TV that’s lost the plot

Tired of watching reruns of American sitcoms on my cable network, I recently switched services and chose the deluxe package.

After 24 hours of waiting for the feed to be beamed into my living room, I was delighted when the Indian television stations started playing. There were 24-hour non-stop old and new Bollywood music videos, Indian reality television shows, sitcoms, movies and, the best part, news from India and Pakistan and a host of other countries whose languages I could not properly follow.

I caught up on the fact that this year, the shortage of rice was so bad in India that the government was importing it for the first time in 20 years. That wheat was going to be subsidised but not lentils. That the production of sugar was at an all-time low and the government was monitoring certain factories to prevent stockpiling. It was better than hearing the American stations debating about how low Obama had bowed in front of the Japanese emperor. I could relate to this kind of current affairs.

Of course, the music videos were a treat. I started to make a mental note of all the upcoming releases. There were the oldies too, an ode to my aunts and my mother and their hairstyles.

I even watched one of those 1990s Bollywood films, which brought back memories of friends laughing at the ridiculous lyrics and plot. It was Hero No 1 with Govinda, the original star of satire, dressed in orange and blue. He was considered passé when the film was released, but after a decade he was retro-cool again. It made me cherish the memories of a time gone by.

But the reality shows and sitcoms do not bear watching. Is this what opening up the market has done to Indian entertainment? There was angst, family drama, even comedy, but none of them seemed to resonate with what Indian life is like any more. AR Rahman, the Oscar-winning music director, told me during his recent visit to Abu Dhabi for the Middle East International Film Festival that bad plots were no longer tolerated in Indian films because of what the Indian audience was being exposed to, thanks to globalisation. Instead, he said, “those plots were playing out on television”. He was spot on. It was like a bad Eighties Bollywood film playing out in 13 parts on TV, while the recent films explored more relevant social topics such as terrorism and the recession.

Which all goes to say that there is very little on television, and a lot more promise in the movie theatres.

Lives changed in wake of terror

It was supposed to be a fine dining experience, sitting by the pool of the Taj Residency in Bangalore, sipping a cocktail alongside well-heeled Indians and foreign tourists, enjoying the cool evening breeze, music playing in the background. But it felt eerie.

A year ago, terrorists had come barging through the pool area at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, shooting indiscriminately at guests, and leaving in their wake upturned tables and chairs, and among them, the dead lying in pools of blood.

From one corner lay the partially hidden body of a man, probably a foreigner, in his white linen pants and blue shirt, one sandal by his side. I remember because I had scanned the photographs in print and online with dread, looking to identify friends. A group of them had planned to be at the Taj that night, but had been stuck in traffic and never made it to the hotel.

Across six locations, three days and with almost 200 dead, a nation held its breath waiting for it all to end. It was one of the most spectacular terrorist attacks in the country’s recent history.

It wasn’t an anonymous blast in a crowded market place or explosions on a crowded train. If the terrorists were looking to make an impact, they certainly did. This was brash, suicidal and prolonged.

With their targets – whether middle class Indians at the rail terminal, affluent Indians in hotels or Jews in the Mumbai Chabad House – they made sure the world noticed as well.

When the financial capital of India, the linchpin of its surging global economic power, is under siege, it is hard not to feel especially helpless. Or outraged. Perhaps it finally drove home the futility of pointing fingers and playing the blame game with neighbouring countries; it was past the time to look inwards for a solution. The attack on Mumbai single-handedly changed how people viewed their own safety within the country.

Now, the common man’s security was on everyone’s mind, including the politicians. Hubs of anti-terror elite forces have been set up across the country so that if there were to be another attack, a city of beleaguered people would not have to wait for paperwork to be cleared in New Delhi before a plane load of commandos could take off from a distant base.

Since India’s version of 9/11, now popularly referred to as 26/11, sweeping security changes have also affected daily life.

You can no longer enter a hotel, mall, or temple without being frisked or “bleeped” through a metal detector or having your bags scanned.

In urban centres or small towns, anyone who can has invested in some form of security service. If there is an asset to be protected, it is now likely to be protected by anti-blast walls, private security with AK-47s, or surveillance cameras.

You can no longer take a romantic stroll down India Gate in New Delhi, buy a pack of roasted peanuts and watch the setting sun. Instead, you must watch it all from behind barricades set up two kilometres away, while a policeman impatiently taps the bonnet of your car and tells you to drive along. And when you bow your head at a temple in Hyderabad, you can also pay your respects to that soldier with a large automatic weapon who stands idly beside the deity.

Before you enter the Taj Mahal in Agra, they take away your cigarettes and lighters and inspect the batteries of your camera. Now, when a nation of a billion moves, it does so with even more hiccups than typically occupy daily life.

A year has passed and talk about the immediate shock and horror has died down. Instead, at dinner parties, friends speak of how they are more patient while waiting for security checks yet complain about the shoddy protocol in most places.

What was put in place with great zeal a year ago is already falling apart (consider the wear and tear when a few million pass through your checkpoints each month). Some checks are merely symbolic while others are flimsy security drills.

My college-bound nephew in Pune called the security arrangements in his city “old, casual and careless”.

But terrorism is nothing new in India. There were other attacks before Mumbai that rattled the nerves of my friends and family and made them pick up their phones and call loved ones to make sure they were not caught in a bomb blast.

Beginning in May 2008 there was a surge in terrorist strikes, with a series of blasts in the cities of Guwahati, Jaipur, Delhi, and Ahmedabad. This year has seen attacks in Kashmir, Assam and, by Maoists, in the heartland of India. And no one is convinced by the new security arrangements.

Yet, the country carries on, broken scanners and all.

Enough said? Probably not

After reflecting last week on the one-year anniversary of the Mumbai attacks that killed 172 people, including the nine who laid siege to the city for three days, I wonder if enough has been said and done.

Not quite, say some of my friends. While some have grown more patient with the security procedures that have sprung up in even the smallest towns, others say the measures are merely symbolic and will not prevent another attack.

Some of my friends lost loved ones. Some survived to tell of their harrowing experiences. And then there is us, the friends and family who live far away and were glued to our television sets and laptops during those three days, redialling telephones at a frantic and frustrated pace in order to reach those we knew in Mumbai.

I was in Chennai last year when I woke to the scenes of mayhem on television. At first, like the rest of the country, I thought it would end in a few hours. I was supposed to take the evening flight back to Abu Dhabi to celebrate American Thanksgiving with friends. But I was asked to book a flight to New Delhi to help support The National’s coverage. In the capital, the bigwigs held impromptu press conferences. Ministers struggled to explain the ongoing madness, while embassies and the Taj hotel franchise were on high alert. And, of course, the army scrambled to send elite forces to Mumbai.

As I drove from the airport to the nearest hotel to drop off my bags, I felt the sense of dread that had filled Delhi. The city was not a stranger to terrorist attacks, but they had mostly been bomb blasts.

This was new. Never before had the nation stood at standstill and waited for an attack to be over. It made everyone vulnerable. Even my driver fumbled with his phone as he tried to call friends in Mumbai. It turns out that in a country of a billion people, everyone has some ambitious friend or family member who left a town or village for the bright lights of Mumbai.

By the last day of the attack, text messages and e-mails started pouring in from friends and family who confirmed they were alive, that they had not been anywhere near the targeted sites. One person I know had simply been delayed in heavy traffic on the way to a dinner party but was still shaken, having lost others to the tragedy.

In a few weeks, I will travel to Mumbai again to reconnect with friends. We rarely talk about those three days but they will be on our minds.

The eats on the streets

One of those basic pleasures in life, perhaps dictated by evolution, is foraging for your food. And when you find it, in this day and age, it better be worth the hunting.

One of my favourite pastimes is searching for that elusive hole-in-the-wall restaurant that delivers. The one where, with every bite, you cannot believe your luck of finding such a gem in the rough.

New York or New Delhi, there are dark and dank alleyways where one finds some of the best cooks, hard at work, behind makeshift trolleys. Their concoctions so well regarded that they are local legends. I remember my experiences of feeling like I was one of the locals in Delhi, when feasting on succulent kebabs in the middle of the night, and wiping the grease from my hands on my denims (for the obvious lack of seating, cutlery or napkins).

