The Comfort of Mulled Wine and Cinnamon Bagels...

With leisure comes the will to appreciate wining and dining... One thing I'll forever be thankful to England for will be the opportunity it gave me to experiment with my cutting boards and knives, spatulas and masalas... The first day that I lugged in my two suitcases into my new residence, I remember my flatmate asking me if I wasnt carrying any kitchen stuff...And like an airhead diva, I laughed my professional laugh and said, I think I will just maybe grab a sandwich or a salad perhaps..Don't think I will be using the kitchen much really....She had smiled wisely at me then- little was I to know that in under two days,I'd be eating my words, literally... When all I could see on menus in eateries around Brighton was Fish and Chips and Bangers and Mash..and supermarket aisles filled with red meat, redder meat and some more red meat...realisation dawned that making my own sandwiches and salads along with a little rajma and a few rotis and some bhaaji in the little cozy kitchen that five of us share... might suit my taste buds and (more importantly) my rather constricted student budget better...Moreover, when the weather gets really cold, theres nothing like a spice-soaked curry to pull you out of the blues... I can't say I endorse the Brit motto of keeping their food far away from the salt and the spice that yearn to cling on to them..But then, when Im not tucking into my cooked-at-home fare I have discovered some things here that are to die for... Coming right at the very top of my favourite comfort food these days is a hot toasted cinnamon and raisin bagel...best fresh out of a bakery.. but even the supermarket ones can be made to taste like chunks of divinity if you cut it perfectly into two equal halves, spread a neat layer of butter and toast it brown inside, slap on some blueberry preserve and eat it even as the buttery vapours rise from it.. And ohh...one of those little fluffed up omlettes..not that they are essentially Brit, but the lack of too many breakfast options like what's rightly demanded by my South Indian palate, makes my mouth water these days for a well done omlette filled with little bits of mushroom, garlic, peppers and maybe even some slices of chicken... also could you please toss on a couple of potato wedges by the side, provided the salt that I add over them is not frowned upon... and while they do that, How I wish to introduce the Brits to the marvels of sprinkling Chat Masala onto anything and everything.. And that brings me to my humble declaration...Im in love...I'm a sucker for the festive spirit already in the air and one spirit in particular...mulled wine...and this is just the season to indulge in one too many glasses... The other day, I went on an expedition literally to taste mulled wine across Brighton..from the little eatery outside Churchill Square which served me a really mean one to the pubs of the city, where the measly glass served got a frown - that was chased away by a smile as the hot drink glided smoothly down my throat.. So now I have decided that through the month of December, I shall have a little pot bubbling on my stove...a few barks of cinnamon, some cloves and some brown sugar caramelised before the red wine is liberally added along with orange juice and some chunks of fruit and mulled right....Has anyone got a better tasting recipe? So next time someone says British food like the weather is insipidly unpredictable, Ill ask them to try my favourites..And then, let them tell me I have not discovered the best things British yet...Oooh talking of which, I have not even talked about the cakes and the assorted English tea accompaniments...Lets save that for another rainy day, shall we... Cheers to the festive spirit and the warmth of the mulled wine in my system..

Interpreter of Dreams Needed...

