Author: manuscrypts

  • Kerala Kerala, Quite Contrary

    This is an anthology of 26 works, edited by Shinie Antony, who also contributes a few as author, interviewer and chronicler. The title, IMHO, is a bit misleading since the works themselves, while touching upon various aspects of life in the state or offering perspectives on its history, culture or working as travelogues, do not attempt to bring out the contrary nature, in whatever form that’s meant. Different individuals’ point of view, does that make a collection ‘contrary’? I’m not so sure. To be fair, a couple of works do attempt to show the contrary nature of the state and its residents, but that’s in isolation, and anyway are not enough in number to justify the title.
    Having said that, there are quite a few which I immensely liked. Will mention those (in the order in which they appear in the book)
    Odd Morning by Susan Visvanathan. I’ve always been a fan of her work after I read ‘Something Barely Remembered’. There’s something that’s wistful and haunting about the way she writes, and this piece follows that style.
    William Dalrymple’s “The Strange Sisters of Mannarkad” is quite enlightening, and has a fascinating theme of religion and legend.
    Anita Nair’s “Orhan Pamuk, Nair and I” is a wonderful short story that explores the psyche of Kerala’s writers and critics.
    “The Argumentative Malayali” by D.Vijayamohan perhaps best justifies the book’s title, as it captures Kerala’s unique stance on global and national issues. As a malayali, I’d say that his observation and insights are spot on. Anti-communist? Probably, but I can’t blame him. For me, its one of the best works in the book.
    S S Lal’s “A medicine that cannot be prescribed” is the kind of short story I love. The perfect mix of food for thought and a mild twist in the tale, that makes a perfect ending.
    “Sitrep Seventies” by Hormis Tharakan is perhaps the strongest contender for the best work in the book. While I was mildly puzzled by the way the piece started, the way it swept across centuries and the lifestream nature of the work grew on me, and its amazing insights on law and human nature just raised it to a whole new level.
    Shreekumar Varma’s “Fort Lines” is a story anyone who has lived in the state, or visited on a ‘wrong day’ can absolutely identify with. I wish the kind of cosmic justice that appeared in the work happened in real life too!!
    “No Sex Please, We have cable” by Suresh Menon ended up as my favourite work. The humour is amazing, and I could easily identify the way a place changes or remains the same depending on what you’re looking for.
    Nimz Dean, all of 13 years old is the youngest contributor at “The Gift”, and the 2 page work definitely shows promise. 🙂
    Shashi Tharoor uses all of his skills to make a passionate case for Kerala and investments in the state in “Building Brand Kerala”. A well written piece but having lived there most of my life, and having worked there for some and having seen enough hartals in the recent past , I am not convinced.
    “Happy” by Omana (as told to Shinie Antony) is amazing food for thought material, and is a fine ending to the book.

    So that’s about 11 out of 26, which are really good works, and a few others could work for you depending on your interests. 🙂

  • Just about fair

    A few days back, on Twitter, Vijay Sankaran shared an article, that led to a brief but heated debate. By the time I joined in, fun time was over and people had moved on, but i still manage to butt heads with Surekha for a while. Since the 140 character format was a constraint, we left the argument in a safe place and I said that I’d share a post soon with my consolidated view on the matter.

    The matter was of course “SRK: Now playing at an airport near you”. No, don’t yawn yet. After evading ‘gyarah mulkon ki police’, this is exciting stuff – the discovery of a continent where the words “Rahul/Raj, naam to suna hoga” don’t mean a damn, and an ordeal which lasted (depending on who you speak to) 2 hours/ just over an hour. That makes me wonder whether SRK started off with ” Sattar minute hain tumhare paas, shayad tumhare zindagi ke khaas sattar minute”. In any case, by the time it ended he must’ve been saying “Babuji ne kaha gaon chhod do, sab ne kaha paro ko chhod do, paro ne kaha sharaab chhod do, please aap mujhe chhod do”. Ok, ok, sorry. I am not really an SRK fan, but I have to admit, I admire the journey from Fauji back in 1988 – a hard fought climb to the very top. An amazing trip. And when the ego was forced to land at Newark, even if it was for a brief period, it must’ve been painful.

