Of Themes, Culinary GlobeTrotting and Solitary evenings...

Now that most of my work ‘work’ is over here at Grevenbroich, I often have the opportunity to leave office at the god blessed hour of six! On such evenings I chart a new leg of my ongoing culinary journey.

Yes, I arrange “theme” evenings for myself.

The guiding principle of such evenings is simple - try out a new cuisine and arrange the other elements of the evening around it. The first step obviously being choosing the cuisine and thence procuring it.

Last Friday for example I went Turkish - I ordered a portion of Mushrooms in Yogurt sauce, garnished with garlic and chilies. To go with that, from the supermarket I bought Turkish Pita bread, which is a cross between a Masala Kulcha and a Pizza. The spread, while not a king’s platter, was representative of authentic cuisine. To wash down the food, I bought a bottle of Blood Wine. Blood Wine is a produce of the hills beyond Bonn, its strong flavored and derives its name from its distinct blood red color and the Frankish legend of Dragon Slayers. The last element of the evening was the music - I played the Nazams of Faiz Ahmed Faiz sung by Abida Parveen.

It was quite an eclectic experience - Turkish food, local German wine and mystical music of the east. I layout the table and put out all the lights, the only light was that from the television which I had set to the Olympics with the volume muted. The evening was rather nice, a wonderful experience.

Spurred on by last week, I charted a new “theme” evening - Authentic Tortellini pasta and ham in a crème sauce, Alt beer to go with it and Bruce ‘the Boss’ Springsteen playing on my laptop. Another eclectic little experience - authentic Italian fare, a lovely local beer and the working-class songs of ‘The Boss’.

As I savored the food and sipped the beer, I laughed at these maverick evenings of my own device.

“…the mistaken heart, its delusions never end, the laws of reason enter the mind after much delay…embracing false hope with both arms, with all its might, to its breast. In the end one day, severing the umbilical cord and sucking the heart empty of blood, it flees; there is then a return to one’s right senses.
But the mind grows restless again…to embrace its next delusion.”

- Robbie T (Rabindranath Tagore)

'The Postmaster'

Labels: Travel

The 'Time of my Life...' ?

It was nearly midnight I was curled up in bed with a book. One of the pleasures afforded by Friday and Saturday nights is being able to stay up and read, without having to worry about the alarm clock dictated routine which normally hangs around one’s neck. My hotel room has a really large window spanning an entire wall. I keep the window open at night, it feels nice to lie on the bed and stare at the square patch of sky. Uneven swathes of velvet in shades of gray, with the odd white cloud floating across it.

The view is pretty unremarkable - a suburban street lined with brown brick houses. A car parked on the street whole night is the only variation one could possibly expect.

The house closest to my end of the street has a stout chimney flanked by windows on either side, there was a party on in full swing, voices in conversation, loud music, laughter and shrieks of joy. The usual “party” atmosphere, really.

For awhile it was irritating, because the loud music was getting a tad on my nerves. But hey it was Friday night right? People can have their fun, cant they?

I ignored all of it and continued reading.

At just about midnight, they played ‘It’s the time of my life’, from Dirty Dancing. What an amazing movie and what a great song!

Dirty Dancing will always be a favorite, especially the music - ‘Time of my life’, the Patrick Swayze number ‘She’s like the wind’ and of course Eric Carmen’s ‘Hungry Eyes’. Patrick Swayze was pretty amazing in that movie, and had this great bit of chemistry going with Jennifer Gray. In fact awhile back, an internet site voted ‘Time of my life’ the number one duet ever.

Anyway I got out of bed and went to the window. The music was loud and clear in the stillness of the night. Dancing silhouettes framed by the window, a chorus of joyous voices trying to sing along with the track but falling woefully out of tune. It was a wonderful.

I lit a cigarette and blew rings into the sky, watching the smoke rise up and coalesce into the night, and all of this with, ‘Time of my life’ ringing out loud.

“Now I've had the time of my life
No I never felt like this before
Yes I swear it's the truth
and I owe it all to you…”

I thought about the last few weeks in Germany, my assignment here - cant exactly do rocket science with Invoices, Sales Orders and Shipping Bills, but having said that, it was good solid on time on budget consulting - nothing spectacular but pretty solid.