I am no dreamer, I have never been one... Dont get me wrong,I have those grandiose plans for the future that are wrongly catalogued as 'DREAMS' that someday I shall loftily sum up for my dog or my child - at the rate at which Im going looks like it will be the former, declaring things that could possibly begin : 'When I was ten, I sensed that this was the destination that I will reach'.... Ok, so now that we have established that's not the kind that Im referring to in this post....but to the variety that Sigmund Freud and his gang interpreted...I shall go on... Couple of my friends suggested its perhaps that I might be those that don't remember the adventures I embark on when asleep..Now that's possible, but the truth is every morning I normally wake up, like I have returned from 'The Dark Abyss'..no street marks or sign posts to denote that I travelled anywhere else... Once in six months or so - I see a dream...And it stays with me...I see it, feel it, hear it, smell it and sometimes the after taste is so strong, Im sure that I lived it.. Some months back, I remember seeing a very ordinary dream...But then i saw the sun and felt the rain and remembered having a very fluffy omlette as I sat filling the crossword, and the dream was so colourful, right down to remembering to buy flowers that many of my friends who read about my dream even tried to locate the cafe that I dreamed about..It was that palpable.. But yesterday, I saw another one....I can't say it was rosy as my last one..In fact, it was right out of one of those Doomsday Hollywood films.. (Image Courtesy:evelinehanson.com Here I was sitting at my desk,stumbling through the reams of reading that have now become part and parcel of my life...when I felt like hardboard cracking inside my mouth...I felt around with my tongue and realised there were jagged edges of my teeth and some pieces that came away as I did my little survey...So I picked them up and put them on the white paper in front of me..Went back to my reading....locking my upper and lower jaw against each other to prevent any more voluntary destruction.. And suddenly my mouth caved in...Literally...my teeth just disintegrated, they just broke away..I had brick like white pieces in my hands..my mouth felt like a demolition drive had just happened...and I panicked... I skyped ma, and she told me wisely that perhaps I had inherited poor dental structure too from my Dad's side, along with most other traits....She didn't even seem overly concerned...and there I thought we go again, listing out what each of us got and from whom...another latent power tussle between Dad and Mom to take credit for the arguably 'wonderful creations of theirs'.. Here I was like panting and breaking into cold sweat at the sight of my ruined oral cavity, teeth looking like jagged pieces of asbestos in my hand, and my Mom was trying to see if this was something my Dad's family genes were responsible for... Huge plops of tears were rolling down my eyes and I know it was leaking into my mouth too, mixing saltiness into that steely metallic feel of blood in the mouth.. And I woke up like that, with my hand cupped, ready to see the pieces of teeth I held there, in the morning light.. I'm not a dreamer...not at all.. (Image Courtesy:kathysart.com) Even when I saw no blood and gore in my hand, I was sure it was no dream... The metallic taste was still there in my mouth..and my mouth kept twitching with the remembered violence as I stood before the washstand, checking out my teeth...They seem undamaged, physically..wonder if they can be psychologically damaged.. What did the dream mean? I tried checking up on the Net...No answers forthcoming..It can't be dismissed as just another ordinary dream, if I lived a lifetime of fear and worry and tasted blood, can it??

The Terror Remembered..One year Later..

My reporting days for television are perhaps over for good... But I can't help revisiting a coverage that left a huge scar behind...the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai last year.. After putting in nearly 60 hours of non-stop vigil outside a burning Hotel- that had many innocent civilians still trapped in there..many of whom were charred or suffocated to death...or brutally gunned down - for no fault of theirs.. I had broken down completely after returning home... Had come completely undone...wept loudly- deep wracking sobs for over an hour, when the truth of what I had witnessed and reported on, sank in....hours after the NSG claimed that the Operation was over...the last terrorist holed up inside the Taj was gunned down... I wonder, how I stuck on, battling waves of fatigue and lack of sleep...as the non-stop coverage of the Taj Seige continued for three days..

At about 4AM on the final day, I remember being asked to sound 'less dead' - slightly more animated over air, about the shellings and the blasts I could hear from the hotel, that was just about a few hundred yards in front of me.. But the truth was that I was so dead on my feet that even the dangers of being this close to actual gunfire and possibility of it being fatal never occured to me...Any one of the reporters could have been sitting ducks for sniper fire, we were well-within range..No reporter shirked. We all sat there, waiting for the war to be won and for the satisfaction of witnessing it ( Photo courtesy: Dinesh Parab, Outlook)