    Fingers have been pointed (including mine, initially) about how it was a good promotion for the upcoming movie ‘My Name is Khan‘. But from online sources, the release date for MNIK is 2010. This would be way too premature, and despite his faults, I can’t remember SRK doing publicity stunts like this. (correct me if i have forgotten something) He himself brushed off the incident later and said that they were doing their job, and when compared to an ex-president, (Kalam getting frisked) he was a nobody. I’m inclined to say that maybe he wasn’t guilty of making it a great deal, but the media and us consumers of media were. (Yes, even this post is a case in point, eh? 🙂 )

    But all this was just an introduction. The article i mentioned earlier (and which you didn’t bother to click) is by Govindraj Ethiraj and is titled ‘The Idea of Injustice”. It centers upon whether the detention of SRK was unfair, unjust, both or neither. The writer gives various examples of injustice that we experience/see around us in our daily lives – from the politician’s convoy that disrupts our commute to the people sleeping on the roadside outside Hard Rock Cafe. He goes on to say that “Young India actually lives on with the most amazing amalgam of principals and values. Where justice and injustice have little or no co-relation to our real lives or that of others. Where denial of a right to education, livelihood or food has no bearing on our notion of justice.” The title of the article relates to Prof. Amartya’s Sen’s “The Idea of Justice”, and the article also cites some of his views.

    Surekha felt that the comparison was harsh and unfair and fans are entitled to their expression, and countering every protest with questions on outrage against poverty, corruption etc won’t get us anywhere. While I agreed that fans could express themselves anyway they wanted, I felt the comparison was valid and the sense of injustice that some felt when SRK was detained was connected to the injustice that the child living in poverty faced. (What he makes out of it later/destiny etc is a different debate) To me, it is not a comparison, but a connection nevertheless. Saying that it is not connected reflects our contextual sense of justice that I kept mentioning. We are affected when the things we hold dear (from family to property to film stars) are affected, the rest is someone else’s problem. We relate to our immediate context, and would like justice in that bubble. We are totally unaffected by the rest of the world’s misery. Yes, we do like the candle marches, and protest groups on Facebook, they are easy ways to placate our conscience. But ‘our’ experience of injustice is more pertinent than anyone else’s, and we turn a blind eye to things that will not affect our bubble.

    Forget the rest of the world, when we have an argument with someone close, how many times do we try to be genuinely conscious of the other person’s point of view/perspective? Aren’t we always right in the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves? Aren’t our actions always warranted, just, fair? Can’t we always justify? Heh, to ask the same us to reflect a bit on the world’s inequities when we aren’t even conscious of our own motivations and sense of right and wrong would be asking for too much, huh? Right, wrong, justice, injustice, fairness, unfairness are all subjective, basis our perspectives. Think about it, shouldn’t unfairness and injustice be absolutes, and not relative to any individual’s perceptions and perspectives? But we’ve built an entire society and its accompanying systems and laws based precisely on this. From communities to joint families to nuclear families to the individual, our concern ‘circle’ has been becoming smaller all the while. And everything from world wars to strife in personal relationships is because of our narrowing concern. But this is not a commentary on society, for after all, if change has to happen, it has to be at the individual level.

    Bura Jo Dekhan Main Chala, Bura Naa Milya Koye
    Jo Munn Khoja Apnaa, To Mujhse Bura Naa Koye

    ~ Kabir

    Objectivity. To see things unhindered and uninfluenced by the baggage we carry around. To go beyond our conditioning – self imposed and otherwise and look at ourselves first, and then the world around us as absolutes. Why? Selfishly- because it can un-complicate us, selflessly- because it makes us more humane. When we can do that, perhaps we’ll understand  the connection and what justice and fairness is all about.

    until next time, ego messages

    PS. The thought continues….

  • Ambrosia

    No, not the food of the gods, actually far from it, its a restaurant in Koramangala, serving global cuisine. Pretty easy to find, its on the Intermediate Ring Road just after the Sony World junction (when coming from the Indiranagar side) opposite Vision Express.

