Every now and then, I do a project that I'm really proud of. This is the Good Earth store in Apollo Bunder, Mumbai, created in the shadow of the imposing Taj Mahal Hotel and round the corner from the Gateway of India.
Monday, November 3, 2008
In the shadow of the Taj
Every now and then, I do a project that I'm really proud of. This is the Good Earth store in Apollo Bunder, Mumbai, created in the shadow of the imposing Taj Mahal Hotel and round the corner from the Gateway of India.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
What's in a name?
What would India be without these?
1. “CHILD BEAR AVAILABLE” for chilled beer somewhere in Bihar.
2. “PRAVEEN TOING” for a tow truck company in Bombay. When I helpfully pointed out that the latter word was misspelt, the owner helpfully pointed out that so was the first. His wife’s name is Parveen.
3. “COMA MEDICALS” for a chemist in Vyanad, Kerala
4. “HOTEL DECENT” just in case you thought this Baroda restaurant was a truly posh joint.
5. “FRIZZ DA SALON” as in Frizz venumma da? That one’s Chennai,folks.
1. “CHILD BEAR AVAILABLE” for chilled beer somewhere in Bihar.
2. “PRAVEEN TOING” for a tow truck company in Bombay. When I helpfully pointed out that the latter word was misspelt, the owner helpfully pointed out that so was the first. His wife’s name is Parveen.
3. “COMA MEDICALS” for a chemist in Vyanad, Kerala
4. “HOTEL DECENT” just in case you thought this Baroda restaurant was a truly posh joint.
5. “FRIZZ DA SALON” as in Frizz venumma da? That one’s Chennai,folks.
Now and Forever
One of my all time favourite reads? The “Weddings & Celebrations” section of the New York Times. I began reading it in 1991 when as a freshman at Smith, I took an Anthropology class and needed to write a paper on the language of ritual and its part in defining culture. The paper and the class have long been forgotten but I got hooked to the column.
I missed it when I was back in India in the pre-Internet years but in the last four years, I’ve been a regular visitor to the page on the New York Times website. In terms of width and range of experience, the couples featured here are hard to beat. The celebrated composer Zubin Mehta has been in it twice, one when his ex-wife remarried his brother, and then again when he married his current wife Nancy. Frequently, there are Indian couples, many who appear to be characters out of a Jhumpa Lahiri short story, who share their stories of finding love and the journey to the altar. One of my favourites, the 30 something lawyer from Chicago who avoided blind dates until her friends tricked her into one. She was stood up by the original blind date but ended up having coffee with a young Indian PR executive who had finished up a meeting in the same restaurant and the rest, as they told the Times, is history.
Today, there were two great stories: The two gay men from California rushing to wed before Proposition 8 goes to vote, and at their wedding, their twin daughters, born via a surrogate. There is a fabulous family photograph, a happy gathering of folks against a backdrop of lush green fauna and the two proud grooms, each holding a baby. I almost exited the site when I caught sight of the next story: two gay men in a double wedding with, wait for it, the father of one of the grooms and his partner.
The celebration of love and the belief in commitment doesn’t get more universal than this.
I missed it when I was back in India in the pre-Internet years but in the last four years, I’ve been a regular visitor to the page on the New York Times website. In terms of width and range of experience, the couples featured here are hard to beat. The celebrated composer Zubin Mehta has been in it twice, one when his ex-wife remarried his brother, and then again when he married his current wife Nancy. Frequently, there are Indian couples, many who appear to be characters out of a Jhumpa Lahiri short story, who share their stories of finding love and the journey to the altar. One of my favourites, the 30 something lawyer from Chicago who avoided blind dates until her friends tricked her into one. She was stood up by the original blind date but ended up having coffee with a young Indian PR executive who had finished up a meeting in the same restaurant and the rest, as they told the Times, is history.