My heart was in my throat literally, emotion choking me as I reported the rescue operations late into the night.....seeing guests in shock escorted out by security forces and bundled into waiting buses, even as covering gunfire raged on in the background... the discomfort at the sight of white bundles being brought out- that they were dead bodies were clear in the way the bundles jutted groundwards....the siren of the ambulances...the smell of gunpowder that wafted with the sea breeze.. What are the images that will stay on with me? Moments after I saw a charred dead body falling out of a window of the Taj Hotel, I can still see the NSG commandos walking out of that ruined shell of a hotel...if their body language was not indication enough as one of them fished their phone out, yards ahead of me to talk to his daughter, I got a confirmation from a very tired soldier, who smiled through his fatigue and braved imminent death - ' hamare liye kuch bhi mushkil nahin hai' - that was what I remember of the Taj ordeal, a year later...The Indian forces won...but at what cost? Taj's General Manager Karambir Kang lost his family in one night even as he battled to save the lives of many others....Children whose parents went out partying that night, found themselves orphaned..Many innocent commuters at the VT station who were just hurrying home to have their dinners with their families never made it off that platform that night...The policemen...and then the little angel Baby Moshe Holtzberg who was saved by his nanny from the Chabad House at Nariman House...Wonder how he is doing, a year later...transplanted to Israel, growing up never knowing his parents...who were tortured to death - in the name of religion?

This sight of the smouldering Taj burning with the fires that raged on for hours,still rankles me....I have it on my desktop, this picture, clicked on my mobile phone.... Will the end of the Kasav trial be closure enough? Has the Indian government guaranteed that we wont be gullible targets for another such audacious attack in the future? Or should we, as Indians often do, believe that till what's pre-destined for us in the lines that run through our hands and heads or drawn into our horoscopes gets extinguished... we shall survive..

Grim prognosis...but in a struggling country like ours, do we have the right to demand that more premium be placed on our safety?? I dont know if I support a Global War on Terror...I don't know if I'm willing to blame Pakistan for every evil thing perpetrated on the Indian soil...I don't know if aggressive posturing through mass media or denouncements of every peace initiative that never succeeded are solutions.. But I do know that the answers I want, that I seek are currently with no one...no one really knows how dangerous the terror game we find ourselves entrapped in, is..... Till then remember we are pawns....blindfolded, clueless... This photolink of by the TIME magazine is worth a click...

THE ENGLISH AND THE WEATHER

They joke about Englishmen always talking about the weather...It took me to get to England to realise why..Now I empathise, I also often catch myself talking about the weather...

The rains appeal to me a lot.. I remember, one of my English teachers in school, who taught me to romance the words, gave the class an excersise..She would say a word and you needed to find associations...the words would be abstract, what it rings in your mind had to be a concrete image...if she said yellow, then the person who said the egg yolk that i love to dip into in my bulls eye would get cheered while whoever said the traffic light or the sun would be smiled and tolerated...my moment of glory in class came when she said bliss...and my reply was a soak in the rain....Thats how I feel about rains...

Every time I post a status update with a mention of rain in it, my friends have started to chide me, saying 'Ohhh there she goes again with her rain talk...' And can't fault them, its true...When it thunders, the weather says things to me, when it drizzles, I feel nature is whining...when there is bright sunshine with the rains, my heart hums a merry tune...but all the pleasure stops the moment the rains turn rowdy and start to pelt heavily...I hate getting wet, hate getting dirty even more...The rain is pleasure so long as Im dry and sitting by the window, watching puddles form and little streams flow...Walking in the rain, and resembling a drenched cat is what my best buddy, Prachi loves, not me...

So...coming back to the weather...I have a theory why the English talk so much and so expansively about it...Imagine you are Peter and I'm Pam..We work in the same office, we have been meeting everyday for the past 30 years that we have worked together..you know where I live, who I live with, how I live and all that assorted crap that follows...Now there is one thing in our lives that change everyday, that give us some common topic to whine about every day...and that is..the weather..

