Minkey Business

Because the distractions, or should I say attractions, of home prove just too tempting, I’m writing this at a coffee shop an appropriate distance away from our house. The voluntary commute does me good; to the coffee shop to set me in a working mood, and away from it enough of a task that I’m driven to spend at least a couple of fruitful hours.

I’ve picked a place in Pasadena that goes by the name Intelligentsia. It is everything the moniker suggests—industrial-chic décor with exposed piping; bare brickwork here, a deep blue wall there, dark wood everywhere, all of it reclaimed from something grand and imposing. There are those underpowered tungsten bulbs that are all the rage—filaments barely aglow. Water is stored in laboratory glassware, an aesthetic that extends to the coffee making, which is done the “cupping” way, or the manner in which coffee experts taste the product. A paper filter in a funnel standing over a beaker gets swirled with hot water to wash away residues and warm everything that will come in contact with the coffee. The beans are ground to order, added to the filter, and hot water at a precise temperature is poured over the grounds. As the mixture foams, the pourer waits, and then pours the water in circular patterns first one way then another. The entire apparatus sits on a digital scale to ensure she always pours the identical volume of water each time.

The resultant coffee tastes very little like coffee. Well, at least the coffee I know. First of all, it’s not particularly hot, and apparently that’s intentional. Rather than being the dark tasting, largely chocolaty drink I’m used to, this coffee is startlingly complex, with some darker tones, but is mainly bright and fruity, even tangy. For the first time, I thought of coffee as a berry drink, and not as a roasted seed drink.

I’m not sure I liked it.

But it wasn’t my first time there and this isn’t a cheap cup of coffee, so was I merely here to disprove any suggestion that the name of the shop reflected the kind of people who patronised it? Not really. A few days ago, I read an article about one of the suppliers to the chain, an El Salvadorian coffee producer who goes through extraordinary lengths to ensure that her coffee beans are world class. It takes manic obsessiveness, a lot of learning, as well as a lot of hard work, so I thought I owed it to her to go back to Intelligentsia and sample, if not her coffee, at least someone’s epicurean version of the stuff.

According to Intelligentsia , the coffee I chose is from a mid-sized family farm in Columbia called La Loma. Apparently, the cup I’m drinking can be described thusly: “Bursting with red fruits, La Loma greets you with red raspberry, cranberry cocktail and notes of sherbert. The acidity of citrus fruit is in perfect balance with the juicy mouthfeel. The finish brings a pleasant tanginess and notes of creme brulee.”

Writing alongside this performance in a cup, it struck me that the requirements of a good beverage were similar to the demands of, say a good novel; that there be sufficient complexity within, with smooth segues from one idea (or flavour) to another, and that there be an overarching theme and sense of journey. If each sip was a scene, the cooling cup was becoming a different scene every minute. The tanginess was now dangerously close to sourness and I think the show was over.

I’m still not sure I liked it.

First published in Gulf News, January 24, 2012

“Don’t waste your food,” says the parent sternly. “There are children starving in [favourite impoverished area of choice.]”

And so the child develops a healthy guilt about wasting food, but learns that the solution, or rather antidote, to waste is to Dyson everything up on his or her plate. (Hey, it’s time we updated “Hoover”.)

Overeating when food is abundant works well in difficult times. Stuffing oneself through a season of plenty, knowing that winter or a dry season is imminent is a good idea. Or eating oneself silly after a hunt, knowing that downing animals is difficult and dangerous, and may not occur again for a while. But today, when few of us have gone even a single a day without food, cleaning up one’s plate may not be the ideal choice to make.

After all, you’re now eating just because it’s there, so the enjoyment’s gone. And because you’re already full, you can be sure that what you’re eating is either going to be excreted, or stored as excess fat. The eater then either lives with that fat at risk of expensive diseases, or pays more money and buys more stuff—dumbbells, running shoes, bicycles—to burn that fat away.

I’m certainly not saying that food must be blithely pushed away, without a care for where it goes. There are other solutions. One may be to find what the restaurant does with extra food—it often gets given to the poor. Another is to never be embarrassed to take away food, no matter how little. (America wastes a lot of food, but it’s also a country where no one looks at you strangely when you want to take leftovers away. You paid for it, it’s yours. The only problem is that you get Styrofoam to take it away in.) The third, perhaps best, solution is to order carefully and not feel you have to overload the table, either to impress others or to make yourself feel you’re treating yourself well.