Similar treks around Abu Dhabi have been hard, simply because most of the best places in town have now been consumed by the chaos of the construction in the downtown area.

But last week, with three days to spare and enough time to explore Dubai, I launched once again a plan to map some of those places that friends wax eloquent about.

Surprisingly not so hard to find was the Chicken Tikka Inn in Jumeirah 1 on Jumeirah Beach Road. Less than 50 metres from the Village Mall, the so-called-inn offers the best behari kebabs in the business. Not to mention their delicious haleem (which I ordered two of). Even their nan, stuffed with keema (minced meat), was a meal in itself. It is, however, located in an elusive corner of a strip mall beside another posher mall, and if you drive too fast, you will miss it. Like all such places, it is best found on foot.

As if finding one such haunt wasn’t enough, an American friend directed me to another dubious-sounding Indian restaurant. By now, having enough faith in the street fare of Dubai, I agreed to tag along. In a place called the Chalet Restaurant (it turns out that restaurants with names that make them sound more upscale than they really are always offer the best dishes), there was another delicious meal to be had by the Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

First they sit you on makeshift tables and chairs on the pavement, a venture that rapidly turns into al fresco dining for the daring. Service is best attempted with hand gestures, unless you know any Indian languages. In our case we did, so the food arrived perfectly seasoned and in perfect sync with each person’s order. Who knew you could roast cauliflower and paneer to such perfection?

Movies move forward

Even in its sixth year, the Dubai International Film Festival still manages to excite. As with the Middle East International Film Festival, the event’s Bollywood quota is always significant. Often, the biggest blockbusters, and their star-studded casts, arrive in these cities, playing to audiences hungry for the latest in Indian cinema.

These fans are so enthusiastic that, last year, the actor Govinda, had to retreat from a mall in Abu Dhabi during an impromptu shopping spree. Evidently, he thought that he would not be mobbed, as would be inevitable in India.

Clearly, the star underestimated the presence of Indians in the city. He was in town shooting Do Knot Disturb at Emirates Palace – a comedy about mistaken identities and hotel rooms. Although this particular movie did not premiere here, many of the films shot in the UAE often return for red-carpet screenings.

In fact, a number have their world premières in the Gulf. The region is only a three-hour flight away from Mumbai and its Indian expat population is eager for cultural products from home. This makes the GCC a significant market in its own right. However, it also provides a good gauge of how a film will fare when it travels around the world to other theatres where homesick Indians gather.

Last week, at Madinat Jumeirah, a crowd of teenaged girls gathered to get a glimpse of their favourite actor, Ranbir Kapoor. At 27 years old he is young and has a career of just five films so far. His latest movie, Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year, also breaks the Bollywood mould. Kapoor does not play a classic romantic lead and the action features none of the song and dance sequences typically associated with Bollywood.

No one appeared to mind the lack of love interest and musical interludes. (The film has a soundtrack, but it is one that plays in the background.) They simply wanted to see Kapoor act and to get an idea of what it is like to be a salesman in the fiercely competitive environment of 21st-century Mumbai.

It appears that the straight-up love story no longer works in Bollywood. That is not to say that the biggest producer of films in the world called a total halt on such narratives.

However, it is true that filmmakers eager to reach out to a new audience have had to incorporate romance inside bigger ideas that more accurately reflect life in modern India.

Considering that only a decade ago, a move away from musicals in Bollywood would have been unimaginable, it shows how far the industry has come in recent years.

The tigress awakens

You will not believe the kind of ribbing I faced when I moved to Canada. There I was, a product of an Indian boarding school where the syllabus was still dictated by the British. Spellings, pronunciation and even enunciation – all British-bound.

When you land in another Commonwealth country, you expect things to be similar. They still had the Queen on their currency. So why the curmudgeonly insistence on omitting vowels that were put in for a purpose? Color instead of colour.

And the ludicrous use of the letter z, as in zed, not zee: analyze or analyse? Why would a country that still held on to so many other British-isms do such things?

It was the proximity to the United States of America, the land of Americanisms. Practices south of the border had spilled into its northern neighbour.

For more than a decade, after I arrived in Canada in 1997 on a scholarship to study journalism at university, I slowly converted my lexicon. Working in the print media, it was a painstaking process of uprooting every spelling and sentence formation to include the new style that was obviously a shortened, less sophisticated version of what I had been taught (in my opinion, anyway).

I still reach for the learning from my youth and call a swimsuit a swimming costume, a stroller a pram, and an eraser a rubber.

Then there are football and American football. (Soccer is a term best left to the new world. We do things the good old-fashioned way. )

The other day I was watching a National Football League (NFL) match of (American) football. A team called the Cincinnati Bengals were playing against the Baltimore Ravens.

The Cincinnati Bengals fashion themselves after the royal Bengal tiger. In the middle of the field lay a giant image of an orange tiger with black stripes. I wanted to point out that the endangered species is actually yellow, dark brown- and white-striped, but in the spirit of things and knowing how Americans like to redefine everything, I held my peace until the announcer pronounced Bengals as “Bengels”.

It was sheer butchery of a word known the world over, and not just for its association with the ferocious beast.

“You know, even the tigers are called Bengels in America,” said my friend.

Really? That much defiance over a 1,000-year-old word that also describes an Indian state and a few million people who call themselves Bengalis. All now reduced to an Americanism that primarily defines a sports team in the US?

Somewhere, out there, I hope they hear my cries of protest. Pronunciation, indeed.

The meaning of the word

Being multilingual in India is no big deal. Pretty well everyone I know, from my grandparents to my nephews, speaks more than one language. Of course, for any ambitious Indian, English is a must (no matter how warped the accent may be), and then there is the mother tongue (for my family, that is Bengali), and thanks to the omnipresence of Hindi – from television and cinema to advertisements – that rounds out the top three in most cases.

I didn’t think it was a big deal that I spoke more than three languages until I started travelling. In New York, when I applied for a mundane job with the UN, the first question they asked me was about the number of languages I spoke and how well I spoke them. It has been the same with every job I’ve had in journalism.

I speak English (of course), Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and a smattering of Nepali and French. While I can read and write Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and French, I can not say the same for Tamil or Urdu. It’s all very complicated and is a result of a somewhat nomadic upbringing, not to mention the fact that my parents spoke two different languages at home and English was our common factor. Add to that my decade of boarding school in Pondicherry in Southern India (a former French colony), where I learnt English and French, and the constantly transferable job my father had with the World Health Organization, and it becomes clear that I do not have a propensity for languages but that the environment I grew up in forced me to adapt to the many languages spoken around me.

It can get problematic. Last week while I was interviewing a source for a story, I struggled with a word. While it translated to a beautiful flower in Bengali, it meant buffalo in another language. My multilingual brain was fried.

These are the moments that my editors do not see. The glamour behind being able to decipher a feeling in a foreign language and being hung up on the exact meaning of a word is a fine line. I tried to deduce the logic behind the word. Did the source really pay thousands of Bangladeshi rupees for a beautiful flower or a buffalo? What were the chances? In journalism, you don’t take such chances, so I called the resident linguist: my mother.

She was rushing to the airport, so she couldn’t be much help. I called the second best in the business, who had taught me the difference in phonetics between Urdu and Hindi words: my father.

Turns out a buffalo is still a buffalo and a flower is just that. And it all depends on the pronunciation, which was obviously lost in translation over static phone lines between me and the source.

In spite of all those languages, it was back to the drawing board for me.

Romantic ideas of home

Despite the fact that life is good – great even – twice this year I have returned from India and found myself dragging my feet.

I was being an ingrate, I told myself. The job was interesting. Friends were fabulous. I had enough of a steady income to afford me holidays (and those trips to India). And my parents were in good health.

I wondered if I was homesick. It was an unfamiliar feeling. My earliest memories are of leaving for boarding school, cheerful and strutting towards an aeroplane – violin case in one hand and the dreaded “unaccompanied minor” sign hanging from my neck – while waving goodbye to the parents. They were not, if memory serves, upset to see me leave. I was seven. The only child of two very busy doctors.

Could it be that, weary of world travel and having to fend for myself all of these years, I was missing my family?

I called my mother. I am told I am built like her, with little time for careless emotion. I missed my parents no more than when I left home as a child. Did I miss the house? Not particularly. Friends at home? There were none. Those bonds were created in school and foreign countries and, thanks to the internet, we were still in touch. My mother told me to stop moping and count my blessings.