And now imagine one more scenario...You are Jack desperately trying to open a conversation with this girl (me) you always see at the coffee shop, as you rush in and I rush out...So as you look around the room to find an excuse to talk to me, there plops out of your mouth...Hey, is this umbrella yours, and I say No...and You say, well then looks like you will sorely need one...Its going to rain badly you know..And I look at you with adoration for your intelligence and puppy love for your consideration...Deal done!!!

These are how I see scenarios develop...and when the variable is as unpredictable as the weather in England..which never bothers to play by the rules-  like it shouldnt rain more than this in autumn or that there should be two more hours of sunshine this time of the year, but darn..dont know why the Sun refuses to work the scheduled hours - it makes for memorable conversations...

If in India, the weather update, is like an unwanted tag-along to news bulletins because some sponsor promised to pay for a 5 minute slot, in UK, it should easily be the most watched segment...People ensure they catch is as they bite into their toast before deciding to pick their umbrella on their way out...I also know some who have the BBC's weather link as a bookmark on their screen...How many weather possessed Indians do you know like that?

Its raining as I write with thunder peppering the atmosphere...Reminds me of this little romantic interlude I always imagine on a night like this...

Thunder grumbled to the Sky all night...
She heard him out patiently,
Silently sending out the clouds 
Spreading them wide to muffle the argument
Now, the Sky is pensive and Thunder grumbling in his den..

Ohh..for that hot steaming cup of milky Chai!!

I now have a new 'brrr...' factor that helps me decide if the autumn nip is turning into winter chills....a month into my life here, I know why the Englishmen begin and end their conversations with weather...But the truth is the forecast is still like our daily horoscopes in our afternoon tabloids...too wide open to offend anyone, but with nuggets that might hit the bulls-eye with atleast one of the thousand readers glancing through it religiously....

So that's about the brrrr...factor...Now with the brrrr...factor, comes the craving for chai..Now to be perfectly honest, I fancied myself as a coffee gourmet, till a time when my mother decided to end the nonsense of making a separate cup of coffee, every day before breakfast while the rest of the clan had tea - convincing me in her 'steel coated with silk' tone that tea drinking was healthier and more economical - in time and effort- for a working mother..

So there I went from a staunch coffee drinker to an occasional tea dabbler to slowly, a confirmed chai guzzler...The state, I belong to in India, Kerala, is known for its tea plantations and Malayalis who down cups of tea endlessly, perhaps even more than water...Politics is discussed in the local 'chai-kadas' or tea shops - leaders are made and slandered over cups of chai....Photo Courtesy



I have never been fond of dip-tea( though my name has often been mangled and brutalised into that phonetic form) - I associate it with the evil brew that is spewed by the vending machines every media office invests in..preferring their exotic coffee concoctions over this vile abomination..So every morning, before leaving home, whether I have breakfast or no, one whole mug of steaming tea, made really strong, with one whole teaspoon of tea leaves, and a teaspoon of milk powder( another indoctrination by Amma) and just a dash of sugar( indoctrination by Health magazines) and I'm ready to conquer the world. Meanwhile, the green tea fad also had caught on sufficiently for me to try a couple of mugs conscientiously every day in the hope that soon, I would be one-jean-size smaller.

On 28th Sept 2009, when I set out from Mumbai to London, little did I realise that the hot cuppa chai that I made at my tiny Mumbai apartment would be the last bit of nectar I would consume for an eternity to come...I never realised that those red cartons of Red Label Tea that I used to automatically pick up, from among the plentiful lining the shelves in my local supermarket, would become a packet that I'd yearn to lay hands on, in chilly Brighton...Something hot to constantly warm the freezing innards is essential and the weak and insipid dips that I see people around me indulging in boils my very Indian blood..

So now, I drink green tea infused with jasmine and camomile and dream about the time when my life had endless cups of chai on demand...made at home the old fashioned way...or with ginger and tea masala at the local tapris or at homes of North Indian friends...