Am I having a time of my life? Don’t know really, most things seem to be in key, but there is so much more to learn, so much more to do. And then there is the whole matter of, love.

I looked out into the night; the dancing had become less frantic as the song played out its last notes. But there were loud cheers and shrieks of laughter all around, a bunch of voices sang the chorus slowly, again and again. I joined in too,

"I've had the time of my life
No I never felt this way before
Yes I swear it's the truth
And I owe it all to you
'Cause I've had the time of my life
And I've searched through every open door'
Til I found the truth
And I owe it all to you"

And I thought to myself - I owe this one to them.

Labels: Travel

Churches, Perfumes and a Postcard from the Rhine...

The Köln Dom (Cathedral) looms large as soon as one exits the train station. It’s a mammoth structure built on a raised square. Its twin steeples rise heavenwards characterizing the sky line. While roaming the streets, whenever I was in doubt as to where exactly I was heading (which was rather frequent), I searched the sky line for the twin steeples, from which I re-affirmed my geographical bearings and continued to trudge along.

The Dom was built in stages over the last seven hundred odd years and is the most significant Roman Catholic establishment in all of Western Europe. And before one Gustave Eiffel decided to immortalize the Paris skyline with a structure of steel, the Dom’s twin steeples were Europe’s tallest man made structure.

Köln was raised to the ground almost overnight, when the Allied forces carpet bombed the Rhine Valley. The morning after, surviving Kölners awoke to rubble filled streets and raised buildings, amidst all this devastation though the Dom remained unscathed. Whether it was the selective marksmanship of the pilot who let loose the bombs or whether it was Providence, is something I guess we will never have an answer to.

From that night to how it stands today, Köln like all of Western Germany rebuilt itself, first with the largesse of the Marshal Plan and then by virtue of the strong Deutsche Mark. But Köln did so, with a distinct sense of character and cosmopolitan spirit. Köln struck me as a multi colored patch rug, with the aura of antiquity jostling with the spirit of the modern, the verve of a university town with the officiousness of being at the heart of a trade route, the plurality of a liberal society with the languid air of a small sleepy town.

The high ceiling Dom is filled with soft light, touched as if by an artist’s brush as it filters in through the large stained-glass windows. I lit a candle in thanksgiving for being where I was, and sat in the pews lost in the myriad colors of the stained-glass.

The place brought back memories of the St.Francis Dom in Goa. I have always had two distinct mental compartments about Churches, based on which side of the Christian Schism they find themselves. Catholic Churches have always struck me as cold and somber with the feel of a mausoleum (even if it had an air of gaiety!). On the other hand Protestant churches, have always seemed bright, airy and full of life (even when they were not!). This neat mental pigeon holing has as much to do with aesthetics of Architecture, as with the fact that being Martinian it is almost incumbent on us to be prejudiced against anything even closely resembling Don Bosco, and yes that includes Churches of the Catholic faith. So well that’s me and my blinkered self!

I spent the afternoon, sitting on a grass knoll which lines the bank of the Rhine. It was warm by European standards and people stretched out on rugs, soaking in the sun. Small ferries traveled up to the Köln Zoo and back, docking at the little pier in front of the knoll. I read a short story volume of Saki - mostly small pieces, running into a few pages at most. I had once read somewhere that the most unprofitable job in all literature was to try and write a ‘criticism of Saki’s works’, because ‘there is nothing to criticize, Saki is simply …to be read and …to be enjoyed’.

Kids on skateboards raced along the promenade at the edge of the water, while the sedate elders cycled leisurely. I looked at the ferries, old dull ones with fading paint and small tables unremarkably dotting the deck. There were bright and festive steamers too, with large decks almost at water level, bright streamers running across it and a brass band playing snatches of popular numbers. They reminded me of Florentino Ariza, probably the most uncharacteristic steam ship operator in all the rivers of this world.

‘And how long do you think we can keep up this coming and going?’
Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty- three years, seven months and eleven days and nights.
‘Forever’, he said.

‘Forever’ I thought to myself.