Last week, I met a friend whom I’ve known since we were in grade three. He lives in Hong Kong now, but we found ourselves in Bangalore – he on business, I to attend a wedding – at the same time. We caught up even though there was little of that to do, thanks to modern technology. I told him of my growing dilemma.

“So you want to move back to India?” he asked. That was it! I was no longer satisfied with being a visitor in my own country, or with the nostalgia of spending childhood in a place that has since grown into an economic power. I wanted my fair share, but was it fair to ask it from a place where I had not lived for more than 13 years?

“You have romantic delusions,” my friend said and explained a sentiment that most expatriates feel when they have been away from home for too long. The idea of their imagined homeland grows larger in their head with every passing day. And the resolve to return one day generates its own mix of guilt and apprehension.

I finally admitted to myself that I had been away for too long, and was likely to be for longer. And that what I was feeling was homesickness for an imagined homeland.

Safety pins in my sari

You would think that coming from a country of half a billion Indian women, I would know how to wear a sari. After all, when they wake up in the morning, most of them can tie seven yards of cloth around themselves as if they were performing one of those mundane morning rituals – such as making their morning coffee. Or frying a dosa.

I cannot fry a dosa, or even make the batter from scratch. I can rarely remember the ratio of water to coffee that goes into the cone-filter coffee maker, which mostly sits idle. And I have never woken up, tied a sari around myself and moved through my daily chores with ease.

Except for special events (which mostly involves a visit to the temple for Diwali), I rarely don one. And even when I do, instead of walking around gracefully and following the folds of the pleats in the front of the sari, I totter around as though someone had stapled my feet to pieces of cardboard. I keep it together with safety pins because I don’t want to join the hordes of urban tales about saris unravelling in public, on stage, or worse, at the temple.

That stuff is complicated. Some even call it art. Systematically wrapping all that cloth around yourself and still being able to walk freely while using your arms for anything but holding up yards of material may look easy, but it is not.

I believe it runs in the family. Or at least in my generation of cousins. For a while, when my cousin worked in the travel industry and had to wear a sari to work once a week, she would pull out one of six that her mother had pleated and pinned. We called it the “home-made version”. You tuck in the right bits for the lower half and create a sort of pleated skirt, while piling the remaining fabric over your shoulder.

Then came the modern day tutorial. Designed for me, the one living so far away from the reach of parents and relatives that my cousins initially would take photos of the aunts tying it around themselves and send me photos. Then we chanced upon the internet version, which teaches you how to go about wrapping it yourself without looking like a mummified corpse. We called this the “ready-made version”.

I’ve even worked out a plan for when I am stranded in a hotel room with no access to the internet: call guest services and – in India at least – a lady from the hotel will pin you up. In a foreign country? Call a friend’s mother. They always answer the call to tie a sari.

Marriage the traditional way

I’ve always wanted to visit Bangalore. The garden city of India. The IT capital of the country and full of bright, young, motivated people who take pride in their city and their work.

So when Seema Shetty, the brains behind BiteRite, a company that caters food to the health conscious and has a special plan for those who are diabetic, invited me to her wedding in Bangalore, I couldn’t refuse.

A modern Indian woman by every standard, Seema studied at Boston University before returning to Abu Dhabi to start her own company. Yet she chose to marry a man her family approved of.

They had met early this year and, coming from a similar background of family values and respect for their community, decided to tie the knot.

So arriving in Bangalore to share her happiness and what is considered one of the most auspicious occasions in a woman’s life was an absolute delight.

It would also be my first insight into a traditional South Indian wedding. We started with, as in all Indian weddings, a lot of singing and dancing leading up to the day of the wedding.

Her father, Dr BR Shetty, the founder of the NMC group of hospitals and pharmacies, the gracious host, welcomed us all as if we were family.

He chose the back garden of his house in the city to host some of the ceremonies, including an evening of Sangeet, where the cousins and friends of Seema put up a variety of song and dance shows that told everyone of how the couple met.

The next morning, the women took over Dr Shetty’s garden again and had henna applied to their hands for the mehndi ceremony.

On the eve of the wedding, we witnessed the Muhurtham, a ceremony held at sunset.

Dressed in a traditional blue and gold silk sari, Seema glowed as she was walked to the stage, flanked by her maternal uncle’s wife and her father’s sister. She was presented with toe rings – a symbol of a married woman in Southern India – by the ladies of the family. Seema then sought the blessings of everyone present.

There was hardly a dry eye left as she was led through the crowds slowly, stopping to ask everyone present to bless her new life.

The next day dawned early as we rushed to the Bangalore Palace grounds for the wedding, when Seema, dressed in a breathtaking salmon pink and gold embroidered sari with jasmine flowers in her hair, was married to Nirman. Her parents officially offered her hand in marriage to the man who made her glow.

As she stood there, receiving a line of visitors who came forward to bless the new couple, one couldn’t help but wonder at how much the modern Indian woman has achieved, while never straying from her culture, or community.

A singular kind of blessing

Another Diwali, another year abroad. Another round of celebrations away from home. It may be the festival of lights but nothing is as bright if it is not celebrated with family.

There’s no point getting sentimental, though. I cannot remember the last time I was home, running around bursting firecrackers under my cousin’s bed or stealing sweets.

I have vague memories of such times in India, of stringing together so many “chilli bombs” – tiny dynamites that came in packs of 12 – that they extended all the way across my friend’s house, past the swimming pool and tennis court and right down to the main gate. We concealed the train behind the bushes, and in the evening – just when the adults were getting comfortable – set off the entire string. The firecrackers went off for at least 15 minutes. The adults shouted, we giggled.

In contrast, the celebrations away from home have been sober. And it almost seems that each year I compromise on a lamp and light a candle instead. This year, I didn’t have time to shop for anything – the traditional terracotta lamps, a string of lights, new clothes, an appliance or even a small indulgence such as a piece of jewellery.

I am not sure if it’s proximity. When I lived in Toronto, the idea that I was so far away from home made me observe the little rituals. In Abu Dhabi, it seems, when there are so many people around me celebrating, I feel like it is OK to let go of the apprehension that if I don’t practice my culture, I will lose it. As a result, Diwali crept up on me this year.

Among other things, Diwali celebrates the return of the ancient king of -Ayodhya, Ram (along with his wife, Sita, and brother, Lakshman), to his kingdom, ending 14 years of exile after a war in which he killed the demon king, Ravan.

Their return represents the -triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, joy over despair, right over wrong. It is believed that the -entire kingdom celebrated by lighting lamps in order to guide their path through the darkness.

People took to the streets and burst fire crackers. However, legend has it that one old lady, who lived by herself in a decrepit hut on the outskirts of the village, could not afford such extravagance. So she filled a single terracotta lamp with oil and lit it. On his way to the palace, amid all the fanfare, it is said that Ram noticed the hut.

This year, I was that old lady and I hope that lighting my singular brass lamp will invite just as many blessings as lighting a hundred.

Delectable dishes in Delhi

Of all the tours that are offered in India, the best that I can imagine is one through which visitors are allowed to travel through the gastronomic wonders of the Mughal empire.

To make things simple, I am referring to the mighty kebab. This wonderful dish comes in many forms, varying in richness, texture and complexity of spices. While it is the source of much debate as to whether the best examples are found in Delhi or Hyderabad, or across the border in Peshawar or Lahore, the kebab remains, mostly, the undisputed king of Mughlai cuisine.

Sticklers for history may argue that the imperial kitchens of the Mughals contributed much more than pieces of delicious meat to the repertoire of Indian cuisine. With creamy curries made from cashew paste, spectacular biryanis, and desserts enriched with dried fruits and nuts, this is an indisputable fact. However, I am a huge fan of the kebab and an unapologetic non-vegetarian, thanks to its existence.

A few weeks before I left Abu Dhabi for a recent holiday to India, a craving for shammi kebabs struck. So I called at least half a dozen of the top Indian restaurants in Abu Dhabi not nestled in the pricey surrounds of a five-star hotel to ask if they offered the dish. None did.

To my dismay, I ended up making myself a batch from scratch before boarding a flight that took me to the heartland of kebabs – Old Delhi.