    Though we hadn’t reserved in advance, we managed to get a good seat when we reached there around 8pm. The place did get full by around 9 though. The ambience is pretty good, with very comfortable seating. The menu is a mix of cuisines from several countries, with flags placed beside each item to point out its place of origin. There’s quite a good selection of appetisers with options of veg, chicken and sea food (crab, squid, prawns), priced between Rs.145-275. There are also about half a dozen options of soups and salads each, again a decent mix of veg, chicken, lamb and sea food options, priced at Rs.85-125 and Rs.165-245 respectively.

    Then there are flambes, which are supposed to be the specialty here, priced between Rs.255-395. Also available is pasta (veg/sea food/lamb at Rs.225-255). Other main course dishes include Chinese/Thai stir fried options, enchiladas, fajitas, North Indian gravies with roti/naan/parathas/rice options etc. We also found a couple of regular Goans – Xacuti and Cafreal. The place also serves alcohol, though there didn’t seem to be a lot of options.

    We started with a Bortsch soup, ” a traditional Russian broth with lamb chunks, tomato, beetroot, carrot, beans, grean peas, cauliflower and cabbage, topped with sour cream. We were told that it was a thick soup, though ‘broth’ indicated otherwise. When we asked for a ‘by two’, we were told that that couldn’t be done, but we could be given an additional bowl. I’m trying to figure out whether its some old Russian custom – the state serves one portion, and we have to share. Anyway, the soup was quite good, so we didn’t complain that it was actually a broth, and not a thick soup.

    For the main course, it turned out that both of us had selected Mexican dishes. Must be the subliminal effect of swine flu. I asked for a Chicken Enchilada, “rolled tortillas topped with homemade smoked ranchero chilly sauce with cheese, served with refried pinto beans, sour cream and Mexican rice”, and D ordered a Pechuga Pibil, “roasted chicken marinated with achiote chilli served with Mexican rice, salsa and tomato sauce”. The food was only just decent, and the quantity was not really sufficient.

    Though the dessert options included a drunken banana flambe and a bitter chocolate mousse, we made different plans for dessert.

    And now came the most exciting part of the dinner – billing. After about 10 minutes of subtle signalling, and then 5 minutes of tactics just short of SOS flares, finally we managed to convey that we’d like to pay and get out. Then, after waiting for another 10 minutes and more gesticulating, someone came to our table and asked us whether we had ordered our main course. When we again conveyed that we had survived the food, and just wanted to pay and leave, we were told that the bill would come ‘just now’. By now, we’d begun to wonder whether the bills needed to be sent to Russia and Mexico to be verified before being given to us. After another 5 minutes, we were told that the printer was not working and that was the reason for the delay. Though we weren’t too thrilled at that, we felt quite proud that a printer had been dedicated for our billing – since at least a couple of other tables got their bills, paid and left while this entire exercise was happening!! Finally, we got the bill…. with a couple of foreign objects, in adddition to the ones we had ordered. When we pointed that out, the guy actually tried to remind us of the buffalo wings and coke we had consumed!!! In turn, I reminded him that I wasn’t Aamir in Ghajini. He realised his mistake and we got a revised bill, this time without the soup. ‘From Russia with love’, I thought, but it was their way of apologising. I insisted on paying, and was told that printing a new bill would take more time!! And I thought the joke/urban legend ended with ‘The russians used a pencil”!! We finally just added the soup price to the bill, paid and escaped.

    All of the above cost us just less than Rs.700, and a Saturday night.

    Maybe it was just a one-off case, but all I’ll say is that while the immortals may have all the time in the world and beyond for ambrosia, we have a finite lifetime, so we plan to stay away from this place.

