Back to my roots.... one day

December 7, 1992 – 11.30am, just after short recess, my class teacher asked me to pack my bag, and escorted me to the foyer coordinator’s office; my mother had come to collect me from school. She was panicking, and before I knew it we were rushing home.

Earlier, mum had been driving my 87 year old paternal grandfather, Pitaji, to my Uncle’s home in South Bombay for his birthday that day. They encountered a naka bandi en route, in Mahim, a predominantly Muslim area of Bombay. Cars ahead of them were frantically turning back in an attempt to escape the stone pelting. Babri Masjid (the mosque of Babur) had been demolished the previous day, and communal riots had broken out in Bombay. My father was in New Bombay on work that day, and didn’t return until a week later, when the riots had subsided.

Those next few days, Pitaji was visibly disturbed. “I haven’t seen this kind of tension since the Partition”. 47 years ago, he had abandoned his home, Narain Niwas, and all his belongings, in Karachi, and ridden his last and most uncomfortable train ride to ‘this side of the border’ along with his wife and seven sons.

Until then, the Partition was only a chapter in the history books. Now, it was real. It was when I saw the change in Pitaji’s otherwise composed demeanour that I realised how profound an impact the Partition had had on peoples’ lives. The life that followed couldn’t have been better, but the memories of that day were deeply embedded. Suddenly, there was more to my lineage than ‘my father was born in Karachi and my grandparents migrated to India during the Partition’. Suddenly, there was a curiosity about the life that they had led on the other side.

Growing up, I listened with amazement as my mother told me stories about the India-Pakistan wars. Days on end, they’d be tucked into their homes, all windows covered with newspaper to block off any light or signs of habitation, and hear sounds of military aircrafts hovering outside.

But there were more pleasant things that also touched my life. Listening to my mum’s favourite Nazia Hassan song Disco Deewane as a toddler in the early 1980s, watching pirated video tapes of the Pakistani play Dhoop Kinaray with my mum’s Sindhi friend, watching in awe as Imran Khan accepted the 1992 World Cup, listening to music by the Pakistani pop band Strings in my early teens, and the rage over Zeba Bakhtiar when she starred in Raj Kapoor’s film Henna.

My first direct interaction with real Pakistani people was while studying in Canada. Most of my desi friends at university turned out to be Pakistani. It amazed me how we similar we were, and how comfortably we coexisted, given the ugly history our countries together had shared.

Most of the hikers I met during my early backpacking trips couldn’t stop raving about hiking in the Karakoram Mountains. And that’s when the thought of going to Pakistan crossed my mind for the first time – I could visit the beautiful north, and then make it south to Karachi, where the majority of my family originally came from. Pakistan soon made it to my list of top three countries I want to visit, only to remain a permanent fixture after being completely shot down by first my mother, and subsequently my husband.

Recently, as part of the requirement for my British passport application, I dug out a bit about my family history, and learnt a bit of Pakistani geography and current affairs! There’s more to it than just a Karachi connection. Pitaji was born in Lahore; my maternal grandfather in a town I always thought was fictional, but which actually exists – Dera Ghazi Khan – before moving to Peshawar. My paternal grandmother grew up in Quetta, which, until the day I found out was her birthplace, was a part of Afghanistan in my mind. A day after I discovered the Quetta connection, the city made big news. A series of bomb blasts had killed about a hundred people. Not a day has gone by since that people haven’t died as victims of terror attacks.

Sixty six years on, Narain Niwas still exists. On a street just off I.I. Chundrigar Road, the financial district of Karachi, renamed from McLeod Road (we’re similar even in our obsession with renaming things with a colonial legacy!). The plaque bearing the Narain Niwas name is now covered with another one bearing the name of the current owner, but it still exists.

This month, on the occasion of Pitaji’s 108th birth anniversary, I wish that one day I will go back to where he came from, and one day I will find out first hand is there such a thing as Karachi halwa or Pakistani fine dining. And if all Pakistani restaurants in Pakistan are also called Lahore, or witness what exactly makes Lahore so important on the Pakistani food map. One day, I will add personally acquired Pakistani rupees to complete the collection of ‘British India’ and ‘India’ coins that Pitaji bequeathed me.