It was a paediatrician cousin’s observation about baby feeding habits in India that first got me thinking about this, and relooking at the idea that not eating is wasting. “Parents overfeed their babies,” she said. Even after the baby has had enough and turned his or her face away, parents insist they finish everything in the bowl. At this point it becomes force-feeding, a process that’s not fun for either parent or child. As this repeats itself, the child learns to ignore or override the sensations of satiety, and learns to overeat at every meal.

That cuts astutely to the heart of the eating habits of way too many people I know. Add to this the drilled-in guilt over food wastage, and you have the person who keeps eating at the table long after everyone is finished, taking the last kebabs or asking other people if they’re going to finish what’s on their plates. “There’s just two bites left,” they’ve heard all their lives. “Just finish it.”

I recently had a meal with someone who has a great sense of portion control and is much more sensible with ordering than I am. But all of this vanished when confronted with the possibility of waste. He was so full that he was sweating and looked acutely distressed, and yet kept mumbling, “Mustn’t waste food, mustn’t waste food” as he struggled to shovel in the last morsels on his plate. After the meal he looked ill and uncomfortable, and for a while wondered whether he’d be sick.

He didn’t throw away any food that day, but would you say he didn’t waste any?

First published in Gulf News, January 10, 2012

This ride report was written on a cycling forum for cyclists, but is not very technical. So if you’re interested in seeing what it’s like to ride in a weekend “hammerfest”, click to read my report on the Montrose Ride.

Very early on the morning of Dec 1, I was wakened by a strange moaning. As I surfaced, I heard the continuous hissing of foliage and then registered the police and fire sirens. (It’s amazing how you learn to filter out a sound that loud and distinctive.) I felt the house shudder and then my waking brain went, “Wind!” followed by “Clothes!”

I rushed out into the early morning dark, hurting my back a little as I wrestled the heavy clothes rack into the the house. Looking out, I marvelled at how the trees were bent over, with occasional gusts seeming as if they’d lift the entire house. I later learned some of these gusts were over 100 km/h—hurricane force. The power came and went a few times, and I got back to bed to fall into an uneasy sleep, only to keep waking, hearing more and more sounds from outside. The sirens were near continuous, things were blowing off our roof, and the hollow screams of gusts got higher and higher pitched as the wind picked up speed.

We were experiencing an unusually bad bout of the seasonal Santa Ana winds, the ones that are known for fanning the region’s infamous wild fires. They have a dusty, gritty dryness to them that sets your throat, and indeed the rest of you, on edge. They are usually hot, and quite suddenly raise the temperature of otherwise cool evenings to uncomfortable levels. That sound they make and the sudden forceful gusts add to the unease, and it’s no wonder they are also known as the “devil wind”.

When some objects came crashing into our bedroom windows, not breaking them, but terrifying us, we had enough and just got out of bed. It was 3.30 in the morning, but we were due to get up in less than a couple of hours anyway. My wife had an early morning flight to catch, but we could not imagine a plane taking off in this weather. While LAX reported power cuts and closed runways, the airline blithely claimed all flights were leaving as scheduled. After a long time on the phone and checking around on the web, we finally moved the flight to the afternoon. Not long after, the sun rose and the wind died out. We looked at each other in the sudden silence, suddenly wondering whether we had overreacted.

Later that day driving around our neighbourhood, we clearly hadn’t. There were fallen branches and downed trees everywhere. Many of them had hit houses and cars. In fact, the house just two doors down had a tree fall on it, luckily it didn’t cause too much damage. Most of the traffic lights weren’t working, and wouldn’t work for the next few days. Some areas wouldn’t have power for a week.

As I write this, there’s the occasional evil moaning outside, and the forecast says we’re in for some more wind. I’m surprised by how nervous that makes me, and I think how it must be for people, especially children, who’ve had trees fall on their houses or otherwise had property damaged (there were few, if any, directly related serious injuries).

For us, the lasting damage from the storm was that our recycling bin vanished that night, never to return. I’ll take it as a sign that Mother Nature has an ironic sense of humour, because frankly, she really scared us that night.