    Ambrosia, No:52 B, 100 ft Road, 4th Block, Koramangala. Ph:40940101/2, 9740391194

  • Visage.. envisage

    In the first book of the Ramayana series, Ashok Banker uses a line, a statement made by Rishi Adhranga to Lakshmana, as the brothers are about to enter Bhayanak van, where Tataka resides – “Over time, truth becomes fact, fact is rewritten as history, history fades to legend, and eventually, legend remains as myth.” In the myth 🙂 , these words are  spoken in the Treta Yuga (the Age of Reason), which follows Satya Yuga (the Age of Truth). The character also states that by the time its the Kali Yuga (the Age of Darkness, which is last and after the Dvapara Yuga), devas and asuras would be just race-memories and dismissed as fantasy by the rational and the scientific.

    In science fiction, there are many stories of the ravages of time. One, where, man comes across computers and other technological specimens, but does not know how to use them, since the lack of energy had made humans de-evolve. Another, where man discovers that the canals on Mars were made by a race of humans, ten thousands of years back, in an older ‘cycle’ of evolution and de-evolution. Interesting? 🙂

    So the other day, I was thinking about facts, truth, history and stories. It further led me to thinking about these blogs of mine, the lifestreams on Facebook and Twitter and on the blog. The digital snapshots of our lives, the way we are storing our life almost by the second, for many reasons. Our experiences, our thoughts, our desires, our emotions, our fears, our happiness and sorrow, and so many more things. To share, to look back….. to create an image of ourselves for whoever sees it?

    In Cochin, at home, there are these old albums with black & white and sepia photographs. The ones with which we, as children, had fun trying to identify Mom and Dad in their childhood photographs. There are other characters in them – grandparents, uncles, aunts and other relatives, friends of theirs. While many of them are easily identified by the earlier generation, some remain unknown, or rather, ones who aren’t remembered. Either ways, other than direct interactions, these photos are perhaps the only remains of people who lived a few decades back. Ever wonder who they really were, as persons, what were their thoughts, what did they think of their life, and others’, did they question their existence, or were they busy running a life, as we are? Did they think that someone, somewhere in the future would look at their photographs and peer into their lives beyond the confines of the frame? Would they have smiled a bit more if they knew, or would they try to look more serious? Maybe they wouldn’t have cared enough to strike a special look or pose?

    With the advent of the web, there are now more means than ever to store ‘life’. Sound, pictures, videos, enough material to make sure that a life is much more documented than the two dimensional photographs. Though my lifestreaming purpose is limited to my life, when I read posts about what happens to a person’s blog/Facebook account etc after his/her death, I can’t help but wonder about the future of digital lifestreams.

    With relationships getting redefined on a  regular basis, will there be anyone later who cares enough to go through another person’s life. After all, with the explosion of user generated content, an individual’s lifestream is just a statistic. (yes, even otherwise, it might just be that, but these are perhaps our efforts to move from being an irrelevant statistic  to a relevant individual). Yes, perhaps truth won’t become facts and so on, though the objectivity of truth itself can be questioned. But meanwhile, I am reminded of the science fiction tales. Maybe no one will be able to access all this content. Or it could be a deviant of this scenario. I have quite a lot of music cassettes. While I can still easily find devices to play it, a few years later, that might not be the case – either that, or the tapes would be in no state to be played. There are many tracks in these which I can’t find online. In the near future, they will be lost to the past. So in essence, technology might advance so much that those data items which have not been updated might be inaccessible anyway.

    A life. A lifetime of experiences, which defined not just what happened to a single person, but also to those around. Multiple lives. A web of existence. Humanity. Statistics and non-stories. All of which would be rendered inaccessible or meaningless in the future, but without which the future would not exist. An endless stream, which may have the larger picture of its origins, but has only hazy notions of the details. Makes me wonder. About the construct of our lives.

    until next time, streaming out loud…

  • Saffron

    No, this is not one of those Hinduism-politics posts, Saffron happens to be the name of a Mughlai restaurant in Koramangala. Amazingly, there is next to no information available about it online. Thankfully it was located in an old haunt of ours – Jakkasandra (Koramangala 1st Block), so we found it rather easily, based on a landmark given in the TOI article, where we read about it.  To get there, when coming from the MG Road direction, continue on Hosur Road after Forum and take the left towards St John’s hospital (that’s the only way you can go. heh). Continue on the road, cross the next junction (with the Intermediate Ring Road) and go towards the Outer Ring Road, until you reach the junction with the road coming from 1st Block (signal – you’ll see Pinjara restaurant on the left), keep going straight until the next junction (you’ll have an HDFC bank on the right and Nous Software on the left), take a left here, and you’ll find Saffron on your right. Parking should not be a major deal, especially if you have a two wheeler, there’s a nice security guy who will help you out.

