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.

Bollywood knows no bounds

They say Bollywood is universal. Spending some time in the Far East certainly brought home the point. After two weeks in the hills of Ubud and beaches of Bali in Indonesia, the wide appeal of Indian cinema gave me a whole new perspective on how entrenched the culture of Bollywood has become.

The West has apparently been the last to catch up on the fad.Long before the Oscars, Bollywood films comfortably lodged themselves across Asia and some parts of Europe, including Russia, during the Cold War. Meanwhile, the South-east Asian countries, with their vibrant mix of cultures, were also growing equally attached to fast food from America and Bollywood films from India.

Last year, it puzzled me to see Shah Rukh Khan, 42, the reigning superstar of Bollywood films being “knighted” in Malaysia. He was bestowed one of the country’s highest honours and he received it dressed in traditional Malaysian male attire – in a black baju Melayu, samping and songkok. The Governor of Malacca’s award, which carries the title datuk, was conferred on him after his 2001 film, One 2 Ka 4, which boosted the profile of the state as a destination for tourists.

And the fact that the deputy prime minister of Malaysia’s wife is a big fan only goes to show that when unbound from the shackles of language, everyone likes their musicals with a hint of spice.

Putu, a wood carving artist in the village of Mas, near Ubud, told me that when he feels like having a good cry, or wants to simply be inspired by tales of glorious love or the triumph of good over evil, he simply sits down for three hours and watches a Bollywood flick.

He also told me I looked like Rani Mukherjee, a slightly pudgy, short, dark-skinned Indian actress with big eyes and an impressive number of hits. He almost fainted in shock when I listed the number of Bollywood actors I had interviewed in the past year for The National.

Then we had a conversation in Hindi strung together using words from the titles of films he has watched over a dozen times. This consisted mostly of him telling me he was Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum (Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad, 2001) or that Dil To Pagal Hai (The Heart is Mad, 1997). Overwhelmingly, the films featured Shah Rukh Khan.

Finally, he asked me to convey the best of wishes of the Balinese people to Bollywood. “We may speak Bahasa Bali,” he said, “but we understand the language of Bollywood even when we don’t.”

Style of two cities

It was a fashion face-off. The last few weeks saw Indian fashion come out in full force in the nation’s top two cities. While Delhi hosted the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, Mumbai shook it up with the Lakme Fashion Week.

Even though they had a common goal – promoting Indian designers and their contemporary wear collections – they had different agendas. While Delhi’s catwalks were awash with new names at a new venue, Mumbai, the land of Bollywood, did what it does best – it brought out the celebrities.

Not to be outdone, Delhi did the same, with a twist. The capital saw a change of venue, from Pragati Maidan, a sport complex that doubles as a venue for exhibitions. They moved to the Hotel Intercontinental Eros in the heart of the city. Of course, the traffic was a nightmare but the hotel came alive with designers such as Priyanka Dhanjal, a recent graduate of the prestigious National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). She showed off a well-received first collection in browns, dusty oranges and ochre. And while Piya Nayyar’s menswear garnered praise, stalwarts like JJ Valaya pulled their weight by getting 1980s actors such as Kabir Bedi and the elegant Dimple Kapadia to strut their stuff in their designs.

Meanwhile, Ashima Leena’s collection was highlighted by the child stars from Slumdog Millionaire, who paraded a couple of her special pieces.

As Delhi stayed local, Mumbai went global. Mai Mumbai in Marathi was a glittering evening of international supermodels and designers who strutted for a charity that will help those affected by last November’s Mumbai terrorist attacks. So it came as no surprise when the crowds gasped as Naomi Campbell walked down the runaway in a glittering black and gold sari by Sabyasachi. It was Mumbai’s way of saying, “we’re back in business”.

The success of Indian contemporary wear can be attributed to a number of factors, including globalisation that saw the launch of India Vogue in 2007, greater spending power and brand awareness, but most of all, to the stringent standards that NIFT has managed to maintain.

India’s home-grown talent has yet to make a global presence but it is no longer unusual to see a smattering of Indian designers at international shows. For example, Manish Arora’s autumn/winter collection debuted at the Paris Fashion Week this year. Whatever the case may be, contemporary design with Indian flair is here to stay.

Bringing bhangra to the masses

At the request of my friend and her birthday party, where the theme was to come dressed as rock stars, I donned a turban and became her favourite Indian pop star. My friend is American. The pop star is Indian. They met on YouTube. Even though she cannot understand a word of what he says, she finds him entertaining and hilarious, and, she loves his music. He is a bhangra artist.