(*The title of this piece is taken from a Raymond Chandler story of the same name whose oft-quoted opening describes the effect the Santa Ana winds have on the residents of the Los Angeles area.)

First published in Gulf News, December 29, 2011

Every time I visit India from the U.S., I meet a friend who asks me the same question: “Why are you wasting your time in that capitalist country? Come back.” Without fail, in those very words.

Back in America, whenever we visit a national park, I remember this person and her question. I silently answer her by looking around and thinking, “This is what we’re doing here.”

We’ve been to only 13 of the 58 national parks, but I think it’s safe to say it’s unlikely you’ll visit one and not be stunned into silence. The scale, range and beauty of the landscapes make for a life-changing experience. We marvel at how they give us views of both geological eternities, alternating with the feeling that the earth was made just for us, just that morning. Capitalism, politics, and pretty much anything thus pitifully human is left behind at the entrance gates, where a ranger collects what has to be one of the most value-for-money fees on this planet.

Because we have no turkey-eating obligations, we’ve spent every Thanksgiving weekend out at a park somewhere. It’s interesting then, that I always remember my friend on the day she’d perhaps most use as support of her point of view: Black Friday.

Thanksgiving is on the fourth Thursday of November, and the day after has recently become known for its crazy sales at big stores across the country. Limited numbers of high-ticket items, notably electronics, are deeply discounted, and if you’re in the market for a large-screen TV, a games console, computer, or Blu-Ray player, this is probably the best day for you. (I say ‘probably’ because many sales-watchers have commented there are actually better times of the year to buy stuff.)

The results are both predictable and surprising. People queue outside stores for hours, there are mad rushes when doors open, as well as fights and free-for-alls. This year’s highlight was the woman who pepper-sprayed other shoppers during a rush for discounted games consoles at Wal-Mart. In 2008, a Wal-Mart employee was killed by a stampede when people broke into the store before it could open.

Still, it’s hard to hear someone sum up and dismiss a country, any country, with just one word. I’m pretty sure my friend would be quite offended if someone did the same to her home, asking her why she lived in a “corrupt” or a “dirty” nation. Though corruption and general filth are huge problems in India, to see life there as solely defined by them is so narrow and small-minded—yet she has no trouble in applying similar thinking to other nations.

Our recent trip over Thanksgiving weekend was to south eastern Utah. While wandering around Arches National Park, we ran into a photographer also travelling from Los Angeles. We got talking and the subject came around to being glad to be away from the city and its sales signs. How funny it was that both parties returned to Los Angeles (incidentally, the city of the pepper spray incident) in need of Black Fridays themselves. We left a new compact digital camera in our rental car after returning it, and it disappeared in the ten minutes it took us to realise it was missing. The photographer was much worse off. He dropped a $5,000 DLSR and lens from a landscape feature, smashing it on rocks 40 feet below.

It’s with some guilt (and to the echo of my friend’s question) that I note we’re in the best place in the world to replace them at cut-throat prices.

First published in Gulf News, December 13, 2011

Take some days off from driving on the freeway, and suddenly you see it for the suicidal lunacy it is. It’s hard to imagine that a world with vaccinations and safety regulations also lets its people strap themselves and their children into wheeled metal missiles that they then take for a little hurtle, along with hundreds of other equally whimsical pilots.

I think we forget that probably the most dangerous thing in our lives is done on a voluntary and daily basis: screaming down a multi-lane road that every so often slows and becomes safe only because one or more of its denizens has come to a sudden, metal-crunching stop. Or if there are enough maniacs to be had, something called “rush hour” takes over, and almost like natural self-regulation, the freeway becomes one of the safest places to be.

The inattention of drivers at high speeds on Southern California’s freeways is terrifying, and sometimes downright baffling. You’re on a largely empty six-lane road, driving at the speed limit on the second-slowest lane, and a car comes racing up behind you, sitting impatiently just off your bumper before whipping around and passing with a snarl. The driver could see you from 5,000 feet away, and yet must come within 3 before making any corrective manoeuvres.

