy grin
When I wag my finger
You wiggle your pointy chin
When I glare at you
You turn around and shake your butt
When I turn away
You come and call me a crazy nut
Let me scream, and let me shout
That I am butter in your crazy mouth
I may rant and I may pout
And call you a miserable lout
But you just put me out
And-you-just-fuckin-put-me-out
You give a toothy grin
When I wag my finger
You wiggle your pointy chin
When I glare at you
You turn around and shake your butt
When I turn away
You come and call me a crazy nut
Let me scream, and let me shout
That I am butter in your crazy mouth
I may rant and I may pout
And call you a miserable lout
But you just put me out
And-you-just-fuckin-put-me-out
Sunday, October 11, 2009
South South East
The vacation was brilliant. Just what the doc had ordered. Ten days and I must have spent around ten minutes thinking about work. To add to the bliss, neither the laptop nor the phone were working for the larger part.
Thailand - don't claim to know it all. Delved into Bangkok and grazed past Pataya. Bangkok, with its many many many mega malls. I am quite the mall-rat you know. Asian food is also my thing. After making it through six weeks in China, the stir-fried noodles, Nasi Gorengs, Phad Thais etc sound heavenly and taste even better. The roads are terribly and inadequately narrow though and traffic is nightmarish in Bangkok - the worst I have ever seen, I, whose veins are hardened by the clogged up arteries of Mumbai.
One of the most striking things about Thailand - even good hotels there have scrapbooks for tourists with pictures, maps and details of places in and around they want to visit, and the last few pages of these scrapbooks are devoted to sex shows, nude beaches, places where you can get action of any and every variety, complete with pictures and addresses. Mammaries of Thigh-land.
Malaysia - is the ultimate multi-cultural hot-pot. Malays, Indians and Chinese form almost all of its population. Most of the Indians are Tamilians. There are Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and you can detect multi-racial notes in people - their features, their dressing. There are 'Happy Dipawali' signs everywhere and the newspapers talk about Beyonce's skimpily clad concert being a threat to culture and moral probity.
Kuala Lumpur is vast and sprawling. Roads, gardens, bridges, monorails, rapid transport system - all well planned out. The twin towers are grand. Could not go up as they were shut for maintenance work the day we were there.
We managed to catch a Tamil movie shooting in front of the national monument there. A dance sequence was being shot. The hero was tall and good looking, standing around watching the choreographers explain the steps to him. The choreographers had conjured up some crazy steps, same old ants-in-pants routine which looks ludicrous without the music but strangely normal with. The heroine was nowhere in sight. There was a smattering of Malays watching trying to imitate the steps. At first when the hero tried, he made mistakes and I thought to myself, just cause this idiot is better looking than the other people in the cast, he gets to be the hero. But then, they started the music and he switched on his expressions and the scene was transformed. Whereas earlier, it was pure technique I could have admired, now the entire scene came together as being paisa-vasool. He may not dance as well as the choreographers, or even the extras, may not act as well as some of the stalwart character artists, can not sing for nuts, has no talent for directing, writing, shooting, but he is the one people will pay to watch. The Hero.
Like Bangkok, there was only so much one could do in KL. We headed off to Langkawi, an island in the Andaman Sea for the next two days. And that was idyllic. The beaches were white, sandy and all of that, the waters were crystal and the people around few.
And then there was Genting. Enough cannot be said about Genting. We have all heard of white, sandy beaches and pristine waters, islands that inspire getaways and glossy catalogues. But have you heard of an entire town-ship that is indoors - complete with amusement parks, shopping boulevards, 'roadside' cafes, cinema theatres, casinos, restaurants and everything else that the average tourist can aspire for? Have you heard of hotels which have huge waiting areas, for the people who throng there every weekend and wait hours in line to get themselves checked-in? Waiting areas, with the same system of electronic numbering and counters being assigned to numbers, that is employed in banks and for railway bookings?
Genting was all that and we did some fun stuff there - like winning ten times over in Blackjack, or Pontoon like it is called there (although I did not put in any money, maybe next time I will), go-karting, boating, cable-car-riding and other normal touristy stuff. The thing I must mention here though is the free fall amusement park ride I took, where they elevate you first, let you hang in the air for some extremely anxious seconds and then let you dropppp! I must mention it because I took this ride against all instincts. I don't think am too fond of heights, as was clear from the rappelling experience earlier this year.