    Saffron is on the first floor, and on the landing is the first theme indicator – a Mughal turban. The interior is simple, but with comfortable seating. Though the restaurant was fairly well occupied, I don’t think you’d need reservations, since there are enough seating options available. We got ourselves a nice corner seat. The menu explains the origin of saffron, from Kashmir, and its name in different places – kasubha in Philippines, kong in Kashmir, kesar in North India, and how the name is derived from the arabic ‘Zafaran’, meaning yellow. Apparently, the restaurant’s name was chosen for the splendour it exuberates. Oh, okay, we’ll get to the food.

    The menu starts with soup options – cream, clear in veg and chicken (Rs. 40-65). There are starters, both in veg – french fries and various versions of paneer tikkas (Rs. 30-95) and non veg – fish tikkas, kali mirch , amritsari (Rs. 130-140); chicken tikkas – tangri, seekh, reshmi, hariyali, malai, pudina, tawa, kalimirch (Rs.95- 240); mutton – bara, peshawari, malai chaap, boti kabab (Rs. 150-165). The main course  has over twenty options in vegetarian – dal, rajma, paneer, mushroom, chana (Rs.70-100), a couple of options in fish (Rs.145), around a dozen options in chicken, including mughlai, handi, achari, some of which are available in three different quantity options – portion, half and full (Rs. 110-140 for portions, Rs.190-230 for half and Rs. 350 -385 for full), and about ten options in mutton – keema egg, brain dahi, kashmeri, qorma (Rs.120-135). To go along with that, you can either have rotis (about 20 options available) or biriyani. There are also raitas and salads. There is also the concept of ‘Shahenshah meals’, basically combo meals, with over a dozen different choices. There are a few basic veg options (Rs. 70-85), a couple of non veg roll options (Rs. 90-95), the larger veg options are priced at rs. 125-130 and the mughlai chicken and mutton are priced at Rs. 150 and 160 respectively. Interestingly, there are also quick snack options in the menu – sandwiches, cutlets, samosas, pakoras etc and a couple of pages devoted to Chinese options (soups, starters, main course with decent options in soups, startes and main course).

    We started off with a Cream of Chicken soup. Though it wasn’t as thick as we expected it to be, it was tasty enough. We then had a starter – fish kalimirch, which was quite tasty, but at some points left us confused, on whether it was fish or mutton. Erm, yes, strange. By the time we thought of checking it up, the proof was safely lodged in our stomach. For the main course, we wanted the brain curry, that wasn’t available. We ordered a Mughlai chicken curry (half) and asked for a boti kabab to be brought as part of the main course. To go along with this, we ordered a butter kulcha and an afghani roti. The Mughlai chicken was good, though it was a brown gravy (we’d expected the creamy white). We ordered a keema kulcha  also later. The boti kabab was quite good, inspite of the bones. Must say, that the presentation of the kababs was quite unique and good. The portions are decent sized, and enough to make you feel full, but not bloated.

    There are about a dozen dessert options, mostly North Indian, but had custard and ice cream too. It had a couple of items which I havent seen earlier – gud roti and mal pura (malpua, i had thought). We asked for the latter, but it wasn’t available. So we settled for the regular gajar ka halwa, which was reasonably good.

    All of the above lefts us lighter by just less than Rs. 750. Though the food was decent, the service could’ve been better. The food doesn’t take much time, but the post meal stuff – finger bowls, billing could’ve been much faster.

    Saffron, #5, 1st Floor, 1st B Main, 1st Block, Jakkasandra extension, Koramangala. Ph: 41317579/41468178

    Menu on Zomato