And then there’s how cars become mobile extensions of homes. People eat and drink and lounge with their feet sticking out of the windows. Recently, my wife was in rush hour traffic nervously eyeing the young woman behind her who was totally absorbed in flossing her teeth. We once saw someone with papers propped up on the steering wheel, reading them in between occasional glances at the road. And not in rush hour, I might add—we were at freeway speeds.

A lot of this behaviour is possible because most cars on the road have automatic transmissions. The most obvious reason is the driver’s gearshift hand is freed for the regular transmission of Big Gulp from cupholder to lips. But we believe there’s more to it than that. Automatics distance you from the workings of your car. Engine braking for example—that all-important tool of smooth and safe driving—is but a blurry ghost in an automatic. By simplifying the constant dance among clutch pedal, gear shift, accelerator and brake, the relationship with the vehicle becomes less invested. (In Zen-talk, you are far less likely to become one with your car, and I don’t mean a situation that requires the Jaws of Life.)

I don’t normally get car sick, but sitting with one of these “distanced” drivers quickly makes me queasy. They treat the two foot pedals as on/off switches rather than infinitely variable ones—slapping on the accelerator and causing the car to violently sit, and definitely not employing “taper braking”; rather, they speed right up to the stop and slam down on the pedal, flinging everyone forward. In any kind of car, making smoothness the goal immediately results in better control and anticipation. Manual transmission learners who have to master clutch control, have smoothness drilled into their heads from the start—they can’t get the car moving without it.

These days, my life keeps me largely off the freeways. And so, when I do get on one, the reality of what I’m doing suddenly hits me. My wife, who used to accuse me of driving too fast, now says I drive “like an old lady”. She’s probably not talking about the old lady behind us… the one who’s eating chips, doing her nail polish and watching TV on her iPhone as she drives at 120km/h eight inches away from our rear bumper.

First published in Gulf News, November 29, 2011

Because of a combination of my wife’s current work schedule, my new group cycling schedule and some well-placed jet-lag, ours is now an extreme morning household. One of us (not me) gets up at 4am to dress, eat a biscuit and go for a run in the early morning dark. The other one gets up to drink tea at about 5am, and on days when there’s a bike ride, we’re both out of the house by 5:50, she heading for work, me heading to where the group meets to hit the hills of Griffith Park, Los Angeles.

Having never been a morning person, I’ve always felt as if I’m missing out on something by sleeping in. After all, popular culture idolises getting up early, pronouncing it the route to health, wealth and something else very good, and often suggesting that late rising is the surest sign of laziness there is; even if the late riser was up working for most of the night.

There was a short time as a child when I was an early riser–going out into our farm at dawn for some birdwatching and to play with the dogs. (I’m talking here about voluntary early rising, not being drummed out of bed to get to school.) But those days soon ended, and I became what I considered the norm–the person who dragged himself out of bed to the insistence of an alarm, if not kicking and screaming, at least mumbling and grumbling, and feeling as if the fogginess outside has permeated his very brain. I decided then that sunrises were vastly overrated (though still had the niggling feeling I was missing a free daily spectacle), and there is something particularly miserable about early morning cold, contrasting as it does with one of the best things in life–a warm, comfortable bed.

That cold still holds its horrors, but early mornings themselves are no longer as inaccessible. Part of the reason is that I sleep a lot better than I used to, and wake up a lot faster. The fogginess that would take an hour or more to dissipate is now an occasional mistiness that clears in five minutes. But more than that, there’s the knowledge that there are few things more joyful than surprising the sun by being out and active when it first peeks in on you–on having it warm gloved fingers as you speed up your favourite climb, rather than it insinuating itself into your room, forcing you to rebuff it with a well-placed pillow.

What’s a little depressing though, is how quickly the beauty fades and the light (to your golden-hour primed eyes) quickly becomes flat and over-bright, turning the magic into just another day. As you head home from the ride, the traffic is out, the bus stops are full, the dust, fumes and aggression have started to rise. The feeling of having the world, at least a little bit to yourself, is a dream for it’s now just another day.

Strangely, in a culture that looks down on waking up late, going to sleep early is considered laughable. Saying you’re in bed by 9pm sounds more like an admission rather than statement of fact. It gives one the air of a person who has no life, a person who is all work and no play.