A little bit of Israel on my plate

My earliest memory of Israel is back from school in India, when I read about David and Goliath.  Don’t recall what year that was; maybe when I was in Class 4 or 5.  I then did a few pages on the political tension in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of my final year contemporary history project in Class 10.  And then I got a firsthand insight into Judaism at university in Canada, when I saw my friend, Rebecca, observing Sabbath every weekend, and later covering her head, like any married religious Jewish woman does.

I then went backpacking in Europe during my Easter break in my exchange term in England, back in 2002, literally exactly 10 years ago.  A girl I met in my hostel dorm in Paris was visiting from Jerusalem, shopping for her wedding dress, which she said is not so great to shop for in Jerusalem.  When she learned where I was from, I very distinctly remember, she remarked about how lucky she thought I was.  “In Jerusalem, life is so unsafe; you can never be sure when the person standing next to you will just explode”.  (I hope my mother only reads this after I return).  The impact of that statement stuck on over the years, and Israel never made it to my ‘countries I’m dying to go to’ list.  And then I saw pictures from one of my closest friend, Rahul's, holiday in Israel few years ago, and I knew I would go one day. And then I met Israeli classmates and (super cute) professors at Kellogg, and it was only a matter of time when.

The final push (and it didn’t take much to push at all!) was when I saw the Israeli-British chef Ottolenghi’s documentary ‘Jerusalem on a Plate’ on BBC in late 2011.  Literally 7 minutes into the documentary I knew that Israel was going to be one of my next few holidays.  For anyone who hasn't seen it and has even the slightest interest in food or history or culture, this is a must watch!

So here I am, in Heathrow Terminal 5, waiting to board my flight to Tel Aviv, and be transported to a different world.  After seeing Jerusalem on a Plate four times, and picking on my Israeli friends' brains for some time, I will be experiencing it, and everything that the country has to offer, firsthand over the next 12 days :)

Mangalorean magic... on a plate

I’m a bit obsessed with food. It’s flattering when friends who politely deal with my constant food-talk encourage me to write a food blog. I’d rather eat than write a food blog, but as I deal with withdrawal from a gastronomically fulfilling trip to India to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday – the grandmother who introduced me to the food for which I live - I am writing this little snippet.

I’m three quarters Punjabi and quarter Konkani. Yet, there was no direct Punjabi influence from Punjab in the food I grew up eating – my paternal grandmother passed away when my father was still in his teens, my paternal grandfather had lived abroad so much he never demanded Punjabi food, my maternal grandfather had run away from home in Karachi and moved to Bombay, where he later married my Mangalorean grandmother, who knew as much about Punjabi food as I do about Assamese. My mum, the eldest amongst her siblings, had been helping my grandmother cook since she was 10 (as I often heard during her several unsuccessful attempts to awaken my conscience and get me to help her in the kitchen). So while I was growing up, everyday food was the regular vegetarian roti–bhaji–daal with the occasional kadhi chawal or rajma chawal thrown in, but seafood and meat was always cooked Mangalorean style, using authentic recipes straight from the source. Now that I think of it, I can’t really remember seafood being cooked any other way at home, apart from the occasional continental stuff like grilled or baked fish, or fish cakes, but mostly with non-conventional fish like salmon, Vietnamese basa, etc. I don’t usually crave Indian food, and can go for months without eating it, but Mangalorean food is so finger-licking, plate-licking, cooking pot-licking good that I simply cannot imagine a life without it.

My grandmother, now 83, doesn’t cook anymore. But when she did, she was so good at it, I can spend a lifetime just cherishing all the food she ever cooked for me. While growing up, eating granny-cooked Mangalorean food was an event. She’d wake up early in the morning and go to the local Chaar Bangla fish market, get the best pomfret (or paaplet, as they call it in Bombaiya) or make a trip to the ‘broiler’, the local poultry store, where you can choose your live chicken from a cage and see it butchered in front of your eyes. She’d then grate fresh coconut, roast all the whole spices, and grind the mixture to make the curry. Once it was cooked, Shyaama Bai, an old Gujarati lady who looked after my mum and her siblings when they were growing up, would pack the fish (or chicken) curry and all the fantastic aromas emanating from it into a cylindrical steel ‘dabba’, and deliver it to our home. My grandmother would finish all the household chores and then join us at lunchtime. All the women - my mum, her sister (in the summers only), my grandmother, my sister, and I would then sit cross-legged around the pot of fresh fish curry and steamed surti kolam rice, and polish it all off until there were only fingers left to lick. On a good day, this would be accompanied by fried fresh bhangda (mackerel), or pomfret (it’s so good, you can have it fried and in curry form all in one meal), or bombil (Bombay duck), or jhinga (prawns), or shimpli (mussels) cooked in Konkani style.