Bhangra is a catchy folk music genre from the plains of Punjab, which lends itself to equally energetic dancing – which is why, partly, it has gone mainstream in the past decade.

However, it wasn’t YouTube that introduced him to the world (although that has helped immensely). In fact, it was a group of Indo-British musicians growing up in England such as Bally Sagoo, Punjabi MC and Nitin Sawhney who experimented with fusion and introduced it when working as a DJ at day jams, a phenomenon that took North America and Europe by storm in the early Nineties, when children of Indian parents would go to a club in the afternoon rather than sneak out at night to discotheques.

While Sagoo and Sawhney sampled bits of Indian music, weaving them with beats and creating an entirely new genre of music, Punjabi MC mixed bhangra with rap.

Some of their samples came from artists such as Daler Mehndi (my friend’s YouTube discovery). Mehndi comes from a Punjabi village and a family of lorry drivers. He sings in Punjabi and is the kind of jovial character that, during his live performances – whether in India or abroad – can have an entire stadium packed with people shaking their shoulders and raising their hands in the air, or as my friend says, “screwing the light bulb”.

After Indian cuisine and Bollywood, Indian pop culture has slowly but inevitably entered the mainstream. To his credit, Mehndi did not start in Bollywood singing playback songs.

Instead, he grew out of his village and onto stage shows and into music videos when MTV and Channel V were launched in India in the early Nineties, when Indians got their first taste of cable television.

And as the popularity of YouTube grew, well-meaning fans started uploading his videos for friends and family abroad, who still wanted a slice of modern India but had few avenues to find it. Of course, all this – cable TV in India and the day jams in England – were happening at the same time, which led to the inevitable tipping point: Mehndi is now one of the best known faces of Indian pop.

At my friend’s party, after I imitated his dance moves, quite a few of our American and British friends immediately recognised my costume.

They called the costume out by name, saying simply: “Hey, look, you’re dressed like Daler Mehndi.”

Perfect on paper

The twists and turns of life are curious, especially when you consider that with a single email you can go from being prized matrimonial material to a mere matchmaker. There it was, blinking at me from my mailbox: the matrimonial resumé of a friend.

At first, voices from the past raced through my head: random grandmothers of friends who had warned of that fine line between blushing bride and spinster.

Too fat, too old, too dark, too ambitious, too picky. The list can go on forever. But I held it all back and read the email carefully. It was from a friend who had relocated from Toronto to Bangalore. A success in every right, except for a requisite husband.

She wasn’t calling on me because I was a foregone conclusion and could forward her my book of rejected contacts. Instead, she was appealing to me in my job as a journalist.

Every day, she explained, I met strangers. I talked to and assessed people for a living. Except she didn’t quite factor in that this job isn’t as glamorous as she made it out to be. Sure, there was that occasional invite to a notable gathering but I spent most of my days chasing fire engines and talking to people who would not pass muster as potential bridegrooms.

In any case, I took a good look at this curriculum vitae. It was much like a professional one, except it contained far more intimate information, which, in turn, could be tweaked, depending on who was receiving a copy.

For example, the version for the real matchmaker – likely an astrologer or priest – contains the alignment of planets. If she were using online matrimonial sites or an advertisement in the papers, it may describe her as “wheatish.” An aunt would get a much more toned down version than mine.

But these are challenging times for a modern woman, be she Indian or otherwise. Apart from juggling an education and a job while being mindful of tradition, she also has to factor in other things such as matrimony.

My friend’s parents, having invested heavily in her education are rather proud of her achievements and had always hoped their daughter would marry someone of their choice, which by extension, meant someone who was vetted by most members of her family. In spite of years abroad, she chose to respect their wishes and her culture but she had to compromise on something. Thus the unconventional search. After all, she said, once she found a match, it wouldn’t matter how she got there as long as “he” was there.

Swapping stories

Pairing a book with a person is like setting people up. You take into account their personalities, their interests, their sense of humour and even whom they’d rather spend time with. And even if it’s a book, it’s not just any book. It has to be worth their time and keep them engaged.

I was excited to visit the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair last week. The event drew some of the best authors from India, such as Amitav Ghosh, who was as charming and insightful as his books.

But I did not discover his works until much later in life. And like most good books that I’ve read, he did eventually come highly recommended. However, my earliest foray into literature was influenced by my mother, who was partial to Russian literature. She introduced me to the idea of exchanging books with friends. It started with her. I’d loan her one of my comic books and in turn she’d let me read one of her “grown-up” books, such as a collection of Tolstoy’s short stories.

At that time, Indian contemporary fiction did not enjoy the same appeal that it does today. There were dusty classics on the shelves or translated works of Indian authors who wrote in regional languages.

