bijalv

First Agro farm visit

Posted on June 8, 2014 by bijalv

http://www.timeoutdelhi.net/restaurants-caf%C3%A9s/features/first-agro

Walking through the 45-acre First Agro Farm is like eating your way through a fresh, crunchy salad. Naveen MV and Nameet M, who co-founded this zero pesticide commercial grower company with KN Prasad in 2010, encouraged us to pluck vegetables and crunch them – we took in the sweet aroma of sage, picked a glistening leaf of purple basil and admired its heady taste and sampled wild rocket. The heart of the salad bowl were the heirloom tomatoes – vines were laden with the world’s smallest pea cherry tomato, the larger cherry one, the grape-shaped one, a teardrop one, a snow-white and a purple version.

We were 110 kilometers outside Bangalore, in Cauvery Valley, speaking to the promoters of First Agro, which grows zero pesticide produce complying with the FAO/WHO’s Codex Alimentarius food safety standards. Naveen, who is the CEO, said, “What is important in this business is to have a deep understanding of entomology [the scientific study of insects] and Olericulture [the science of vegetable growing] so that you know how to use natural methods and bio-solutions to manage pests.” Nameet is the chief production head, who learnt all about growing vegetables and keeping pests at bay with natural methods from horticultural growers in Canada, where he was a commercial pilot. COO Prasad has managed family farms in Karnataka for over a decade.

Nameet worked on an integrated pest and disease management system where he uses a “combination of neem oil, beneficial insects, beneficial microbes, garlic-chili spray, pheromone insect traps and companion plants”. “We are able to manage about 90 per cent of the common pest issues in agriculture,” he said. The farm also uses the drip-irrigated method to provide water to their fields.

Being commercial growers, the three brothers have expanded their business to the retail and hospitality sectors. First Agro supplies to restaurants such as The Glass House and Caperberry and hotels such as The Ritz-Carlton, The Oberoi and JW Marriott. In retail, their produce is available with BigBasket.com, HyperCity and FoodHall, among others.

Their biggest challenge has been to get Bangaloreans to think about food safety. “When we do promotional campaigns in malls, people tell us that they had no clue about these issues,” said Naveen. “We tell them how food is grown using pesticide or what GMOs are. Slowly, awareness is seeping in.”

By Bijal Vachharajani on June 06

photo: Pradeep KS

Book review: Wave

Posted on June 8, 2014 by bijalv

http://www.timeoutdelhi.net/books/reviews/book-review-wave-memoir-life-after-tsunami

“‘Oh my God, the sea’s coming in.’ That’s what she said. I looked behind me. It didn’t seem that remarkable. Or alarming. It was only the white curl of a big wave,” thought Sonali Deraniyagala while on holiday in Yala, a national park on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004. Deraniyagala, an economist who studied in Cambridge and Oxford, was with her husband Steve, her two boys Vikram (8) and Malli (5) and her parents. The wave that Deraniyagala was talking about was 30-feet high in Yala, it moved through land at 25 miles an hour, charged inland for over two miles, claiming and wrecking lives, before it returned into the ocean.

The author survived, but lost her entire family in the tsunami of 2004, when an earthquake under the sea near Indonesia triggered a tidal wave.

Most people remember being riveted in horror to their television sets as news of the tsunami sent reverberations across the world. Until then most of us, including Deraniyagala, hadn’t even heard of this tidal wave phenomena. As the author grapples with her unimaginable loss, she writes about her grief, in a raw manner that’s gut-wrenching to read. The memoir is devoid of statistics, you don’t find out how many people died, instead you realise who were some of the people who perished in the tsunami.

After the tsunami, instead of returning to her London home. Friends and family rally around her but she collapses – endlessly tracing back events, evoking memories and only resurfacing with a strong wish to die as well. She is numb with grief, alternating between fits of fury and suicidal thoughts, which she acts upon by slashing herself with a butter knife, burning cigarette butts into her skin and stashing sleeping pills. Her days get obliterated into a vodka and Ambien pill haze, she even hounds the Dutch family that moves into her parents’ house in Colombo. “I am in the unthinkable situation that people cannot bear to contemplate,” she writes at one time poignantly.