And then there was shopping. Ah. That the was the high-point. I got some good funda-clothes. Which means clothes which have a different funda to them. Also did some good clubbing, visited a couple of Hard Rock Cafes across. Managed to read alongside, watch a couple of seasons of Coupling and a few movies. And of course, there was the ubiquitous Starbucks. Starbucks is my happy place, it resonates with the ethos with which I want to live my life.
Nuff said. Now must get around to reading those 400 e-mails in my inbox.
Thailand - don't claim to know it all. Delved into Bangkok and grazed past Pataya. Bangkok, with its many many many mega malls. I am quite the mall-rat you know. Asian food is also my thing. After making it through six weeks in China, the stir-fried noodles, Nasi Gorengs, Phad Thais etc sound heavenly and taste even better. The roads are terribly and inadequately narrow though and traffic is nightmarish in Bangkok - the worst I have ever seen, I, whose veins are hardened by the clogged up arteries of Mumbai.
One of the most striking things about Thailand - even good hotels there have scrapbooks for tourists with pictures, maps and details of places in and around they want to visit, and the last few pages of these scrapbooks are devoted to sex shows, nude beaches, places where you can get action of any and every variety, complete with pictures and addresses. Mammaries of Thigh-land.
Malaysia - is the ultimate multi-cultural hot-pot. Malays, Indians and Chinese form almost all of its population. Most of the Indians are Tamilians. There are Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and you can detect multi-racial notes in people - their features, their dressing. There are 'Happy Dipawali' signs everywhere and the newspapers talk about Beyonce's skimpily clad concert being a threat to culture and moral probity.
Kuala Lumpur is vast and sprawling. Roads, gardens, bridges, monorails, rapid transport system - all well planned out. The twin towers are grand. Could not go up as they were shut for maintenance work the day we were there.
We managed to catch a Tamil movie shooting in front of the national monument there. A dance sequence was being shot. The hero was tall and good looking, standing around watching the choreographers explain the steps to him. The choreographers had conjured up some crazy steps, same old ants-in-pants routine which looks ludicrous without the music but strangely normal with. The heroine was nowhere in sight. There was a smattering of Malays watching trying to imitate the steps. At first when the hero tried, he made mistakes and I thought to myself, just cause this idiot is better looking than the other people in the cast, he gets to be the hero. But then, they started the music and he switched on his expressions and the scene was transformed. Whereas earlier, it was pure technique I could have admired, now the entire scene came together as being paisa-vasool. He may not dance as well as the choreographers, or even the extras, may not act as well as some of the stalwart character artists, can not sing for nuts, has no talent for directing, writing, shooting, but he is the one people will pay to watch. The Hero.
Like Bangkok, there was only so much one could do in KL. We headed off to Langkawi, an island in the Andaman Sea for the next two days. And that was idyllic. The beaches were white, sandy and all of that, the waters were crystal and the people around few.
And then there was Genting. Enough cannot be said about Genting. We have all heard of white, sandy beaches and pristine waters, islands that inspire getaways and glossy catalogues. But have you heard of an entire town-ship that is indoors - complete with amusement parks, shopping boulevards, 'roadside' cafes, cinema theatres, casinos, restaurants and everything else that the average tourist can aspire for? Have you heard of hotels which have huge waiting areas, for the people who throng there every weekend and wait hours in line to get themselves checked-in? Waiting areas, with the same system of electronic numbering and counters being assigned to numbers, that is employed in banks and for railway bookings?
Genting was all that and we did some fun stuff there - like winning ten times over in Blackjack, or Pontoon like it is called there (although I did not put in any money, maybe next time I will), go-karting, boating, cable-car-riding and other normal touristy stuff. The thing I must mention here though is the free fall amusement park ride I took, where they elevate you first, let you hang in the air for some extremely anxious seconds and then let you dropppp! I must mention it because I took this ride against all instincts. I don't think am too fond of heights, as was clear from the rappelling experience earlier this year.
And then there was shopping. Ah. That the was the high-point. I got some good funda-clothes. Which means clothes which have a different funda to them. Also did some good clubbing, visited a couple of Hard Rock Cafes across. Managed to read alongside, watch a couple of seasons of Coupling and a few movies. And of course, there was the ubiquitous Starbucks. Starbucks is my happy place, it resonates with the ethos with which I want to live my life.
Nuff said. Now must get around to reading those 400 e-mails in my inbox.
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