In the early 1990s, the world woke up to Indian literature written in English by Indian authors. Not only were they exquisite pieces of work describing the rich details of life, but they were also written in a form of English that the Indians had developed over centuries – colloquial yet global.

Over the years, I have discovered another realm of Indian literature that I have grown partial to. And in the same way that I swapped books with my mother, now I lend them to friends. They are written by Indian expatriates or first or second-generation Indian authors residing in foreign countries.

For example, I have reserved Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest novel, Unaccustomed Earth, for a British photographer friend of mine. Lahiri (who won a Pulitzer for her first work of fiction) writes brilliant short stories, and here she combines three of them to chart the life of an Indian girl and boy who grow up in the US. He becomes a photographer and they meet and part over and over again. It’s the kind of convoluted tale, filled with intricate cultural references, that I have come to identify with.

But that is not to say that I pair all of my books with my friends. Some I keep for myself. Or in the case of Ghosh’s latest novel, Sea of Poppies, which takes place in Calcutta (where I was born), I’ve put it aside hoping to lure my mother into swapping it with one from her collection: Perhaps Maxim Gorky’s Mother, which deserves a second reading.

Surprising moments

For my birthday three years ago, my father gave me an autographed copy of APJ Abdul Kalam’s autobiography, Wings of Fire. He mailed it to Canada as part of my birthday package.

The book was a fantastic read. It told the journey of a man who grew up in poverty, whose father rented boats for a living. Kalam realised early in life that one way to save money was to become a vegetarian. He was also inspired by his mother and teachers in school. His goal in life, as idealistic as it might have been, was to excel in whatever he did.

Kalam, now 77, is a scientist and engineer who rose to prominence for his role as a strategic adviser to the government when India conducted its first nuclear tests in 1998. From 2002-07, he served a term as India’s president, earning the nickname “the people’s president”. He remains one of the country’s most popular presidents to date. He has also penned several books in which he outlines his vision for India and its future generations.

This week, I met him in person.

Before, I imagined him as a tough, larger-than life man who made grand speeches. In real life, Kalam, is frail and slight with bushy eyebrows and meticulously parted grey hair.

But he does have grand visions for the world. A man who erased any doubts about India’s nuclear capability, he now dreams of a world in which countries prosper because they help each other grow. Through technological collaborations and common markets, he believes the world will be rid of poverty. He thinks that peaceful nations will only come about if they help each other.

All this was inspired when he met a little girl and stopped to ask about her dreams. “I want to live in a developed India,” she told him.

Given his fondness for talking to children, it comes as no surprise that Kalam speaks like a schoolteacher, often stopping to ask if I understand his scientific explanations about how to advance date farming or source clean energy.

He makes me repeat the answers and declares with flourish that I an a good student. When I sheepishly tell him that I’ve been a journalist for close to a decade, he laughs at me.

“You still get 100 per cent marks for being a good student in front of me,” he says.

These are the kind of moments that surprise a journalist when she sits down with a world leader – and the kind of moments a journalist lives for.

Hidden culinary treasures

After having grown tired of jostling for reservations for brunch (and dinners) at posh restaurants located in five-star hotels, my friends and I decided to embark on something we should’ve done when we first arrived in Abu Dhabi more than a year ago.

Every city has it. And everyone who has lived in a city long enough to care knows about it. The famed hole in the wall. The one place you can go to for delicious yet cheap food. And repeat that experience all over again till you become friends with the servers and the cook.

In the past year, there have only been unconfirmed reports of delicious Indian fare found in the nooks and crannies of the city. So I set out last week to test three places most brought up in conversations. The city, it turns out, is rich with great eateries of a number of cuisines. Filipino, Chinese, Arabic, rip-offs of American fast food chains, and of course, Indian.

There are plenty that call themselves canteens – ones where men who live here on their own and hardly have time to cook, go to. These are places with frugal and set menus. Everything is reasonably priced. But that is not to say that the food is not delicious.

Take Red Valley Restaurant as a prime example. It is, like all the others, hard to find in the hustle and bustle of the city, framed on one side by a large mosque, construction on the other, in between 4th and 6th streets.

There were three items listed on the menu, which was stuck to the wall. You couldn’t miss it as you entered. We ordered everything. And so found ourselves overwhelmed with biryani, chapli kebab (a speciality from Afghanistan as well as Peshawar, Pakistan), a basket of hearty Afghan bread, some chicken gravy to dip it into, and another plateful of stewed and mildly spiced lentils. The grand total was Dh35, which included bottles of water and soft drinks. To say the dinner was a success is an understatement. I haven’t tasted such delicious kebabs since my friend’s mother from Peshawar came to visit us in Canada more than three years ago and made a special batch.