At another point, she realises that she is now frightened of Sundays as that was the day “the wave came to us”. Guilt surfaces. At other times, a feeling of doom, as she writes, “When I had them, they were my pride, and now that I’ve lost them, I am full of shame. I was doomed all along”. Deraniyagala visits Yala again and again, scouring among the debris for fragments of the belongings of her family.

Her father-in-law accompanies her on the first trip – “He’d stood in that wind and spoken a few words into the air to Steve and the boys. That’s when something fluttered by his foot”. It turns out to be the back cover of a research report that Steve had co-written. These are moments that makeWave so compelling on the whole.

As Deraniyagala writes about the horrific event, it’s as if her thoughts are spilling onto the pages in short, almost staccato sentences, recalling the mind-numbing sorrow and the void in her life. Her words begin to uncoil slowly as she returns to London, after three years and eight months. She loses herself, and in some way reclaims herself, in those warm, happy memories of their life there: “I clasped a seashell in my fist… one of those cowrie shells I found in the house before it was rented. On its shiny surface still, Malli’s fingertips”. She finds her husband’s eyelash, marks from coloured pens on the kitchen table, the place where Steve and the boys would feed spiders in the garden, clinging to a familiarity that slowly begins to soothe her.

Wave is a haunting, difficult read about the nightmare of the tsunami and the wreckage it left behind. But it’s also a personal memoir about the beauty of relationships and their fragility. You can’t help but read it until the end, with short bursts of painful breaths, admiring the excruciating exquisiteness of her words. Wave will linger in your mind long after you’ve put it back on the bookshelf.

Sonali Deraniyagala Hachette, R399

By Bijal Vachharajani on June 06 2014

Sancho’s

Posted on May 24, 2014 by bijalv

When we first heard the news that Delhi-based Mexican chain Sancho’s was coming to namma city, it was still February. We had to wait for the restaurant to open in April to get our dose of the spicy Mexican and Tex-Mex fare. Nestled in the food court of UB City, Sancho’s has an al fresco dining area and an air-conditioned seating place.

We invited our house guest from Connecticut, who had recently vacationed in Mexico, to join us for the meal. We started with a melon berry mint slush, an icy blend of cantaloupe, strawberry crush and mint leaves. Our friend said: “Given a choice, I would marry this drink.”

We also ordered chips with mango salsa, guacamole and fish taquitos. Those small beer-battered fish tortillas never arrived and so we ultimately cancelled them closer to dessert time. The chips were the crunchy corn ones and went well with the chopped avocado guacamole. The mango salsa tasted like a slightly spicy aamras.

Our veg enchiladas were corn semi-fried tortillas stuffed and soaked with salsa ranchero and topped with shredded lettuce, melted cheese, onions, Mexican rice and refried beans. We wished the enchiladas had been spicier and made with wheat instead of the cornflour that gave it a grainy texture.

Our companion’s prawns burrito came stuffed with beans, Mexican rice, guacamole and pico de gallo salsa. She pronounced them authentic enough and nodded approvingly at the right balance in the dish. Since our companion wasn’t keen on dairy products, we skipped the flan and tres leche cake for an air buñuelos for dessert. These Mexican fritters are supposedly as light as air. Our rosette-shaped fried buñuelos came dusted with cinnamon sugar and accompanied by a bowl of dark chocolate sauce. We gleefully abandoned table manners to break the crisp fritters into bite-sized pieces, and covering ourselves in cinnamon sugar.

Although the food wasn’t as fiery as we thought Mexican food should be, our companion was quite thrilled at having found a slice of Mexico in Bangalore. 204, UB City, 1, Vittal Mallya Road (4167-4151). Daily 11.30am-11.30pm. All major cards.

By Bijal Vachharajani on May 09 2014 7.52am

Half Bad

Posted on May 24, 2014 by bijalv

Half Bad

Sally Green, Penguin, R299. Ages 14+.

Sally Green’s debut young adult novel, Half Bad, is already slated to be published in 36 countries with a signed film deal. Half Bad is set in a world where witches co-exist with humans (they are called whets) secretly. The story revolves around Nathan, a witch who is half-black and half-white; his mother (the White Witch) killed herself, and his father is the wicked Black Witch who has been absent forever and is on a happygo- killing spree. Nathan grows up with his grandmother and stepsiblings and is closely governed by the White Council, which is forever thrusting new notifications onto Half Codes.