The shammi, also known as the galouti – although easy to replicate at home, using the right mix of minced meat, crushed spices and lentils – offers a legend of its own. It is said that one of the rulers, or nawabs, of Lucknow, who was very fond of kebabs, in his old age was unable to chew succulent hunks of skewered and grilled meats, and ordered his khansamas, or chefs, to come up with a special recipe that would make the meat melt in his mouth. In short, he asked they produce “the toothless nawab’s kebab”.

So, as legend goes, more than 100 different spices were added to minced lamb meat in order to produce the shammi. A variation of this is still found on the streets of Lucknow, Hyderabad and of course, in dusty shops nestled along the narrow lanes of Old Delhi.

After a half-day trip to the Taj Mahal, we thought that it was only fitting to continue our tour of Indian history by following our nostrils right down to Old Delhi. Since such culinary tours are only offered by friends who call the city home, we followed them blindly as they sauntered through streets specially illuminated for the Eid celebrations.

We managed to finally get our hands on the last plate of shammi kebabs that was on offer at a tiny restaurant. That’s a taste and a feeling that can only be experienced in the forgotten alleyways of Delhi.

Finally, I see the attraction

We intended to see the Taj Mahal by sunrise, so we set off by road from Delhi at 3am, for what would be a three-and-a-half-hour journey. Of course we joked about Indian Stretchable Time (IST), about traffic jams, potholed roads, driving around cows, goats and any other kind of livestock that happened to amble across our path. We hoped to get there at least by noon.

As a 12-year-old, I had suffered a similar fate at the hands of my parents, who were eager to introduce their petulant child to the history of the country. So for a week (or much longer it seemed) I suffered through bumpy rides across the Indian countryside while hardly glancing at the splendours that were on offer.

I vaguely remember being impressed by the sight of the Taj from a window at the Agra Fort. Apparently I was standing in the room, where, legend has it, Shah Jehan, the Mughal emperor who built the Taj as a mausoleum and monument for his wife Mumtaz, was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb.

But, more than that, I remember the mind-numbingly boring eight-hour road trip from Delhi, via Fatepur Sikri and the Agra Fort to – finally – the Taj.

Almost two decades later, I had returned to a different India. There was even a highway between Delhi and Agra that promised to zip tourists in and out of Agra in half a day.

I expected to half snooze through my road trip with my friends. Instead, we found ourselves chatting about the landscape, while cutting through centuries-old farmland on both sides and passing one crumbling fort after another.

Even Agra had been transformed. Once upon a time not so very long ago, getting in and out of its congested roads was a nightmare. Now, there were proper road signs that, every few metres, pointed even the most hopeless tourist towards one of the wonders of the world.

And it seemed that years of talking about conservation had finally paid off too. The delicate marble with which the monument had been built was for years under siege from the pollution being spewed by nearby factories and the sewage being pumped into the river Jumna, that runs beside it.

Things had been cleaned up. Even the touts that used to charge outrageous prices to sightseers have been replaced with government-approved, ID-wearing guides who courteously asked once or twice if we required their services.

However fortuitous this journey was, it was especially significant when we realised that we were standing at the Taj on Eid, where thousands of the faithful poured in, to offer their morning prayers.

It was then that I finally realised what the hullabaloo surrounding the Taj Mahal is all about.

A journey worth taking

The rush to get home in time to break your fast is something has become familiar during the past month. The traffic got particularly heavy during some times of the day, and come sundown, the roads were deserted.

If you turned your gaze towards airport lounges, you would have seen that there is no relief for airline personnel, either. The race to get home to celebrate Eid with your nearest and dearest has meant airport lounges are bursting at their seams with people eager to be reunited with their loved ones – and keeping strange hours in order to get there on time.

And so, on a recent flight, I saw two gentlemen sharing one piece of carry-on luggage. There was not much in it because all the gifts – clothes, a DVD player, toys, perfume and running shoes – were packed away in two boxes that had been checked in. In the bag, apart from the usual necessities of travel, they carried two gold chains, one for each of their wives.

Once they landed at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, they would take a shuttle to the domestic airport, where they would wait, snatching occasional sleep, on the lounge chairs for three and a half hours before boarding the next flight to Ahmedabad. Then they would board a train and travel to the northern town of Unjha. More than half the village would turn up, they said. But after two days of travel, they refused to admit they would be too tired or irritated to celebrate their return, a well-earned leave they take every two years.

“You must have a sense of humour about these things,” one of them said. “Otherwise, how are you going to entertain a house full of relatives with your travel stories if everything on the journey turned out just fine? That is boring. Telling them what we ate in the plane is fun. Or if the train is delayed, what happened. How did we cope? They want to hear every detail so we will tell them.”

A group of men from a village near Unjha – like scores of others from all across India – work in the UAE. Not all their friends are returning home this year to celebrate Eid, but they are all sending money home. These two men are not carrying money, for fear of being pickpocketed along the way. When they reach their village, they will line up at a local money transfer shop to receive the money they sent ahead of time and distribute it to those less fortunate than themselves. It is zakat – an essential part of celebrating the holy month.

A whole new highway code

The name of the highway you find yourself on is irrelevant when you are hurtling down in it panic. Research may have found that the UAE has more than its fair share of bad drivers and crazy speeding, but really, has anyone reading this column ever had to slam on their brakes for a cow ambling across the Sheikh Zayed Road? Or goats? Or buffalo?

You know what I am getting at. Driving in India, in any city, town or village is an act of bravery. Which is why it is not surprising that most international rental companies that have set up shop in India rent you their cars with drivers. It is not because they don’t trust you, but because they know you don’t know how to come to a sudden stop from 100kph on a highway when a cow decides to cross four lanes of traffic.

So there I was, being driven by a maniac down the Delhi highway which connects Delhi to a number of cities. It is an impressive stretch built solely to boost tourism in India. Of course, the economic gains have been impressive – fresh apples from an orchard in the hills of Himachal Pradesh can now reach the Azadpur wholesale vegetable and fruit market on the outskirts of Delhi in eight hours. If the truck had my driver, you could shave another two hours from that time.

Throughout the drive, I scolded him. First it was the seatbelt. He wouldn’t wear one. I made him. Then the phone calls he was taking while navigating through a maze of trucks, autorickshaws, young men on motorcycles and other aggressive drivers in sedans (and cattle). He stopped after I threatened to call his mother.

It was not entirely his fault. I hate to admit it, but what he was doing sounded familiar from my friends who commute daily on the Sheikh Zayed Road. If others around you are behaving badly, driving above the speed limit or flashing their lights at you, you have little choice in respecting the speed limit yourself because the chances are that you are going to get rear-ended or worse by a speed freak who will forcibly take their right of way.

In his case, too, he had little choice. If he didn’t aggressively nudge himself between trucks, someone else would. If he didn’t overtake on the wrong side of the other vehicle, someone else was going to, and probably hit him instead. Besides, there were no lane demarcations so traffic converged.

But panic is panic and whoever said driving in the UAE was bad surely hasn’t taken a ride on India’s new asphalt yet.

The voices of a nation

On my first-ever trip to Pakistan, I found myself at Illusions in Islamabad. It is one of those cool, glass-walled music stores with all the latest HBO shows advertised at the front. “Where are the classical artists?” I asked. I had strict instructions from my mother to locate old, classical works.

She had trained as a classical singer in her youth only to take up medicine as a more practical career option.

Growing up in a freshly partitioned India, tutored by some of the best vocalists in the country, my mother had watched in dismay as some of her favourite singers migrated to Pakistan. It was a loss she never overcame. It seemed as if Mehdi Hassan, Iqbal Bano and Noor Jehan took with them her ambition to join their ranks.

Of course, some Pakistani musicians have successfully crossed over in recent years, including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and bands such as Junoon. But the best voices from the past failed to reach my generation.

I was unable to relate to this alien list of artists whose music I had been asked to collect, but at the same time, I was curious to know what “the other side” was listening to these days. My friend suggested I start with the basics.

Currently, everybody is listening to the Coke Studio Sessions, an artists’ collective that was brought together by Umber and Rohail Hyatt, who also founded one of the country’s first bands, Vital Signs. The pair has been credited for this unifying series in a time when the country is plagued by political strife and terrorism. It has captured a nation’s imagination and bridged a yawning generation gap.