A few days later, I found myself staring at Evergreen Restaurant, right next to the bright lights of El Dorado Cinema complex – a one-stop shop for Tamil and Malayalam movies. Evergreen’s speciality is to feed those who are either in a rush to see a movie or get home after one. The counter located outside the shop is the best bet for Indian street food. Try the Gujarati style dhokla and pani puris – deep fried balls of dough stuffed with potatoes and tamarind water.

Finally, my favourite of all favourites is Chappan Bhog. You can order everything on the menu (as I did systematically through several visits) and nothing is mediocre. This is north and south Indian street food at its best. And their fresh lime sodas are worth every bead of sweat that you will generate trying to find your way there.

The arrangement of love

My earliest memories are of Indian weddings. One particular instance still stands out, where relatives were intent on matchmaking a cousin of mine at a family wedding. She was at that time looking through a handful of suitors, so my aunts offered friendly advice.

There were also arguments in favour of an arranged marriage, which I scoffed at. While some of their points make sense, others still sit uneasily. Arranged marriages are made to avoid as many clashes as possible, my soft-spoken aunt explained. Economics, culture, schooling, even a family’s affinity to cricket matters, she half-joked. “I am crazy about basketball and don’t care about cricket,” I said. Cricket is not a girl-friendly sport and neither are tomboys a marriage-friendly prospect.

“Then we’ll just have to wait for you to outgrow your childishness,” she said, but it stuck; that an alternate sport didn’t fit into an arranged marriage was heartbreaking.

A while ago, we were on the phone and she gently enquired about my marriage prospects. I reminded her of my love for sport and its unsuitability to arranged marriage. Since my cousin’s wedding, I had gone on to study abroad and had worked as a journalist around the world for almost a decade. “You are lucky that you go out and talk to strangers for a living. How many other girls in our family do you know who do that?” None.

Times have changed, but even so, tradition remains. Even though they are increasingly visible in the job market, most Indian women still live at home until they marry. And they usually marry someone their parents choose, or, family approval is the foremost predicament in a “love marriage”. “It’s not that girls don’t meet boys,” she said. “They just don’t meet the ones they ought to marry.”

Which is where I begged to differ. From colleges to offices to parties, I knew friends and cousins who were happily exploring their own options, and they were doing it with little or no assistance from families.

Of course, who they formally introduced to the family was still ultimately judged by the same set of aunts over cups of steaming tea. From a balding patch to whether or not the potential bride or groom had chosen to live with his parents or her in-laws were all burning factors.

While little had changed in the scrutiny from my aunts, there was a marked difference in those willing to take such a bold step. When my cousin’s bride-to-be was introduced to the family, she shook everyone’s hands while wearing a pair of jeans instead of a traditional salwar kameez or sari.

Another gave his daughter a Muslim name even though his father, my uncle, is a staunch Hindu. Both cases caused much debate and hand-wringing from the elder set of relatives. Then there was me, the unknown factor.“You are different. You always have been. You have gone and done things that we don’t understand,” said my aunt.

Maybe. But rules of scrutiny and approval would still apply to my choice.

A celebration of spring

The planning started early, sometimes as much as six months prior, which meant that if my cousins and I were ever bored of doing one of the many things our parents disapproved of, we would plan the Holi assault.

Known as the festival of colours, Holi heralds the coming of spring. Hindu communities celebrate it with songs, dances and tributes to the gods. But everyone comes together to play with colour, playfully throwing dry powders and coloured water on each other. Traditionally, these were derived from herbal extracts of indigo, turmeric and saffron.

But my cousins and I strategised about synthetic colours, water balloons and water guns. Until my grandfather passed away, it was family tradition to meet at his house to play Holi.

After the elders of the family had finished receiving a stream of visitors, who politely applied a little bit of red powder on each others’ cheeks, they would feast on sweets. Then they would nap, and, for us children, the neighbourhood became an urban fortress.

My cousins and I would take up positions depending on size and throwing accuracy. We waited quietly on trees and rooftops with impressive piles of water balloons meant for the straggling visitor who dared to wake our grandfather from his afternoon nap. As the youngest cousin with an average strike, I was always placed on a tree nearest to the house.

Of course, the straggler deserved every balloon that drenched and humiliated him, and our imposing grandfather never objected. I think he secretly enjoyed knowing that his legion of grandchildren was keeping watch.