At 17, Nathan will get three gifts to turn into a proper witch. That’s when his own Gift will be revealed and he will find out whether he is White or Black. Things get tense when Nathan’s thrust into a cage and watched over by another witch. There’s a quest thrown in towards the end of the first instalment as well as a love interest, who is, of course a White Witch.

The story may be new, but the threads in the narrative aren’t. There are shades of Twilight – the witches have to drink blood while getting their three gifts – and Harry Potter in it, as well as Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series. Nathan’s father sounds quite like Voldemort and Nathan keeps wondering if he’s Black or White, much like Potter’s dilemma about belonging to Gryffindor or Slytherin. There is a prophecy as well, and all that talk about purity of blood.

But Half Bad works because it is fast-paced and a thrilling read. Green writes lucidly, and keeps the story gripping at all times. There’s plenty of gore in the book, but it doesn’t come across as all dark and dreary. She also manages to put together a well-rounded slew of characters – there’s even a gay character (no, we won’t play spoiler). Between all that Black and White business, Green manages to shed enough doubt about the grey areas of life, reminding her young readers that life isn’t neatly divided into monochromes. The sequel is slated to come out next year and is called Half Wild.
Bijal Vachharajani

The Big Book of Treats

Posted on May 24, 2014 by bijalv

http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/books/reviews/book-review-big-book-treats

Book Review: The Big Book of Treats

The lavishly-produced dessert book is splashed with mouth-watering photos of Dhingra’s goodies

A few years ago, a close friend’s birthday was fast approaching and as usual, we were stumped for gifting ideas. Finally we zoned on to the fact that the friend was a shopaholic. That’s when I called Pooja Dhingra, the founder and owner of Le 15 pâtisserie in Mumbai. After a careful discussion with Dhingra, we settled on a dozen shopping themed cupcakes. Two days later, I went to pick up the cupcakes and was delighted by the frosted pink delicacies that came with a quirky but tasteful icing in the shape of a bag, a stiletto and clothes. My friend of course was delighted and almost refused to eat the cupcakes. When she did eat them, we realised that unlike most cupcakes these weren’t dry and the frosting wasn’t overpoweringly sweet.

So, I was understandably excited when I got Dhingra’s baking book The Big Book of Treats. The lavishly-produced dessert book is splashed with mouth-watering photos of Dhingra’s goodies including peanut butter brownie cups, Nutella squares, white chocolate and rose sponge cake and of course her delicately-flavoured macarons which she’s best known for. The book starts with a Baking 101 guide which takes readers through commonly used ingredients, essential equipment and techniques and tips. Some of them are really useful, like the distinction between baking soda and powder and the handy conversion table.

The rest of the book is divided into Cookies, Bars, Brownies; Cakes, Tea Time goodies, Tarts, Cupcakes, Frostings, Truffles, Desserts and Macarons. Dhingra offers a range of recipes from basic ones such as chocolate chip cookies and vanilla cupcakes to the fancier ones like chai cupcakes and green chilly truffles. Each recipe comes with a little note where Dhingra talks about her work at Le 15, her team, shares personal anecdotes and sometimes recommends variations as well. For instance, in the eggless passion fruit truffles recipe, Dhingra suggests that if you can’t find passion fruit, which isn’t easily available in the Indian market, you can substitute it with any fruit purée such as mango, strawberry, or apple.

We decided to give Dhingra’s recipes a whirl in our oven. We started with the dark chocolate fudge bar, which tastes like a brownie-like fudge. We first melted dark chocolate with butter, following Dhingra’s Baking 101 tips. While that mixture cooled, we whisked together free-range eggs, castor sugar and vanilla. The chocolate mixture was folded in and our kitchen was as fragrant as a real-life bakery with the cocoa, butter and vanilla doing its magic. Flour, baking soda and almonds were added. The recipe called for white chocolate chips, but we decided to experiment and tossed in some butterscotch chips instead. Dhingra recommends roasting the almonds before adding them to the batter, a tip that made sense as it improves the flavour immensely. Twenty minutes later, the batter had doubled in size and the butterscotch was smelling heavenly.