For someone who swears by Mangalorean food, I am appallingly ignorant about the names of most of the dishes I know. All I know is that when you combine the goodness of whole spices such as coriander seeds, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, black peppercorn, red chillies, etc. with the chastity of freshly grated, sweet, white coconut and the sanguinity of deep ruby red, sour kokum (a variety of mangosteen indigenous to the Konkan region of India) you can create magic. Throw in some fresh Indian Ocean seafood, and you’ll never want to eat seafood any other way.

It’s my dream to travel to Mangalore some day, identify a few veteran cooks, and learn all I can about Mangalorean cuisine from them. While I continue dreaming, I spent my Bombay trip eating all the foods I so immensely miss when I’m away from home. Until I get my next dose of mum made Mangalorean magic, here are some pictures (of food that I ate in Bombay this time) that will help me survive.


Surmai curry (usually made with pomfret)


Rawa fried paaplet


Crab masala


Chicken gassi


Surmai masala


The glorious paaplet

Time Warped in Cuba - II

Sitting in our tree-house in Le Perche region of France as I write this, quite kicked about the fact that I’m back in France for Easter break exactly 9 years after I first backpacked here. Anyone who knows me well knows how besotted I used to be by France, the language, and lots of things French until few years ago. But instead of feeling excited I can (albeit limited) converse with the French in their own language this time, I feel sad I didn’t know a word of Spanish before I went to Cuba. The interesting thing is I find myself ‘si’ing and ‘gracias’ing instead of ‘oui’ing and ‘merci’ing. A good start!

I’ve been spoken to in Spanish before – the first time being in Venice, when a Spanish tourist approached me and asked if I spoke the language – so I wasn’t completely surprised when the flight attendant on Virgin, an English bloke, greeted and directed Hitesh to his seat in English while instantaneously switching to Spanish for me. We were both quite amused then, but little did I know that Spanish would be assumed to be my first language by default for the next 12 days (absolutely no exaggeration there). Each and every place we went to, Hitesh got asked, “Español?? Inglesa??” and the minute he said “No Español” they’d turn to me and give me the “Arre tu to Spanish bolti hi hogi (surely you must speak Spanish)” look couple of times until I somehow managed to convince them, every time, that I don’t. One Cuban woman, and subsequently many other Cubanos, we had a drink with insisted, “Tu similare... fisico... Cubano” (I figured she was trying to say you look Cuban). I must admit I was quite flattered the first few times. Not least ‘cause I think Latin Americans in general, and Cubans in particular, are a cool people. But there isn’t another country in the world where people haven’t guessed my ethnicity, so the truth really is that the Cubans aren’t exposed to as many Indians to be able to tell!

So we landed in Havana after a 10 hour flight, to be greeted by an old Bombay airport style Jose Martí airport; our bags were to arrive on carousel number 5 but after a 30 minute wait we found them doing the rounds on carousel number 8 without any notice; about 15% of the lights in the baggage area didn’t work and of the ones that did 5% flickered; as soon as we exited the airport we were surrounded by loads of touts trying to convince us to ride their taxi. I was already beginning to feel at home in this place.

As a rule, Cuban Immigrations don’t stamp your passport – they only stamp the “Tourist Card” which is somewhat like a visa but not attached to your passport. I don’t know the official reasons behind this, but I’d guess it has something to do with Cuba’s attempt to attract tourists despite it being officially banned for travel by non-Cuban Americans. But how can you come to Cuba and not have any evidence of it on your passport? So I am the proud owner of a passport with a Jose Martí arrival stamp on it. And for anyone who is wondering, I did travel to the US few weeks after returning from Cuba - they didn't seem to care.

We shopped around for a cheap taxi, and agreed to go with the next one as the fares were fairly standard, as I saw with a lot of other things later during our trip. It was only once we got to our taxi that I realized what Hitesh had been talking about when he kept insisting our trip to Cuba would transport us to life back in the 1950s. So here we were, just about to ride a vintage Chevvy from the airport to our hotel and see hundreds of others along the way. Instead of helping the driver load my heavy bag onto the car, I was totally consumed by taking pictures, quite excited about what the next 10 days had in store for me.