Then one year, my grandfather stayed up to receive a visitor. I can’t remember who it was, but I know I didn’t hit him. By the time he reached my position near the house, he was drenched. My mother’s fury was such that she dragged me through the house by my ear and poured cold water on me as I stood, fully clothed and shivering. My cousins were made to stand in a line and look shamefacedly at my grandfather and his guest.

Later, my grandfather slipped me some chocolate. I think he knew that I had taken the fall for my cousins.

With his death, everything changed. No one wanted to host a group of hooligans anymore. There were a couple of attempts to recreate the drama but we were too grown up to stay perched on trees all day.

But every year, on Holi, no matter where I am in the world, my ear tingles with embarrassment and anticipation.

Same, same but different

Even though Abu Dhabi and Toronto are connected by a direct, non-stop flight, little is known about each city, no matter which way you travel – and that travelling takes a good 12 hours, and it’s over Greenland. So while mutual cultural understanding may be lost over the Arctic ice caps, it is amusing to answer the question, “How is it there?”

How does one describe Abu Dhabi in a sentence? Especially since the geography of the city takes up the first minute. Its vicinity to Dubai helps, but that only piles on the stereotypes.

It is softer, I found myself saying. Not quainter or quieter but softer. That didn’t answer questions such as, “Do people walk the streets in the height of summer? Do you? Are you allowed to?”

So I borrowed one of my favourite expressions from the streets of Abu Dhabi to explain my expatriate life to friends and family in Toronto. Taxi drivers use it, shop keepers use it, and even my tailor – so why not me?

“Same, same but different,” I said, describing the similarities in lifestyle but the difference in basic culture.

From the difference in currency to how I greeted those around me, there’s been a perceptible shift, which is hard to explain because it is embedded in the eccentricities of daily life. In its simplest form, I had gone from hopping on the subway (politely standing in queue to get on) to hailing a taxi (trying to elbow my way through those who stole an approaching vehicle) every day to get to work.

The past year in Abu Dhabi did occasionally make me homesick for Toronto. I missed the changing of the seasons, organic bazaars and the downtown culture – from the art galleries and impromptu musicians on street corners to eateries. I missed multiple public transport options: streetcar, bus or subway?

I also missed the Canadian Rockies and cottage country. The lushness of Canada and its lakes brought home the point when I was a bridesmaid at my friend’s wedding, which took place in a tent in the heart of cottage country in Long Sault, a town bordering the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. The maple leaves were already turning brilliant hues of yellow and red and nightfall brought a chill in the air that warned of winter. The wedding dinner menu consisted of seasonal and locally grown produce and the biscotti, placed beside each plate, had been baked by her neighbour – things that can’t be recreated in the Middle East, not even with fake snow and an indoor dome.

When I decided to move to the Middle East, I knew there were compromises to be made. I was going to miss watching my nephews grow up and being part of my friends’ lives, but as the bride and I sat exchanging notes about our lives in the past few months, she said that this was a small price I paid for adventure – of discovering life in another culture. Indeed.

Lessons from the road

When I was a child, one of my mother’s favourite philosophies was: keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

And with that advice firmly tucked in my head, I have spent almost half my life travelling and living in various countries, sometimes adapting easily while at other times being forced to keep an eye open.

Here is what I learned during my voyages:

1) Try local delicacies. They are often the cheapest and most nutritious food that is available. This would explain why my comfort foods now range from dhal (lentil) and rice, to maple syrup and hummus with pitta. That is not to say I’ve tried them all at once.

2) Mind your Ps and Qs, especially during travel. It is stating the obvious from the manual of manners, but to be gracious goes a long way. It doesn’t matter if you’re stranded at the border customs in the US or being detained by Indian airport authorities who make you sift through your luggage before they touch it. As a journalist carrying all manner of electronic equipment, I understand that I may scream “extra interrogation”, and you can add to that metal-ended stilettos that set off alarms or a misplaced nail file. What matters most is that you smile.

3) Shop for bargains. That’s easy here, but a supposed no-no in the western hemisphere. Not so. What I learned in New Delhi, I employed in New York. Where I saw opportunity, I dived in. Flea markets, vintage stores, organic food markets – the list goes on. In Abu Dhabi, try the Hamdan Centre or the fish market at Zayed Port. If you do it right, the savings will leave you breathless.

4) Ask for directions but follow your gut. It feels strange admitting that requesting guidance from strangers can go gravely wrong, but let it be known that little good has come from vague advice during travel, be it through rain, sand or snow. My favourite memory is from Al Ain, the land of endless roundabouts, where my friends and I wandered around the Jebel Hafeet mountains, attempting to get on the road to the top, because we thought it was better to listen to a man on the street than follow directions on a map. So off we went, following directions that went: “seedha, seedha, seedha, halas”; or “straight, straight, straight, the end”. Except we went in circles around the roundabouts for two hours. That was one time when I did let my brains fall out instead of merely keeping an open mind.