Then, I had complained hard about how milky some people make their chai, the milk nearly thick enough with cream to gag on and sugar to cloy my tongue for a good hour...Today, when I sit shivering in my layers of clothing sipping the fine 'tea drinking' experience of the Earl Grey or the Green 'Healthy' Tea, my soul cries....Ohhhh for that hot steaming cup of milky Chai....

Ok, before I go, one last question to ponder over...compare this and the other picture ( and don't be lured by the fancy trappings..which cup would you stretch your hand out for??

A DATE WITH HISTORY

History was not my favourite subject in school - blame it on unimaginative teachers, rotten error-riddled NCERT textbooks and to a much lesser extent, my preoccupation with geography....So much so that history and the mandatory civics classes ( people outside CBSE, ever heard of it?) became evil step-sisters who had to be tolerated...

When I became a journalist - toying around with incidents and precedents and patterns -I started re-discovering some bits of the Indian story over the millenium and farther old, only for the realisation to smack me in my face that it wasnt history's fault...it was the way I was introduced to it...

So I went on the overdrive ( typically hyperactive!) making up for lost time and wasted opportunities..

There were so many stories badly told and more often never told in Indian history classes that cheat students of the rich heritage and culture that we alone can lay claim too...

And it couldnt have been more obvious, as I walked through the streets of Westminster in London, where every building had a tale to share....Monuments to every imaginable incident memorable, narrating stories that I barely knew - a monument to commemmorate the War Dead, another to record how the nation weathered the Black Death...and some others...that brought back unpleasant memories( atleast for me) like the one at Marble Arch for General Dyer who was responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre...Guess one person's hero is another's terrorist...

But one person, who has been getting burnt on a stake for a long time now, atleast once a year, for four centuries now, is this Catholic plotter, Guy Fawkes, whose famous Gun Powder plot to assassinate the king was discovered on time...

Now remember, the monarch is a divine figurehead for the Church of England and the Protestanism that its a flagbearer for....(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windsor_castle_guyfawkesnight1776.jpg)

So with banners that read God Save the King/Queen, in towns across Britain and also across many nations of the Commonwealth ( India is not a part of this league) the Guy Fawkes Day is commemmorated on Nov 5....




This year, I was at the epicentre of the celebrations across Britain, atleast thats what many claim...The Lewes Bonfire.( for more check the link out..(lewesbonfirecouncil.org.uk)

The town of Lewes is quaint, so are the people who have been proudly participating in the parade every year...

Its as if on that day every year, the town quietly hitches a ride on a time machine, to the times when the robes of the gentry and the cassocks of the priests and the beacons of fire were the ways of the world..

And we stood by the pavements, me sipping on some expertly prepared mulled wine (its such a delicious feeling as it goes down your throat)- something to warm the innards as temperature plummeted rapidly soon after the sunlight faded by 5 in the evening...

And soon enough, there poured onto those very stones of the cobbled streets, like it has happened every year for over four hundred years, men, women and children - holding beacons of a proudly guarded tradition, some dressed in costumes that have been handed down generation after generation.....

And many 'Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholics' were burnt at stake...a throwback to the days of Grand Inquisition and the subsequent Reformation that moulded European history and culture...

Also represented, on the streets in grand processions were clans from every region that Britain has placed her imperial feet on.....

So there were the Zulus and the Indians, the Chinese and the Australian convicts...all the colour of British history spilling out from the pages onto the roads by the light of the fire of the beacons they carried..

And as the flames grew larger, the crowds swelled....My feet cried in protest, we had been standing watching the processions for nearly 5 hours...Some good wine and the frazzled feeling from dodging firecrackers gamefully thrown your way made us decide to call it a day, before the competition of the bonfires began...

I hear its a sight to behold...But I had had my fill of history for the day...watching Lewes ablaze with the emotions and sentiments lovingly treasured over hundreds of years



More Brighton chronicles will follow...For now, enjoy the slideshow of my bonfire...Ill keep it on my blog page till the end of the month...So enjoy the fireworks...