We stayed the night at the Oasis Panorama Hotel in Miramar, Havana, for the first night. Rated as #2 on Tripadvisor, but definitely one of those that got truly lucky. It was clean and cheap, and served our purpose of being reasonably close to the airport – just right for us to be back to the airport the next morning.

I still remember the time, back in 2003, when I’d wonder why my Brazilian colleague and good friend, Eduardo, complained about the Caipirinhas and Caipiroscas in Bombay regardless of how good the bar we went to. It took me all these years, and my first Mojito in Cuba, to really understand where he was coming from. My first sip of a Mojito in Havana, and I knew that Mojitos would never be the same again. There was something about Cuban Mojitos (which is where they originate anyway) that I had never experienced before. And I was determined to take some of this magic back home with me.

We started quite early the next morning, to catch our flight to Santiago. So we were back to the domestic portion of Jose Martí, which was completely like a smaller version of the old Delhi domestic airport. More lights didn’t work this time (surprise...surprise), and there were couple of women doing jhaadu katka (cleaning / mopping the floor). The check in staff didn’t speak a word of English so we just presented our passports and tickets and stood there and watched. And we saw something we haven’t even seen in India before. Our passports were inspected and then a sticker with seat numbers 16A and B were stuck on generic boarding passes. We were checked off as passengers number 39 and 40 on a hand-drawn floorplan of the aircraft. We were then handed counterparts of our baggage tags, which had absolutely no reference to our boarding passes or tickets. Simple and easy. No unnecessary involvement of computers. Complete commitment to confidentiality.

We were hoping to fly one of those old Russian military aircrafts one of Hitesh’s colleagues told us she flew – a 10-seater with metal seats, and ropes in place of seat belts. What we got instead was a Russian aircraft (no Boeings or Airbuses in Cuba) that was exactly like GoAir on the inside. Fifteen minutes after we were seated, and 10 minutes before departure, an announcement was made and we saw everyone evacuating so we followed. Twenty minutes after waiting in the bus we were allowed to board again, and almost ready to take off. “So what exactly is going on? Was there a bomb on the flight? Has it been defused? Are Russian aircrafts safe? Am I going to get to Santiago today? Or ever?” There was no way to find out, but an hour and a little bit later we had safely landed in Santiago.

Santiago airport was a bit like the Udaipur airport I remember. Just one carousel, about 20 feet long in total, so you see the same bags circulating about 5 times in 7 minutes. And I saw something I have never seen before. Not in any airport around the world. Two security men were matching the counterpart of your baggage tag with your baggage tag, and collecting it before you exited. So you could only leave with your own bags. No room for manipulation there.

My holiday in Cuba was finally about to begin!

Time warped in Cuba - I

In the few years that I’ve been fortunate to travel abroad, I’ve been to several countries that I’ve liked, some that I’ve really loved, and couple that I want to – and hopefully will, although right now I don’t see practically how – go back to.  No other place has touched my heart like Cuba has (or like Ladakh did few years ago), so this one calls for a blog entry.  And what better way to spend a four and half hour train ride to Aberystwyth (with the noisiest British kids and a bunch of Spice Girls (of Wales?)) than write about the most charming country I have travelled to, one that I have missed very fondly every single day since my return few weeks ago. 

It all started couple of years ago, when we were planning our next group holiday with friends from London.  Fear of risking my student status in the US, especially in light of my consistent poor track record with US Immigrations despite being a citizen of the friendly neighbour up north, kept us from planning this trip back in 2009.  However, after reading a detailed email regarding things to do from our friends, Tarun and Shilpa, we were convinced we’d go there some day.  It wasn’t until Hitesh consistently brought up Cuba as a potential holiday destination that I realized he’s serious about going there.  So “a trip to Cuba before the country’s completely out of Fidel Castro’s hands” it was!

We flew Virgin Atlantic – the only major airline that flies direct from London – to Havana, the country’s capital.  After a night in the Miramar area of Havana, we then took an early morning Air Cubana flight to Santiago de Cuba in the east of the country, and spent the next 10 days discovering the country and driving all the way back west to Havana. 

Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Ignorant as this may sound, all I knew was that the US had imposed an embargo against Cuba, a Caribbean island, in the 1960s, primarily to express its opposition of Cuban human rights violation and communist policies of the government led by Fidel Castro.  “So Fidel Castro is a dictator, and Cuba must be at least as unsafe as I was made to believe Russia is before I went there.  What’s more, it’s still communist, unlike Russia and most of the Eastern European countries I’ve been to, so the people must be quite suppressed and it must be quite an eerie country too”.  And then there was the whole Guantanamo factor.  “God forbid, if anything goes wrong they will just put us in the Guantanamo Bay prison” (Very very ignorant, I know!). I don’t know where I got that from, but I do faintly remember reading somewhere that if the police stop you even for a minor driving offence they will just put you in prison and you can’t fight your way out because they don’t speak English”.  Needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive before I landed in the country, and any mention of Cuba just conjured up images of us arguing fruitlessly with the Cuban police.  Not least ‘cause we were going to be driving around the country and didn’t speak a word of Spanish.  Add to that, as far as we knew, no mobile service provider with any US ties could partner with mobile networks in Cuba, so Vodafone would likely not work (and we don’t count much on O2 anyway), and use of GPS was illegal.  It promised to be quite an adventure!  Oh, and I knew about Cuban cigars – not so much about Cuban rum, which, by the way, was invented there (rum in general, not Cuban rum). 

And an adventure it was, but as they say, little knowledge is dangerous.

Roadtrip in Time Warped Cuba

Ladakh - Sept 2004

I just spent few weeks in the ummmm...Pashmina (or Cashmere!) capital of India (or the world, actually!). Yes, Ladakh, the northernmost part of India. Popularly known as the Last Shangri la, or Little Tibet, Ladakh is so culturally and geographically isolated and different from the rest of India down south of the Himalayas, it hardly feels like a part of India.

I first got officially introduced to Ladakh in World Issues class in high school in Canada, as an example of a place completely untouched by development, where people were so isolated from the outside world that life was still very primitive. And it's one place that I've wanted to visit eversince. I guess things are slightly different there now, tourism is amongst their largest industries, and development is slowly creeping in. But it's still lightyears away from where most, in fact all, of us come from. Things that we almost take for granted, like electricity and water, for instance, are quite scarce there, and it's not unusual to find yourself walking around with a torch at night or going without a shower for days together. Or if you're like one of my trekmates, going without doing laundry for three weeks, that too living out of a backpack!!!!!

Call me ignorant, but I went there expecting that I'd be surrounded by lush alpine mountains, with no dearth of mountain flora. But really, what makes Ladakh unique is its lack thereof. There's mountains alright, but masses of rock. Stark mountains. Savage almost. A landscape shaped completely by wind and snow erosion. Plain stone but yet so beautiful.

Spent a few days in the region's capital, Leh, and the rest of the time out in the mountains. Met lots of interesting people along the way, ate lots of Tibetan and Kashmiri food, tried lots of different kinds of teas typical of the region, and walked endlessly. Ended up being a great refresher course in geography too!

Trekking is a huge part of the tourism industry in Ladakh and in fact, most people go there to trek. I went on a 7-day trek too, only to cut it short on Day 4 – resulting from a combination of some form of acute mountain sickness (yes, such a thing exists!), fever, and the realization that I needed much more than just 5-10 days of working out to conquer the mountains. The highlight of my trip, therefore, was Day 4 of my trek, when I parted from the trek group to get back to Leh. A day full of adventure is not what I thought of it then, but in retrospect that was certainly the most eventful day in my trip. I trekked back about 15-20km to the nearest village in the hills, only to find that it's inhabited by just 5-7 people (much more than most villages in Ladakh, apparently!) and about 90-100 labourers from the notorious Indian state of Bihar. Was kinda scared to be surrounded by a bunch of sunburnt Indian men all drunk on 5-6 pegs of rum each even at 2pm, and the next bus to any form of habitation was only 4 days later. So I hitched a ride on a "tipper", a truck that carries cement and other building materials, to the nearest village, and somehow managed to hitch a ride back all the way to Leh, with my heart in my mouth almost. A day I can't forget for some time for sure!

A lot of you have expressed interest in traveling to Ladakh / India, and if that's what you still want to do, you have my vote for a few weeks in Ladakh. It's definitely an experience of a lifetime...especially if you can go there before the government commences the thousands of road development projects that are planned throughout the region, almost taking away half the charm of being there. I'd highly recommend taking the overland route from Delhi to Leh via Manali too. It's picturesque...and simply breathtaking!