Futures put to the test

Pretty much all Indian kids in Class 10 and 12 who are taking their public exams are quaking in their boots.

Every year, March heralds the arrival of board exams, a term synonymous with late-night cramming and much finger biting over something that will make or break careers. This is similar to the GCSE and A level exams in England but much more brutal in its execution.

In a country obsessed with turning its children into doctors, lawyers and engineers, these exams are seen as precursors of potential students (Class 10) studying towards choosing a stream that will prepare them for pre-medical exams. For those in the science stream in Class 12, they’re looking for a spot in medical and engineering schools.

The Indian curriculum is followed by a number of schools in this country, and one only has to look at the faces of harried parents to understand its true effect.

Your grades in Class 10 will determine whether you qualify for one of three streams – science, commerce or arts, with science being the most prestigious. And depending on how they fare in academia for the next two years, legions of 18-year-olds will qualify as future doctors and engineers.

Having been through the system, I know it is tough and fiercely competitive. It’s the stuff that nightmares are made of.

I used to be one of those kids that others hated for barely cracking a book but managing to pass with modest grades. But that sort of luck was supposed to run out when you sat for a public exam with millions of others. And so every year, journalists would gather in front of schools and interview traumatised students staggering out of exam halls after having expunged every thing they knew about calculus, genetics or Shakespeare. Inevitably, they would also capture the tears.

But no one teases you about crying after the public exams because entire generations have grown up with that disappointment of knowing they may have just blown their chance at a respectable career.

To this day, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, clammy from a panicked dream of staring at the mathematics exam from Class 10 or physics from Class 12 (my lowest scores).

Even though my grades were decent enough in Class 10 to get me into the science stream and thus several pre-med exams, I was eventually talked out of medical school by my father, a doctor, who recognised early on that I asked too many questions.

But the nightmare of one of the toughest exams in the world remains so intense that I wouldn’t even wish it on my enemies.

Neither here nor there

When Aravind Adiga was awarded the 2008 Man Booker Prize, for The White Tiger, it wasn’t the fact that it was his debut novel, or that he was one the youngest writers to receive the prestigious prize, or that he is Indian that was noteworthy.

Who he is and what he represents is more interesting: since Salman Rushdie got an entire subcontinent of writers noticed with his magic realism and ability to win multiple Bookers, others have followed suit.

While Rushdie and the exalted authors Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai are noted for their fantastic prose and equally rich imagination, Adiga takes an approach closer to social commentary. He has looked at India’s social ills with a disaffected eye and penned an irreverent portrait of the economic gap between the haves and have notes. In doing so, he has put a sizeable dent in arguments about India’s growing prosperity.

Poverty still exits, and its ugliness blights the lives of those who live it. Adiga does not pity his characters. Instead, he designs the sort of robust, shrewd protagonist that few authors dare create for fear of being criticised about their lack of empathy for the poor.

The White Tiger is about a man who will use any means necessary to fulfil his dream of escaping an impoverished village life for success in the big city. The means involve the stuff of the middle class’ worst nightmares: the murder of a boss, building antireligious sentiment, and other such social and ethical mischief that regularly fills the crime sections of Indian newspapers.

The author’s discerning eye allows him to achieve such adventures. Adiga is a product of neither here nor there. He is the face of a growing generation of Indians who study and live abroad (he studied at Columbia University and Oxford and lived in Australia) before returning to work in India (Adiga worked as a correspondent for Time magazine and lived in Delhi; he currently resides in Mumbai).

And he proves that to best observe one’s surroundings, one can travel the world and return. It is no longer the case that where you belong is a place on a map as much as an idea in your head. It is from this place that Adiga has written his stunning first novel.

Coping with terrorism, quite often

NEW DELHI // About 40 hours after gunmen took Mumbai hostage, I arrived in Delhi, which was fighting its own fear. The streets of Delhi, usually choked with traffic, were empty.

“Don’t stay in a five-star hotel, don’t go to the mall, or a cinema theatre, Madam, and don’t ask me to drive you to a temple,” said my driver. “And please also don’t go to see the Red Fort [a popular tourist attraction].”

So I asked him what he would recommend.

“The parliament house,” he said. “They’ve already been there so it is safe.”

He was being sarcastic.

In 2001, terrorists stormed the seat of the Indian government and a gun battle ensued, which left six people and four gunmen dead.