Today, there were two great stories: The two gay men from California rushing to wed before Proposition 8 goes to vote, and at their wedding, their twin daughters, born via a surrogate. There is a fabulous family photograph, a happy gathering of folks against a backdrop of lush green fauna and the two proud grooms, each holding a baby. I almost exited the site when I caught sight of the next story: two gay men in a double wedding with, wait for it, the father of one of the grooms and his partner.
The celebration of love and the belief in commitment doesn’t get more universal than this.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Chaiwala
Yesterday I took a trip out to see a potential new project site. Getting there involved some effort. 4 am wake up call, 5 30 am flight through dark, smoggy skies and at the other end, a 3 hour drive to the actual location.
The road from the airport was super smooth; asphalt shining in the early morning sunshine, a snaking tongue that is testament to India’s most economically progressive state, run by a poster boy for communal disharmony. Of course. Such contradictions are accepted with equanimity in India.
We stop at a newly minted “tea shop”, in our country a euphemism for a ramshackle tin shed that sells everything from Iodex balm, batteries, shining strips of shampoo sachets, shoelaces, smudged glass jars with impossibly coloured boiled sweets and strong, milky tea, spiked with ginger, cardamom and a generous fistful of sugar. As we wait, the tea is streamed out in long milky ribbons into faceted clear glasses by a young boy with brown, brown eyes who knows already that school is a place where other children go. The tea shop owner used to be a farmer, tilling the dusty, dry earth to grow enough crop to feed his family for a year, a month, a fortnight – whatever he’s able to rustle up with aging bullocks, contaminated fertilizer and inconsistent rain. He gave it up two years ago when his then fifteen-year-old son trudged into the city barely half an hour away to find a better way for them to live. One month of driving lessons courtesy a friend, two pawned bangles to raise money for a fake drivers license, four bribes and some assorted abuse later, Chintu is a testosterone brimming Baroda taxi driver and an ex-farmer’s son. The teashop is just another feather in his still underage, still too young to do anything legally, cap. And in the Indianised version of the old adage about the horse and the water, not only can you ferry your bleary horses to the tea shop, you can also address both ends of the supply chain as the taxi meter ticks away.
The road from the airport was super smooth; asphalt shining in the early morning sunshine, a snaking tongue that is testament to India’s most economically progressive state, run by a poster boy for communal disharmony. Of course. Such contradictions are accepted with equanimity in India.
We stop at a newly minted “tea shop”, in our country a euphemism for a ramshackle tin shed that sells everything from Iodex balm, batteries, shining strips of shampoo sachets, shoelaces, smudged glass jars with impossibly coloured boiled sweets and strong, milky tea, spiked with ginger, cardamom and a generous fistful of sugar. As we wait, the tea is streamed out in long milky ribbons into faceted clear glasses by a young boy with brown, brown eyes who knows already that school is a place where other children go. The tea shop owner used to be a farmer, tilling the dusty, dry earth to grow enough crop to feed his family for a year, a month, a fortnight – whatever he’s able to rustle up with aging bullocks, contaminated fertilizer and inconsistent rain. He gave it up two years ago when his then fifteen-year-old son trudged into the city barely half an hour away to find a better way for them to live. One month of driving lessons courtesy a friend, two pawned bangles to raise money for a fake drivers license, four bribes and some assorted abuse later, Chintu is a testosterone brimming Baroda taxi driver and an ex-farmer’s son. The teashop is just another feather in his still underage, still too young to do anything legally, cap. And in the Indianised version of the old adage about the horse and the water, not only can you ferry your bleary horses to the tea shop, you can also address both ends of the supply chain as the taxi meter ticks away.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The First One
Blogs seemed to be popping up in all my conversations lately. A friend I recently reconnected with on Facebook said that she has been planning forever to start one. Another friend referred me to his blog when I asked how he was doing. My daily read, Holly Becker’s decor8 has moved from being a blog to a full fledged website. And suddenly it felt right for me to do it too. So here I am, having a Carrie Bradshaw moment on my Mac, writing my first blog. And pretending, that for the moment, I too have killer abs, a walk-in closet and the perfect punchline.
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