These live music sessions broadcast on television are Pakistan’s pride and joy. It’s a series of concerts played by some of the best contemporary artists, alongside classical singers who recreate popular songs of yore, while lyrics penned by Sufi saints get a fresh set of drums and strings.

From the female duo Zeb & Haniya to the pop singers Atif Aslam and Noori, from Riaz Ali Khan and Javed Bashir to Ali Hamza and Saieen Zahoor – all bring their bit of magic.

The internet has been instrumental in spreading the word among those homesick for some local tunes. Hyatt has 2,000 fans on Facebook and some of the songs posted on YouTube have more than 30,000 hits.

The amount of hits signals a positive shift and indicates that the next generation of Pakistanis are looking to renew their sense of culture.

In cooking, a shared spirit

For non-Muslim expats, there are few opportunities that come our way that allow us a glimpse into the world of fasting and feasting during Ramadan. Of course, hotels offer grand iftars and a lucky few are invited to their friends’ homes to break the fast and enjoy a lavish meal. But to understood how various groups celebrated their first iftar this year, The National sent reporters across the country to talk to and report about people congregating on the first evening of Ramadan.

I headed to the labour camps in Musaffah. It is a 20-minute drive from the city of Abu Dhabi, over a bridge and a motorway that divides drivers who are rushing towards Dubai versus those, mostly in minivans, buses and taxis, ambling their way into a suburb of workers’ quarters.

The mood was festive. For the next month, they would be returning at least two hours early to their camps due to decreased work hours. That in itself lent an air of excitement to those busying themselves with the tasks at hand.

There was cooking to be done – chopping, peeling, frying and dicing – and washing and bathing after one prepared the feast and before evening prayers. Although the camps attract workers from various countries in South Asia and the Middle East, the majority of workers are Muslim. And away from home, they have improvised the ways in which they divide their duties.

Lacking women from their households who would typically take care of the food preparations, the men have come together in groups of anywhere between four and up to a dozen to share duties and divide cooking time. During Ramadan, friends take turns to prepare their favourite dishes for the rest of the group while also sharing precious kitchen time by cooking in shifts. So instead of 200 men cooking individual meals and being confronted with impossible shift timings in the kitchen, now each group sends a representative every day to sweat it out. Similarly, costs are divided by buying a large bag of rice at wholesale price rather than individual portions for every few days.

With workers cooking their favourite foods, one sees a bounty laid out like no other. Just as someone from Kerala grates coconut to mix with a rice paste to make pottu, another man from Pakistan is using his mortar and pestle to blend together coriander leaves, garlic and chillies to make a chutney, while a man from Bangladesh makes a curry out of mustard paste: the true diversity of the city and the spirit of Ramadan is best laid out here.

A storybook encounter

In the kind of coincidence that usually only occurs in a masterfully written book, a short while ago I found myself locked in conversation with the nephew of an author whose work I desperately wanted to read.

Real life does not tend to include such happenstances, but on holiday while attending a wedding in Islamabad and having escaped the vibrant shaadi household for a quite afternoon in the Margalla Hills, that is exactly what happened.

It has been a while since I have come across a book that is unputdownable. I have a particular affinity for literature based on South Asianess (as I like to call it), which, probably because of who I am and where I am from tends to leave a more indelible impression than the rest.

I have searched to no avail in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin. This collection of short stories tells of the lives of servants, feudal lords, corrupt judges and other characters, all of which are intertwined thanks to the ageing aristocrat and landowner KK Harouni. I looked forward to grabbing a copy off the shelf in the first bookshop I would come across in Islamabad.

It was sold out. From several shops. So when I happened upon the author’s nephew at my friend’s wedding, I got a fantastic preview of the stories I have yet to encounter.

I had read some excerpts from the collection in The New Yorker, and a review of the book and a profile of the author in The New York Times, where I gleaned that he gave up practising law in New York to work on his father’s land in the heart of Punjab. Once there, he apparently slept with a gun under his pillow. The article said the book was a thinly veiled account of his real-life experiences.

“It is not thinly veiled at all,” said his nephew. “There are people here who have read it and are not at all happy.” Aha! That’s exactly the kind of recommendation one needs to dig into a book.

His nephew had been handed a copy prepublication, had read it with much relish and then suggested to Daniyal that he not publish it. Daniyal did. His nephew chuckled and said: “I am glad he did.”

It is too early to know how successful the book will become, but Daniyal has already been compared to one of my other favourite authors, Jhumpa Lahiri, whose debut collection, An Interpreter of Maladies, won her a Pulitzer prize.

Whatever the case may be, Daniyal has managed to lift me from an ennui brought on by reading one too many books that desperately tried to be what his piece of prose ultimately achieved: a frank, unflinching look at life in the subcontinent, one that is easy to feel but hard to capture.

A cultural feast in Pakistan

To the untrained eye, it was a lavish feast, accompanied by singing and dancing that was straight out of a Bollywood movie. To us, the desis, or locals of the subcontinent, as we like to call ourselves, it was regular fare.

Well, regular by our standards, which more or less involve five days of singing, dancing, feasting and ceremonies that revolve around such things as henna, ubtan and yet more feasting.

It may have been my first visit to Pakistan, for a friend’s wedding, but everything felt familiar. The warmth of the relatives – from being ordered around by the aunties to being spoiled by them – to the chatter around me was such that I hoped the monsoon showers that thundered above us the night before I was scheduled to fly back to Abu Dhabi would postpone my journey.

Having lived more than half my life outside the subcontinent, it is only now when I return that I realise the full impact of what I have missed over the years.

Even before the official events got under way, the bride’s friends, cousins and anyone else who decided to drop by would gather in the living room, where all the furniture had been pushed against the wall and an extraordinary array of carpets, collected by the family over the past four decades, were spread out for dance rehearsals.

It is customary to perform elaborate song and dance numbers during the mehndi – when henna is applied on the bride’s and other women’s hands.

Then there is the dholki. At this time, a traditional drum or dholak is placed in the middle of a circle of girls who sing while others dance. Songs range from the usual Bollywood hits to traditional wedding songs, as well as improvised songs in which the words are customised for the situation. For example, my friend was marrying a banker whose company has posted him to Khartoum. So we took an old 1950s Bollywood tune about a lover calling from Rangoon and replaced the words. The sentiment, however, remained the same, and it made the bride blush.

Then there was the ubtan, a ceremony in which a paste made from turmeric, sandalwood powder, herbs and aromatic oils is applied to the bride’s hands and face by her family and the groom’s mother. She is then adorned in bangles and earrings made of flowers – a simple precursor to the next day, when she will be dripping in jewels. Typically, this is to ensure a glowing bride, but it is also an excuse for another round of singing and dancing (and of course feasting on juicy kebabs).

After these ceremonies came the simple nikaah – the singing of legal documents followed by a lavish wedding reception. The bride was finally ready for the real and married world.

However much I sang, danced, greeted guests and ran errands for the bride, I realised I had come to cherish a part of my culture that, in spite of a border that separates India and Pakistan, really knows no bounds.

The fabric of families

One of my oldest and favourite saris did not travel with me when I went to Pakistan to attend a friend’s wedding this week. That is not to say there is anything wrong with old ones. In fact, they are prized possessions handed down as heirlooms from mothers to daughters.

However, I was left with little choice but to follow my mother’s strict instructions about what I should wear to the wedding – one that she would not be around to supervise. She may not be on Facebook to witness the slew of photographs, but, being a mother, she can pretty much will me to do anything. And she did.

So I left behind one of my favourites. The gold threads that were used to embroider the edge are a little frayed, but there is a lot of emotion attached to it. Perhaps this is because it was the first sari that my mother ever handed down to me. Although it was not the first sari I ever wore (I always borrowed from aunts, cousins and my mother), this was the first sari I ever owned. It is older than I am, because my mother bought it when she was a medical student. It was one of her first grand purchases.

I am yet to pillage my mother’s collection (although I am working on it). It is nothing compared to my aunt’s – a self-taught fashion maven and collector of saris from every state of India. Indeed, her collection is like visiting a museum. But I digress.