What will get you brownie points, it seems, is “late to bed and early to rise”, almost as if sleep itself is something wasteful; never mind that you stay up until 1am just to watch reruns on TV.

First published in Gulf News, November 15, 2011

On a recent trip from the US, I carried a bicycle with me and rode it a lot in my hometown of Bangalore. This provoked all kinds of reactions, ranging from resigned or amused acceptance (close friends and family); to startled interest (most people); to outright horror (whoever’s left). Very often though, it was a complex, ever-shifting combination of these.

The most frequently asked question was a wide-eyed, “What’s it like riding in this traffic?” Bangalore, as I’ve mentioned before, is obsessed with its traffic, or rather the horrific nature of it. To ride out on a non-motorised two-wheeler is looked at as akin to covering yourself in meat paste and going for a jog in the savannah.

Well it is in a way; in that it’s a huge, exciting rush. It’s like a high-speed game of 3D chess, albeit one in which ‘checkmate’ will really hurt. The biggest thrill comes from how slow-moving Indian traffic is. Sprint from a light and you’ll find that except for a couple of speed demons, you’re way ahead of everyone. Ride spiritedly and you’ll find you’re passing trucks, autorickshaws, scooterists and those motorcyclists who mysteriously never exceed 35km/h. Plus, unlike everyone else on the road, you don’t have to slow down for speed bumps.

There are two secrets to staying safe. One is to match or slightly exceed the pace of the traffic (this might require some physical conditioning), and the other is to aggressively claim your space. A cyclist who shows even the slightest nervousness or hesitation will get eaten alive.

It’s all very exciting, but there’s one big downside. The fumes. It’s true that I got from my home to town in 45 minutes, about half an hour faster than if I was in a car, but at the end of it my airways were inflamed and burning. Luckily there are masks available with activated charcoal filters that help alleviate this.

Another potential downside is that you get to your destination one big sweaty mess—so unless you’re meeting other cyclists, you have to find somewhere to cool down and change. Hosts tend to get a little nervous when you arrived red-faced and steaming at their door. (You should know that they also sweetly, though rather hesitantly, offer the use of their shower.) I reassure them by saying I just need to wash up, and produce a towel, a change of clothes and most importantly, a can of deodorant.

Right now, traffic in Bangalore is so bad, and such a potential damper on living, that needing a mask and a shower might become sacrifices more of us are willing to make. The biggest relief of bicycling across a city is that you can keep moving. And if every gap ahead is plugged, as sometimes happens, you can always get onto the pavement and turn into a pedestrian.

This is more liberating than you might expect, because suddenly you feel in control again. The helplessness you feel when stuck in a car in a jam is gone. Your time and movements are under your charge again, and you set the pace rather than have it set for you. The city becomes yours once more, and in some small but significant way, your life becomes a little bit more your own. This is one of the many reasons riding a bicycle is so addictive, and why its adherents are so fanatical. And as more people start to ride, the kinder the city will get to and for cyclists, causing more people to ride and so on.

Until then though, please don’t ever forget to pack that deodorant spray.

First published in Gulf News, November 1, 2011

We were sitting on a balcony in Cox Town, Bangalore, chatting quietly over a cup of morning tea. The party last night had been fun—so much fun that I had stayed the night rather than drive home after.

As we talked, I heard the familiar call of a street vendor, and I peeped over to see a man pushing a bicycle, selling string hoppers and a rice-flour dish called putte, which are like cylindrical idlis. I ran down the stairs and bought some, and we warmed up the previous night’s mutton stew to go with it for an absolutely delicious breakfast. My friend V. was visibly reluctant to go to work, so we dubbed it a Good Day and just put on some more coffee.

And this, my friends, is the sort of thing that will bring me back and keep me in maddening India. This is home, and most of my friends are old friends, good friends, or friends of old friends, good friends. There’s a way in which houses are thrown open to guests that I just don’t find elsewhere, and in this still small-at-heart town, there’s such a sense of shared histories, and the sense of community that comes from an awareness of a shared future.

Some people who’ve left the country find this sort of thing suffocating, and there’s often a feeling that the people they’ve left behind haven’t moved on. This is clearly untrue. Every time I come back to India, I’m struck by the openness of my peer group to global influences, and the incredible detail of everybody’s cultural knowledge. Even if they don’t travel a lot, or haven’t lived abroad, the whole country has moved on, carrying everybody with it.