He, like most Delhites, could relate to what was unfolding in Mumbai. Less than two months ago, five synchronised blasts had rocked some of Delhi’s busiest shopping areas and neighbourhoods. At that time, he was en route with a passenger to his residence. Instead, they parked on the side of the road and waited for more than four hours before they could drive again.

In that time, both he and the passenger made frantic calls to their family and could not get through because phone lines were jammed. Now he listened to radio updates about Mumbai and occasionally shook his head, while managing to get through to friends in Mumbai. He had tried the day before but faced with jammed phone lines again he had given up till the next morning.

“We have already had our share this year,” he said. “I hope they don’t come after us again.”

I was told that the night before I arrived most hotels had hastily shut their doors after rumours spread across Delhi that the Taj Palace hotel in the city was also under siege. That morning, even the doorman used a metal detector to scan my luggage and me before admitting us into the lobby.

Driving through Connaught Place and listening to reports about how the Mumbai police were ill equipped to handle the crisis, I noticed that did not seem to be the case in Delhi. Most military personnel (including some plainclothes officers) posted in front of government villas chatted in groups with AK-47s casually slung over their shoulders.

Even at the four-star hotels, police checked the underside of vehicles using a mirror and looked through the trunk of cars. Police barricades were set up in front of hotel entrances and exits as well on the roads, reducing a three-lane way to two-lanes.

I had arrived from the south Indian city of Chennai, a two-hour flight from Delhi, but it seemed completely untouched by events unfolding in Mumbai.

While I breezed through security checks in Chennai, the heightened security watch was evident on arrival in Delhi. The domestic arrival lounge was full of heavily armed men in uniform, walking around with AK-47s, while undercover officers and some airline staff randomly picked people and questioned them about the purpose of their visit to Delhi.

With Mumbai to the west, Delhi to the north and Chennai to the south forming a triangle of India’s most dynamic metropolitan cities – which are connected by more than a dozen flights every day – Chennai has never been hit by a terrorist attack.

Unlike Delhi, FM radio stations in Chennai did not interrupt play to relay updated news bulletins. And the traffic police on the streets, who were trying to direct traffic through flooded streets, were convinced that Chennai was safe. One officer could not fathom what would make Chennai a target for an attack and since he had not experienced one, he could only briefly sympathise with Mumbai before going back to directing traffic.

The north and south Indian divide was an intricate sentiment, said a friend whose family was from Punjab, the northern part of India, but she and her husband live in Chennai. The south of India has only recently woken up to such attacks. While in the past year, such southern cities as Bangalore and Hyderabad have been hit, they are still not as frequent a terrorist target as cities in the north, where separatist violence has raged in Kashmir and Punjab for decades.

“As a north Indian, every time you hear of a bomb blast, you are instantly glued to a television, trying to find out details – which city, which neighbourhood and God help you if it is where family is.”

On Saturday morning after the last siege ended at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, and the chief of the National Security Guard declared a cleanup operation was under way, the most telling of all – a cloth banner – went up at one of Delhi’s most popular eateries.

Nizam’s, famous for its kathi kebabs, had delayed its opening that morning to put up a show of solidarity. As lunchgoers eagerly waited outside, a banner painted in yellow and green was hung at the entrance: “The staff and management of Nizam’s salutes all the individuals, security, paramilitary persons and Mumbaikars who helped wipe the tears of Mumbai and bear the inane, unnecessary and wanton loss of human life and spirit.”

Bollywood magic

As a child growing up in the 1980s, when it can be argued that Bollywood was perhaps not at its finest, I wasn’t allowed to watch commercial cinema because my mother disapproved of the objectification of women in these films. The heroine sings, dances and runs around in the rain with a hero. Cut to a scene of bees humming and a field of flowers. Cut to a scene of an anguished and disapproving father of his daughter’s behaviour before marriage. Cue innuendo about loose morals.

Apart from the fact that it sounds just as confusing as it looked, there were several levels to my mother’s objection. She was a film buff at heart but, to her, the mindless singing and dancing and the way women were depicted in these films did not represent reality.

Most of all, she believed that Bollywood did not represent Indian cinema.

Indeed, she was a fan of the likes of Satyajit Ray, one of India’s most renowned film directors, who accepted an Oscar for lifetime achievement from a hospital bed, where he lay dying. She was also a champion of his films, which represented the overlooked genre of regional films in India.

Almost two decades later, I found myself sitting on a panel about Indian cinema during the Indian Film Festival in Abu Dhabi, defending that which I was brought up to abhor. Although Bollywood has progressed extensively through production values, budget, sound and other technical details, the scripts are still formulaic.