So far, I have inherited a few pieces from my mother, including the dark blue Varanasi silk with intricately embroidered flowers in silver thread that she wore at her wedding reception. Of course, this piece travelled with me. As did two of my newer purchases: a bright yellow silk-and-cotton mix garment with extensive Kantha stitch (from West Bengal), entirely hand stitched, and a bold orange georgette sari (also a Varanasi silk) that weighs a good 2.3kg thanks to the zardozi work, in which delicate copper wires have been woven into trellis and floral patterns throughout the garment.

It occurred to me as I was writing this that I have a particular affinity for saris from Varanasi. Or it could be the subtle influence of my father’s side of the family, who hail from that state. The final one that I packed was a pale green tissue sari by the renowned Varanasi weavers in which they interweave silk in a way that makes it look even more delicate. It is a type popularly worn at weddings. My mother wore it at hers – actually, in one of many ceremonies not unlike the week-long celebrations I was about to embark on.

A trip of several lifetimes

My bags are not entirely packed but I am ready to go. As I prepared to travel to Pakistan this week, I realised that I will be the first in the last three generations of my family to actually visit that country (unless, of course, you count the time that my grandfather was on a flight which strayed into Pakistani air space).

Volumes have been written about the bloody partition in 1947, from which Pakistan was created. Accounts of deaths have, over the years, turned into bitter tales that explain the holes in a family tree. This is true for a lot of families who live on either side of the borders of India and Pakistan, and to a certain extent, modern-day Bangladesh, which, after partition was called East Pakistan before gaining independence in 1971.

In spite of all the stories I heard growing up, one of my best friends who I would meet in Canada and become inseparable from, is from Pakistan. It is her wedding that I am going to attend. We bonded over a number of things, but mostly over matters that struck a common chord. The grandness of the lives lived by our grandparents and their ancestors. Our mothers and their jewellery and sari collections. How our fathers wooed our mothers. Our international upbringing as a result of the decisions made by our parents, who were in turn, influenced by the education and guidance they received. And most of all, cooking. When either of us fired up our stoves (we lived two blocks away from each in the heart of Toronto), there was a feast.

Many years ago, in the kind of moment that only comes when two girls stay up all night chatting, I promised her that no matter where it took place, and no matter what circumstances I found myself in, I would attend her wedding. So after a month of waiting on a Pakistani visa – an experience made most pleasant by cordial officials (the best samosas in town come from the canteen inside the embassy) – I was summoned last week. Now, I am ready to embark on a trip that is rare for an ordinary Indian.

As I relayed the news to my mother, I expected the usual list of concerns. Be careful (you’re a journalist). Be careful (you’re a woman). Be careful (she like saying things in triplicate).

Instead her deepest worry lay in my attire. In spite of 60 years of independent living and cultivating different cultures, the codes of conduct and decorum have remained the same. And the emphasis on putting your best foot forward. And so, as if she were sending an emissary she said: “Please don’t pack your torn jeans.”

Learning to stand the heat

Sri Lankan cuisine is not for the faint-hearted. I’ll be the first to admit it, even as an inhabitant of another chilli-loving nation. We, the Indians, are no match for the fire power that our island neighbours to the south can summon with the presentation of a dish. Any dish.

The island’s food differs slightly from the north to the south – from the Sinhalese style to the Tamil flavours, from the northern hills of Kandy to the coastline that shows its influence with abundant seafood. But there is no doubt that the variety of chillies that are used to flavour the dishes and create side dishes are some of the world’s hottest mixes.

Last weekend, I found myself staring at a Sri Lankan buffet at the Panorama Hotel in Bur Dubai. The Palm Court restaurant was alive with a motley quintet who were taking requests written on napkins from patrons and singing popular songs from Bollywood, Tamil films and regional Sinhalese music.

Sri Lankan cuisine has evolved over thousands of years. Those who came to Sri Lanka – whether in search of spices such as cloves, cinnamon and cardamom, which were prized by Arab traders, or to form a new law in the land, as the Malays, Dutch and Portuguese did – all left their mark on the way food is now prepared.

But my friends and I had our minds set on trying to conquer the spice battle that lay in front of us. The all-you-can eat buffet started with kiribath, or milk rice. It is usually served on auspicious occasions – weddings, celebrations, the Sinhala new year and on the first day of every month to kick off of a propitious 30 days. The rice, which is boiled in coconut milk, is usually served with a side of lunumiris, a type of sambol, which is a mix of grated, fried onions, spices and dry red chillies. It is also popularly – and appropriately – called dynamite.

The jackfruit curry ignited a fire that was only added to by most of the other dishes, from the wonderful sardine curry to the beef and potato curry cooked in coconut milk.

Of course, this was an adventure of the taste buds and a journey into possibly acquiring permanent stomach disorders, but it turns out the best way to eat a spicy curry is to savour it. For it can only be conquered with an intricate mix of yogurt, rice and gulps of water to temper the heat. To hurriedly dig through a mound of curry is a recipe for pure torture. After all, as a wise adage I once saw scribbled on the side of road sign, said: Hurry-burry spoils the curry.

In summer, head for the hills

To this day, those who can escape do so. By the time the British arrived in India and experienced their first heatwave, it was already established that a few months spent in cooler climes was a necessity, not a luxury.

So following the example of the land’s hundreds of monarchs, the British, too, escaped to “hill stations”, a term used to describe a sleepy town in a suitably mountainous location. Over time, as the Raj spread across the country, so did the hill stations, and the escape routes turned from mule trails to pukka roads.

But the summer sojourn in the hills that was once reserved exclusively for the monied class has, over the past half a century, evolved into a more affordable holiday for the Indian middle class, whose ranks have grown, as have their salaries and assets.

At the same time, those who can afford to escape abroad are also doing so. Friends in India have flung themselves to far away spots – from the Swiss Alps and Madrid to Phuket and even New York City, to celebrate July 4.

And at the same time, I find myself advising friends here – Emirati and otherwise – about the joys of a trip to a hill station. A friend who impulsively booked a ticket to Delhi after getting tired of the heat here has compiled a list of six spots to visit, from Shimla and Leh to Sikkim. We have charted places in the vicinity of the capital, not too different from what I imagine the British were doing 200 years ago.

Any Indian state with a range of mountains provides an escape route. For example, Darjeeling was the summer capital of the British when they ruled India from Calcutta, before moving to Delhi. For six months, the hills would come alive with platoons of the army and their generals searching for a respite from the heat.

Over time, the journey evolved from dozens of elephants and palanquins bearing the rich and their worldly possessions. The British established a more economical and efficient way of travel by laying down the narrow gauge railway, on which trains, popularly nicknamed toy trains, ferried both foreign and Indian tourists to and from the warmer regions.

This year I am struck by how much the world has continued to evolve. The places that we visit on holiday and the way that we think about travel have both changed dramatically from even a decade ago. Borders are blurred by globalisation. And so this summer, I find my European friends looking to Indian hill stations, while my mother packs her bags to visit family friends in Norway and I head to the Margalla hills in Islamabad for a wedding.

New generation's lofty goals

My nephew would like to seriously consider a career playing the drums. Although this would have been unheard of a generation ago, his parents agree. Actually, a generation ago, when I – the daughter of doctors – wanted to be a journalist, even that was unheard of, given the stringent confines of parental expectations.

Millions of young Indians – both in India and abroad – having completed their highly stressful exams last month, are now entering the next phase of life’s choices that will determine their future.

I already see a marked difference between them and my generation. Whether they live in Dubai or Delhi, their experiences and career choices are increasingly diverse. Of course, those who live abroad have the added advantage of experiencing life and all its challenges away from their homeland, which shapes their choices to a great extent. But in India, where one tends to live by example of that doctor aunt or engineer uncle, the traditional list of professions that are considered acceptable for a determined fellow to pursue has always been rather short. Not, I hope, any more.

As a compromise, my nephew will travel from Kolkata to Pune to study at a prestigious college. There he will hopefully earn a degree in mass communication. Having settled it with his parents by getting at least one degree under his belt, he then wants to turn it around and work in the growing Indian pop music industry. This while playing with his band throughout his academic career and hoping that they make it big before he is forced to don a suit and represent other musicians.

Such lofty dreams – a mainstay of American or British culture – are finding a new home with the youth of India. A generation ago, paradiddling with drums would have been relegated to a hobby. But entire generations have now grown up on satellite music stations, syndicated television shows and music franchise shops that oversee the release of the latest albums pretty much at the same time as the rest of the world.