More important though is that “moving on”, whatever it means, is not necessarily a good or desirable thing. Why would you want to move on from the old Bangalore scene in Cox Town I just described? Why move on from the qualities of taking and making time, and not being savaged by one’s career like a rat in terrier jaws? Why expand from a small, local footprint, from shying from the packaged, the convenient and the compressed?

As much as I bemoan the arrival of the big box stores and industrial agriculture, I see so many moves in the right direction. People are making increasingly kind and interesting choices, from something as simple as apartment complexes segregating garbage, to people leaving corporate lives to start organic farms and B&B’s.

Sure, I still worry about coming back. None of what I’ve said changes the brutality and carelessness that characterises city life here. It doesn’t suck the pollutants from my lungs. But there’s much to be
excited about and hopeful for. Indians who don’t live in India are often accused of sporting two attitudes, each at odds with the other. One is of romanticising India and imagining a haven that died 20 years ago, and the other is that of criminalising the country, dubbing it unlivable in, and not worth returning to.

The truth is somewhere in between, but like a human seeking a state of balance, it isn’t static. It oscillates from one extreme to another, and it must accept the very real possibility of a fall. As my trip here winds to a close I’m not thinking about the traffic or the missing green spaces or the dug-up roads. My mind’s on the great laughs, the hearty dinners, the generous invitations and, most of all, the familiar rhythms. Balance, I’m starting to think, is overrated. Life is just one foothold after another.

First published in Gulf News, October 18, 2011

So we went to California and became hermits.

Given that people travel to India to “find themselves”, I suppose if there’s anywhere Indians can go to contemplate their umbilici, it would be the Golden State. Where exactly in California would be up for debate, but no doubt the San Franciscans will assume it should be Northern California. (This term is especially strange given that San Francisco is barely halfway up this western state.) But for us, our journey of discovery happens in the southern half of the state—the bit that people love to hate how much they love.

Exposed to all the wonders of Los Angeles—the shows, the concerts, the screenings, the festivals—we seem to have found that our true selves are happiest planted next to each other in front of the TV, stuffing our faces with take-out food. I know what you’re thinking: this sort of thing can be done anywhere in the world and at any age. Why are we wasting our younger years in one of the most exciting cities on earth?

Well frankly, that bit about being able to do it anywhere in the world? Not true. India is where we’ll eventually be, and it is, after all, home. With home comes family, old friends, weddings, birthdays, parties, dinners, assorted events one wants to attend, and many more one does not but has to. In our first stint in India as a couple, we never had a weekend to ourselves in one and a half years. There were Saturdays when, I do not joke, we had four things to do in one evening. And we’re the less social among our friends.

Things in LA are very different. We have a small but warm group of friends who are so busy and so spread out that we meet only every few weeks, usually with many days’ notice. In between, the wife and I have our lives almost completely to ourselves. We love it, but I have to admit there are some weekends that get a little too quiet. The friends haven’t been given notice and are all doing their own thing. We haven’t left the house by late morning, so inertia has set in. The Clean One has started enumerating so many chores that sometimes I think she makes some up just out of spite. I mean, do humans really need to pick things up off the floor more than once every few months?

After a few months of this, I start to yearn for the bustle that’s social life in India. On my first couple of weeks in Bangalore, I feel exhilarated. So many old friends, so many lovely dinners with family, immediate and extended, so many impromptu coffees. But after a while, it starts to feel as if I’ve chosen to commute by roller coaster. Days seem to run into each other, and downtime is always tinged with guilt and the feeling you need to be somewhere else. Sometimes, an event is an intrusion not because you are expected to go, but because if you don’t, you’d feel that you’re missing out on a whole lot of fun.

So what’s the solution? Many Indian novelists seem to found one. In so many bios I’ve read a line that goes something like: “Amitav Bannerjee spends his time between New York and Calcutta.”

Just like that. They make it sound so easy, it quite makes you want to slap someone. I’m sure the itinerant life has its own set of yearnings, but just imagine the luxury of having two places in the world you can truly call home.

First published in Gulf News, October 4, 2011