But Bollywood has, amid all this, managed to bring together the Indian diaspora across the world. I had watched it happen for more than 12 years, when I lived in Canada and was witness to the fan frenzy in the Gulf. In their thirst to reach out and cue into their culture, Indians everywhere looked to the silver screen.

Whether it was fans wearing ethnic clothes under winter jackets in Toronto during one of the coldest days in January awaiting the arrival of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai for the world premiere of Guru, or the actor Govinda having to fend off hordes of fans at a shopping mall in Abu Dhabi while on an impromptu shopping trip during the Do Knot Disturb shoot, the passion to reach out and connect was the same.

Even during this festival, the largest audiences were for the two Bollywood films, although the slant of the festival was to introduce regional art house cinema to the Gulf.

The magic realism of Bollywood has been successfully channelled by major Bollywood production houses who have started to create niche films for their expat crowds – usually filled with stories about a protagonist’s (male or female) journey to a foreign land.

Of course, they also always portray lavish lifestyles and unbelievable opulence, but one is yet to figure out what exactly hooks a homesick Indian. Likely, the idea of an imagined homeland still intact in values.

Doctors, taxi drivers … they all ask the same question

As far as the taxi driver could see in his rear view mirror there was nothing wrong with me (though he did keep checking).

“But why?” he asked again. “Why aren’t you married? What is the matter with you?”

As a single, South Asian female, a taxi ride in Abu Dhabi is often fraught with questions of a deeply personal nature.

And so we drove on: a perplexed cabbie interrogating me about my personal life – while wondering aloud about any physical defects that I might possess – and me murmuring my well-rehearsed mantra of emancipation, but every word falling on deaf ears.

Of course, not every taxi driver wants to know the intimate details of my life. There are some who, after making peace with the fact that I am unmarried, offer helpful advice such as phone numbers of potential grooms, meeting venues, even family planning. One particularly helpful soul recommended that I should have 10 children like his wife; for that, he emphasised, is the benchmark of a dutiful woman.

But it is not just taxi drivers who are fixated on my marital status; others, including a general physician and my beautician, have shown equal fascination. An elderly doctor carrying out a routine health check, after approving the correlation between my age, height and weight, slapped my triceps while checking my blood pressure and declared: “Too thin. Not good for making babies.”

And as the beautician inspected my eyebrows, she talked about the virtues of drinking lots of water to stay “looking young”. Then she launched into a set of questions with which I have become all too familiar, beginning with the seemingly innocuous. “Do you have a family?”

As a means of extracting a confession, hot wax and hair removal are easily the match of electrodes and lights in the eye. I blurted the truth. Neither children nor marriage were a priority at the moment. Besides, I had a large network of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews that kept me busy and happy.

“But they are not your own,” she said. “You need a family to take away the loneliness of living so far from home.”

Culturally, I could not fault such opinions. After all, having lived in India, I was only too familiar with the idea that if a woman does not “settle down” at an appropriate age – which generally means her early to mid-20s – she will find herself increasingly isolated from the rest of society, which tends to cast a wary eye on single women. Marriage is considered not just socially compulsory but a moral duty, too.

As India changes, at an almost unimaginable pace, the pressures on the educated, middle-class Indian woman have become immense. She is expected to balance two worlds, keeping one bangled foot in tradition and the other in Manolo Blahnik-shod modernity. Even as the rupee grows stronger and women in their millions take their place in a roaring economy, they are still expected to conform to the norms followed by their mothers and grandmothers.

Modern India is full of such contradictions for women. While new nightclubs open every day in the major cities, casual dating is still considered taboo. The professional woman may have a high-powered and well-paid job, but she is still expected to live at home until she marries, and then often to a man chosen by her parents or, at the very least, to a man of whom they approve. Yet, divorce rates are soaring and popular online dating sites now offer sections for the divorced.

But when it comes to Indian women living abroad, the challenges and the contradictions are often greater. Attitudes among the South Asian expatriate community are, if anything, more rooted in the past than those back in the subcontinent. Opinions and traditions that are starting to change in Delhi and Mumbai are still ossified here in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Or as one taxi driver reminded me kindly, the rules that apply to his daughter in Peshawar, Pakistan, should also apply to me. I was breaking free but his daughter was still expected to stick to tradition.

My parents always encouraged me to pursue both education and a career and did not expect marriage as the only option. But even they are not immune to the pressures of their society (or constant inquiries from relatives about when I would be venturing into the marriage market). I have come to understand that an apartment and a career abroad do not absolve a woman from the expectations of her culture.

After all, one’s heritage is inescapable, and in a city without public transport, so are taxi drivers.