My nephew’s role model is a 22-year-old drummer who won a competition on one of the music television shows at the age of 19. Now he tours full-time with his band, who play an amalgamated version of Indian metal rock. The usual distorted guitar riffs, heavy drum grooves and fast bass lines are accompanied by lyrics in Bengali.

His band, Etcetra, are taking a break from playing gigs this summer while some of the band members look for college placements. In the meantime, in order to counteract his grandmother’s complaints about playing the drums too loudly, this summer he plans to learn the flute. And the sitar.

Growing up with Michael

It was a phenomenon everyone in my neighbourhood was familiar with. Grandmothers, uncles, even the local grocer knew which children were doing it behind closed doors. Especially in the summer, when the going got slow, the stack of Michael Jackson cassettes came out and all kinds of tunes blared from homes.

I am going to have to admit that I attempted not just the moonwalk but all kinds of other moves, including trying to slide on my knees, and most embarrassingly, trying to stand on my toes. It ended in all kinds of injuries.

Then there was a time when someone stole my Dangerous cassette and replaced it with MC Hammer. My mother was convinced it was a family friend’s son who was always up to no good. But this was the 1980s, and there was no way I was getting extra allowance to replace the precious tape, so I did what all the other kids were doing: begged around the neighbourhood for someone to make me a tape and went back to unsuccessfully practising the moves.

We even organised a dance party in the neighbourhood. We rehearsed for the entire summer to get a dozen skinny, awkward 10-year-olds to dance – or rather sway – to We Are the World.

Even before MTV came to India, Jackson was a well-known performer. His music sold alongside Bollywood soundtracks and a small collection of generic rock from America and pop from Britain. A measure of his influence can be seen in the fact that at least a dozen Bollywood films from the 1980s copied his music, style and dance – at least as much as a middle-aged, pot-bellied actor with an impressive moustache could.

As radio stations in the UAE play Jackson’s hits non-stop following his death, memories have come rushing back. My cousins, all crazy about the singer, once made a list of birthdays in the family to see who was born closest to Jackson. Disregarding age, I won by a difference of a month but was promptly disqualified for being a girl. I remember huge tears streaming down my face as I begged to get back on the fan list. My cousins now deny it, but I remember.

One of my cousins, now a balding and respectable father of two, only remembers our dance-offs. Apparently he dressed as a zombie from Thriller while I played the female lead. But halfway through the performance, I changed my mind and decided to be Michael. I tried to slide on my knees and ended up breaking my mom’s favourite vase. My mother confiscated my MJ collection. I remember feeling absolutely gutted. Last week, I woke feeling even worse: it was the day pop music died.

Vicarious holidays in India

The advantage of living in the UAE is the ease with which one can zip back and forth to India. Or rather, my friends can, but I can’t. A weekend jaunt to India for a quickie holiday on a beach for me would mean offending half my family who live there. Visits to the country usually involve prolonged meals at the homes of relatives, where the aunties pinch my cheeks or slap my shoulder and proclaim: “Why so skinny?” or “Why so dark?”

After the feasting comes the inevitable shopping, even if it only means accompanying my uncle on an early morning walk to the vegetable market as his bag carrier. Of course, he has taught me to revel in the delight of fresh produce and seasonal fruits but year after year, the same homes and the same markets in the same city start to lose their appeal, and I yearn even more to do what my friends can: traipse around India – the seventh largest country in the world – among its 1.2 billion people, with all of the beaches, mountains, temples and cuisines it has to offer.

To upset the Indian version of an Indian holiday is, however, unthinkable.

But my friends, whether British, Canadians or Americans, bear no such burden. They are free to come and go as they please. And it is through their holidays that I vicariously live out my long weekends.

Through them, I have taken a three-day boat ride in the backwaters of Kerala, partied in Mumbai, stayed at a French-colonial bungalow in Pondicherry, visited an ancient temple and celebrated a South Indian wedding in Chennai, lounged on a beach in Goa, visited a book fair in Jaipur, meditated at a yoga retreat in Rishikesh and travelled by road to see the Taj Mahal.

Of course, all this sounds like one of those incredibly slick advertisements called Incredible India that the Indian government has masterminded to attract even more tourists to India, but it is true. In fact, in some regards, their experiences are richer than an average Indian on a excursion around their own country. They see things in way that I will never be able to. A friend befriended a rickshaw driver, who then became her de facto guide around the city of Jaipur, refusing to take any extra money for his added duties. Another lot made friends with children from a village who asked them for pens. They emptied their journalist purses and produced notebooks and other stationery, much to the delight of the children and their parents.

Somewhere in there among all of these stories, I am sure, is my dream holiday too.

Electing the future of India

For those looking from the outside, the end of the Indian elections was still thrilling. Although there are no provisions for non-resident Indians like me to vote by mail-in ballots, we are a powerful lobby. There’s 25 million of us living abroad. And while I did not travel to India, like many others did, to cast my vote, that did not deter me or others in the same position from being atwitter about the election.

The most popular topic of conversation wasn’t about the incoming government, their majority, or a dissection of who is presented with which portfolio. Discussions centered around the young. Young politicians, that is.

Unlike in India, the celebrations here did not spill into the streets. Instead, friends gathered in each other’s homes to roast and toast the results. Their roasts obviously alluded to the bulk of this year’s line up – the seasoned politicians. The toast of town however, was the sprinkling of first-time young politicians.

With obvious fascination, we had watched the process from far away. While we didn’t personally attend any political rallies, we certainly read all about them. And from that emerged the most interesting observation: that a young politician seemed to be getting ready to lead the country and like everyone, whether in India or abroad, we simply had to wait and watch. The most charismatic young politician du jour is none other than Rahul Gandhi, 38, the latest of his dynasty to join Indian politics.

Granted, most of the young politicians, like Gandhi, come from political families. But, having said that, they are all very well educated (either in India or abroad) and a number of them have worked with private corporations before they joined Indian politics.

“Give them a chance,” said the director of a film club in Abu Dhabi. “Don’t give them portfolios but make them deputies or assistants so they can get some experience before going on to more senior positions.”

How or why it was that these elections saw such an exemplary crop of young professionals turn into politicians has been the topic of conversation for many long evenings spent on the beach at the Corniche.

It may have been a combination of factors but my friends like to believe the terrorist attacks on Mumbai and the recession coincided with an entire generation coming of age.

Whatever the cause may be, the results suggest to us that there is hope for the future.

Bollywood bounces back

They said it would last a month at the most. But Bollywood’s latest strike dragged its feet for twice that long, making its presence, or rather absence, felt not only in Indian theatres but in far away places – all the way from Dublin to Dubai.

What of bhangra drum beats and larger-than-life song and dance numbers? What of villainous characters and sweet mothers? Of beautiful starlets and moustached actors? It was looking like a bleak summer without any of the above playing at a theatre near you. But that changed this weekend, and film distributors are rushing to stock up on reels in hopes that the musical-starved masses will be lining up once again.

In this most recent dispute, Bollywood producers, who finance the films, and western-style multiplex theatre owners were in disagreement over how to split earnings. Initially, the producers wanted a 50/50 split of box-office takings, but the theatre owners rejected it. New agreements put in place give producers a 50 per cent cut in the first week of a film’s showing, which decreases in subsequent weeks. But owners said they would rather see a Hollywood-style system in place where the payments are based on ticket sales, thus on the performance of each film.

Whatever the arguments, the strike left a void in the lives of those who care even a little bit about commercial Hindi films. It also disrupted my movie-watching routine, which I hope to be able to resume soon. Once a month, I go through the long list of releases and earmark at least one Bollywood film playing near me. I don’t always pick the best of the lot – my choice depends on a number of things. My mood might be for comedy, a romantic thriller or a period drama. In turn, it would be balanced out by whatever Hollywood was offering that month. For example, I would have liked to pair Terminator Salvation and all its intensity with something like Jab We Met (When We Met), a laid-back look at love and friendship.

My hopes are now not entirely dashed. The summer blockbusters are coming shortly and I cannot help but admit that I am looking forward to watching Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor share screen time with Sylvester Stallone and Denise Richards in Kambakth Ishq – a story about an Indian supermodel and a Hollywood stunt man.