When the first streaks of gray filled the sky and the steamers docked for the night, I set out in search of a Chemist shop attributed to have created ‘Kölnisch wasser’, considered Köln’s greatest contribution to the modern world. Very simply ‘Kölnisch Wasser’, is a sort of perfumed spring water, first created over two hundred years ago for the German Gentry who inexplicably had a strange aversion towards bathing!

The most generous patrons of ‘Kölnisch Wasser’ though, were the fashion conscious French who exotically re-christened it ‘Eau de Cologne’. The name stuck and the French perfumers usurped this little known Rhineland product, making it their own.

Labels: Travel

The Little Grey Cell Scrap Book

I often think that if we could figure out how the mind - stores, connects and retrieves information, we would be able to find acceptable explanations, if not solutions, to most of the world’s humdinger mysteries.

Isn’t it strange? Often months and years pass without us thinking about something/someone, and then suddenly we read/see/hear something and the mind is flooded with memories as if it all happened yesterday.

On Saturday morning, I was just too bloody flaked out to go to Bonn. I just lay down and watched TV, floating in and out of sleep. Mtv played ‘Ironic’ - the unplugged version.

I had asked her, sitting by the Tennis Court, ‘So what have you been listening too lately…?’ pat had come the answer ‘Alanis Morisette’. That thread over, we doodled over other topics of polite conversation . A few months later at Heathrow, I had an hour or so to kill, so walked across to the apparel store ‘Rohan’. It gives me quite a kick, to buy clothes from a store which shares my name. Well that’s me and my vain self! Now the world knows!

The store was closed, so for the lack of anything better I browsed Music at Virgin. I came across the ‘Alanis Mtv Unplugged’ CD, with the lady strumming her guitar against a wall with a red motif. I thought of her, and I bought the CD. By the time I got back to Calcutta she had left, and as it later transpired, the departure was forever. I could never giver the CD to her, and unwittingly it became part of my collection.

Years later, in a hotel room with tired walls and pretenses of art, which look over me as I sleep. Of all the Videos in the world, Mtv plays Ironic. And it all comes back as if it were yesterday.

‘Rohan … when you meet the right person, everything will fall in place, and nothing else will matter’

That’s what she left me with. Simple? Simple like we were. True? Yes true like we were. In retrospect, the broken promises were our rites of passage.

She somewhere in northeast Canada ensconced in a bank job and me here in a Dusseldorf Hotel, writing my blog.

The greatest summer I ever had and the clear night sky, under which I had kissed a woman for the first time. All that remains of eating Vanilla ice cream on a cold winter evening, of buying our first bottle of beer, of thinking she was the most beautiful girl in the world, is this - Alanis Morisette strumming a guitar and singing her songs, and me asking the white crazy cement ceiling, ‘Isn’t it Ironic. Don’t you think?’

Labels: Fiction

Inextricably linked by the colonial master

Beyond the Grevenbroich Bahnof are the Turkish quarters. It’s a crisscross of lanes, with Turkish fruit sellers under sun umbrellas, shops on the corners with men huddled around a television, drinking tea in small bell shaped glasses and watching re runs of Galatasaray’s recent matches.

Conversation threads are invariably about Turkeys impending unification with the EU and how prices will soar, making the prospect of returning home, for expatriates such as them, nothing short of a pipe dream.

The Turks have migrated to every major Western European City, where they run the popular Doner-Kebab kind of joints, corner shops or drive taxis. While there is a general levity in the air, due to the way the Turkish are - laid back and high on bonhomie. One cannot help but detect the fact that everybody in a sense is ‘waiting to exhale’.

Last evening I was walking around the place when I came across a small four table restaurant, not surprisingly named ‘A la Turka’. Though small it is a bona fide restaurant serving authentic Turkish fare unlike the Doner Kebab joints, which are Turkey’s contribution to the world as McDonalds outlets are Americas.

I ordered skewered lamb, with salad and Turkish bread (not unlike our Nan). The cook, with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth was a friendly sort. He was quite delighted that he could talk to me in English, unlike his usual customers with whom conversations where exclusively in either German or Turkish. The man worked for many years with the British in Istanbul and through this association, he picked up not only British cuisine but also their language. The average Britt’s obsession with ‘The Indian curry’ is well known, and our cook from Turkey vociferously confirmed the notion. As he said in his slow drawl ‘The British people want to eat Indian curry even with their roast beef and Yorkshire pudding!’