After all, a good movie is a good movie, regardless of when it is released. I just hope that they hurry up.

Inside juice on the mango

The Alfonso has arrived. For lovers of the fruit, who are well aware of the fleeting season, this is the perfect time to suck on a mango. Or slice it, dice it, shake it into a lassi or simply inhale the sweet yet warm aroma that has filled the fruit section of every supermarket and vegetable shop in town.

Since March, I have watched the slow trickle of Indian mangoes make their way into people’s hands. There has been the added pleasure of the green, unripe, sour mango eaten in a variety of ways, including with a dash of cayenne and salt or with cumin, salt and green chillies. However, I digress.

This weekend, I found myself hovering over my kitchen sink with one of two ripe Alfonso mangoes I had bought earlier in the week. The Alfonso is easily considered the king of the mango varietals. It is also the most expensive kind, with the most export appeal. When the US lifted its ban on the import of the fruit after more than 18 years in 2007, major North American media followed the journey of the first crate that arrived on the American shores. (The ban was lifted once India installed irradiation machines that were able to kill weevils without damage to the fruit.)

However, a debate about which among the hundreds of other varieties is the best is a war of words can erupt regularly anywhere – from posh dinner parties to early-morning market walks – from the months of March to May, when the best of the juicy mangoes finally come into their own. By June, the desperation sets in enough to want to cling to the last of the seasonal offerings and people tend to buy whatever is still on offer. All of which is to say that Indians (whether abroad or in India) are keenly aware of the comings and goings of the mango season.

After I came to the realisation that I was still cupping a chilled mango above my sink waiting for it to reach room temperature, I decided it was time. If entertaining, I would’ve sliced the mango in three, with the skin intact and the pit in the middle and then diced it like an avocado. That would mean sacrificing a lot, including a good portion of the thick, delicious juices that start flowing at the mere touch of anything. So I dug in. I peeled the skin with my fingers and exposed the juice-laden pulp that I sunk my teeth into and then watched with fascination as juice collected in my teeth marks. Then I did the unthinkable. I slurped my fingers and wrists in order to manage every bit of the trickle and thought of the British adage, that, indeed, there is no polite way to enjoy a mango.

Sounds of home

Last weekend, I found myself in a rare moment of exhaustion brought on by sheer joy.

For the past three years, the money transfer company Western Union has organised a series of singing competitions in workers’ camps in Dubai.

My friend and I arrived at the Khansaheb camp in Jebel Ali after a series of misadventures, including getting lost in the maze of workers’ camps. After many helpful and courteous directions by bhaiyas, or brothers, who I rolled down my windows and shouted to, we found ourselves parked beside an unused building.

From there, two workers emerged dressed in their best: bright red shirts, slicked-back hair, jeans and polished shoes, which were promptly made dusty thanks to the sandstorm we created while trying to park the car. They told us we were in the wrong location and offered to take us to where the auditions were being held for camp ka champ (the camp’s champion).

We moved our gear from the back to the boot, and the workers took the back seats. Off we went, except the people in every vehicle approaching us kept honking and gesturing wildly. Before we hit the paved roads, and after almost 150 metres of driving on a dusty road, we realised that the boot had been flapping the entire time. Both workers promptly jumped out of the car to help find anything that may have fallen out. Nothing had, so we all climbed back in. They brought us to the door of the auditions and melted into the crowd.

We were in for a massive treat. It turns out Khansaheb camp is the defending champion, so the workers were serious about putting their best foot forward.

Auditions take place in seven camps, and about 16 people are shortlisted. Quarter-finals in each camp narrow the list down to the best two people, who then take part in semifinals. In the final, the best three camp teams have a musical showdown on stage.

So here we were, listening to complete duds and absolute stars. They sang mostly Bollywood songs, and ballads about leaving loved ones behind or returning home triumphantly after a battle were obvious camp favourites. At the urging of the three judges, some of the workers sang “fast numbers” or perky songs that got more than 100 workers on their feet dancing, whistling and applauding in the canteen.

The grand prize is of course a grand sum of money (last year it was 10,000 rupees), but participants were further motivated to win for the sake of surprising their families: whichever team came out on top would, courtesy of the remittance company, have the winning sum sent to their families at home.

As the evening set in, the camp was filled with the most delicious smells. It was like visiting 10 different regions of India. One man put it simply: “We keep the memories alive in two ways. Singing and cooking.”

The NRI vote

As the marathon Indian elections come to an end, I am ashamed to admit that I have never voted. Having left India before I was eligible to exercise my rights, I’ve returned only for holidays, none of which coincided with the election season.

I am even more embarrassed to admit that I don’t even own a voter ID card, considered this season’s most fashionable accessory as the country drags its feet through federal elections spread over five weeks.

All this has led my nephew and niece to believe I am apathetic because, while the rest of the family – parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the driver, the cook and the cleaner – decided to get some indelible ink on their fingers to prove their stand, my not-so-politically-engaged self was busy elsewhere. Rather, in another country.

Parts of my family that are scattered across India and abroad have learnt to hone in on those who still live in the epicentre of political gossip, Kolkata, where relatives have spent countless evenings dissecting the elections.

Idle political gossip dominates everyday life: It is not unusual for men to disappear from their homes each evening to visit street corners, sip tea from the roadside vendor together and launch into their tirades.

Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, SMS or the humble e-mail, we looked forward to reports of their banter.

On Twitter: Rise of regionalism but my Boro dada (elder brother) thinks it’s complicated. Whatever. Coalitions are here to stay. Bring on the alliances.

An SMS: If you have NDTV, turn it on, now! now! now! (I don’t but the New Delhi-based news channel has recently launched services in the Middle East.)

Unlike most Western countries, India does not have provisions for its citizens who live aboard to mail in their ballots, which is usually done through embassies. So there is little to do except influence a vote. Colourful stories abound from the labour camps, where workers have taken to calling their families at home and asking them to vote for their favourite parties or the ones they think may influence their welfare abroad.

In my case, not so much. While I’ve had quite the thread of communication with loved ones in India about where political parties stand and what their manifestos are this year – especially with the economic climate, traffic congestion and taxes – I wouldn’t dare tell them who to vote for.

Or as my cousin posted on Facebook: Snehashish Bhattacharya voted but you’ll never know for who. He believes in keeping the peace at home.

What festivals are made of

They came, they rocked, they conquered. Granted, Womad brought together some of the best acts from across the globe, but the South Asians were particularly entertaining and enthralling. It started with Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali from Pakistan, followed by Dhol Foundation from the UK and India and finished with Trilok Gurtu, a tabla maestro from India.

Those who had never heard of the nephews of the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the revered singer and musician who introduced the world to qawwalis – vocal music of the Sufi mystics – were left mesmerised and slightly puzzled at the duelling vocals and spontaneous outbursts on the first night of the festival. The qawwali group was formed a year after Khan’s untimely death, when his teenaged nephews took to the 1998 Womad festival in Reading, England. A decade later, they tore hearts open in Abu Dhabi.

The word was out. A large group of Pakistanis gathered in front of the stage. Most of them had come in trucks, some ferrying their friends from Dubai. In their shalwar kameez and bare feet, they formed a circle and danced with abandon.

The second night proved equally scintillating. After Dhol Foundation performed, the group told the crowd about how it came to be labelled as a band from the UK and India. Johnny Kalsi’s parents emigrated from India to Kenya, then to England, where Kalsi was born. But as a turban-wearing Sikh, Kalsi often faced discrimination and derogatory comments in school, where he was told to go back to India. Since he had never been, Kalsi felt he had one choice: he drew closer to his faith and never forsook his turban. The experience also brought him closer to music – to the dhol or the Indian drum and to Bhangra, the lively folk dance of Punjab, where his ancestors come from. Thus was born a band that combines Celtic tunes with Bhangra beats.

On Friday night, Kalsi and his drummer boys did more than entertain. They taught a few grannies and toddlers to dance the Bhangra.

“Put your arms in the air like you were pushing up the sky and then jump and shout, ‘Hey’,” he said. The crowd did just that, following the rhythms he made on the 15 kilo drum strapped around him.

Sure, the super stars were out at the festival – from Khaled and Mohamed Mounir to Youssou N’Dour – but for me, it was these boys that stole the show.