The man took upon himself the professional challenge of rustling up a ‘Curry on the rice’ for me. And if I was to confirm its authenticity as a ‘Good Indian Curry’, it would be a major professional victory and ego-trip all rolled into one. In the man’s own words ‘It would prove that I can cook an Indian curry without ever having entered an Indian kitchen!’

He did rustle up good stuff, a very spicy chicken in thick gravy laid out over a portion of rice. Well it tasted fabulous, but it wasn’t a curry and much less Indian. But I didn’t want to break the man’s heart, and told him it was the best curry I had ever eaten. He was thrilled to bits! It was his professional equivalent of an astronauts’ moon walk. He shook my hand and fawned over me for like ever.

After clearing the plates he sat at my table, and we smoked Marlboros over a glass of Turkish tea. The tea is boiled for hours and has a distinct bitter aromatic taste; it is drunk with a touch of sugar but without any milk. Over Tea he talked about his days in Istanbul and the financial compulsions which had brought him to Germany. He talked fondly of his British Employers, and how shocked he had been the first time his Master asked him to pour milk in the tea. Which I gathered was blasphemous in Turkey’s tea drinking culture. I bid the man good night and in a typical large hearted Turkish way, he bid me a good life.

As I walked back to my hotel, snaking my way through beer gardens on the verge of shutting down for the night, I thought about the unmistakable irony which underlay the entire evening. The way a Turkish cook and I - born in post independence India many years after our Colonial Rulers bid us farewell, were so inextricably linked. And the fact that it took the quotidian curry for us to strike an unusual little bond, a bond based on a shared history of colonial rule and the heterogeneous Occident-Orient culture which emerged in its wake.

It’s been over half a century since the famed sun finally set over the empire, but the long shadows at dusk or ironically the afterglow, will form the sub text of our continuing presents and futures.


Bahnof : Railway Station

Labels: Travel

Thinking of 'S' and lot more-less

Last night I caught the 9:45 from Dusseldorf to Grevenbroich. It is one of those two-coach suburban trains, scheduled such, as to take people working late back home. There were two girls sitting across me, probably waitresses, because they were still wearing their black tunics with white collars. They were chatting and sharing an apple, a country apple, the color of crimson fused with cream. In between laughter and animated chatter, they bit the apple, lipstick making red streaks on the cream.

I dozed off for awhile and some where on the outskirts of Neuss I dreamt of S. It has been a year at least, since I last saw S. Though I have met her less than half a dozen times, I did like her. Maybe not in a romantic kind of way, but I did like her. I liked her because of what she could have been.

She could be strong, independent and authoritative but often she inexplicably gave in.
She was always beautiful but she had it in her to embody grace, but she never did.
She could have been sharp and cerebral, but she wandered on the fringes of bimbette land.
She could have made love in a sublime kind of way, instead she chose to fuck.
She could have had the limelight forever, but I think she had stage fright.
She could have used her wit but she used her cleavage.
She had these bursts of brilliance which could streak the night, but she only touched a moment.

Its not that I am making a value judgment, but I did see something out of the ordinary in what she could be. I wonder where she is now, and I hope she is happy and all of that.

I am sure people have a million and more things they wish I was. Some of that stuff maybe real stuff and the rest prejudice - but I do know there is some very real stuff out there.

I have a confession to make, I fancy the Kate Winslet song ‘What if’, very popish in bits but I think it’s rather nice.

I am in this preachy frame of mind today. Let me push the gauntlet just a tad more, while I still can. By way of sapient advice, especially for my cousins, some of whom are on the threshold of college/work life. At the threshold of getting their hands dirty in the muck of the real, big, complex world, all whilst trying to keep ones soul pure and pristine and all of that. A world where we conceal all that is important and reveal all that is illusionary.

These lines are from ‘Love in the times of Cholera’. And it speaks a truth,

“He would never reveal it...not because he did not want to open the chest where he had kept it so carefully hidden, but because he realized only then that he had lost the key”

Labels: Fiction