We impatiently waited for the loaf to cool before cutting it into mini bars. We found the recipe easy to follow, and the conversion chart ensured that it was an effortless switch between grams and cups while measuring the ingredients. The bars were not too sweet, they were crispy on the outside and gooey but chewy inside, a perfect snack for that 4pm craving. The almonds added a subtle crunch while the butterscotch chips melted in our mouths. And best of all, it took us less than an hour to get this dish together, and that’s including baking time. Next, we plan to try the mango tart, and then we hope to roll up our sleeve and dedicate a few hours to mastering the macaron.

Pooja Dhingra Penguin, R699

By Bijal Vachharajani

Play dates

Posted on April 28, 2014 by bijalv

http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/kids/features/play-dates

Bijal Vachharajani lists some exciting tips and playful tricks to keep boredom at bay for children of all ages this summer

Keep your munchkins entertained this summer, but not by packing them off to the usual activity classes and run-of-the-mill workshops. Instead, entice them with our roundup of fun things to do. These are activities that your children can dabble in with their cousins or friends at home or even in your backyard. We tell you how to encourage kids to write better stories, stage home productions of plays, and even devise a quiz. They can also plan a midnight feast, live in a tree house, which you can build without hurting the tree and hone their sense of smell.

Illustrations by Ashwini Pandit.

Good feeds

Posted on April 28, 2014 by bijalv

http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/bangalore-beat/features/good-feeds

Time Out rounds up old and new Indian literary fiction that are themed around cooking and eating

For all those who grew up yearning for scones and slabs of homemade fruit cake thanks to British author Enid Blyton, or wished that the Elven Lembas bread from The Lord of the Rings was real, we thought it’s about time you sampled flavours closer home. Indian literary fiction is steeped in food metaphors. Stories are built on the culinary efforts that go on in kitchens across the country and amateur and professional gourmets often are the star characters in narratives. Time Out picks some of its favourite food moments that are sure to leave you hungry for more.

The Case of the Love Commandos

Tarquin Hall, Random House, R499.

India’s Most Private Detective Vish Puri is back in this latest instalment from Tarquin Hall and this time he is eating his way through Lucknow. For those unfamiliar with this private eye, Puri is one of the country’s most famous detectives. He works out of Delhi and in the past has cracked The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken, The Case of the Missing Servant and The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing. The stories are rife with quirky and adorable characters, from Puri’s wife Rumpi to his Mummy-ji who is always interfering in cases when really she should “stick to what she is best at: making gulab jamuns and all”. Yet the books go beyond being classic mysteries, offering a slice of India while delving into social-political issues, corruption, Dalit rights, betting and more. When Puri’s mind is not occupied with the mysteries he has to solve, actually even when it is buzzing with these puzzles, he is thinking about food – from the kathi rolls that he has delivered to his Khan Market office to the offerings at the Gymkhana Club. InThe Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken, Puri finds himself torn between keeping a politician waiting or finishing a plate of sev puri with extra chutney and chilli. In Love Commandos, Puri wolfs down galauti kebabs, mutton biryani, sultani daal and kulfi topped with rose-scented falooda, all while following important clues. The book ends with a lovely collection of Lucknowi recipes. We promise that you can’t read the series without wanting to reach for a plate of samosas or jalebis.

Eating Women, Telling Tales: Stories about Food

Bulbul Sharma, Zubaan, R295

Bhanurai Jog has passed away and it comes down to Badibua to prepare his favourite dishes for the death anniversary feast. A cluster of women gather in the kitchen, eight knives deftly chopping big round aubergines, slicing pumpkins, and sorting greens. As the kitchen bustles with activity, one woman points out, “This year the coriander and mint we grew is really good. You can smell the fragrance even before you begin to grind it.” The food memories invoke nostalgia, from which abound stories as the women begin to draw on their experiences and their past. The tales centre on food: a mother trying to win back the affections of her son who now lives abroad with ghee-drenched aloo parathas and jaggery sweets filled with coconut; another woman gearing up to welcome her husband’s family home with different curries and chana paishe, a Bengali sweet made out of fresh paneer; a bride who finds herself chained to the kitchen after she displays her culinary skills. Melancholic, humorous, macabre and poignant, Bulbul Sharma manages to toss together dramatic stories within a story.

The Girl from Nongrim Hills

Ankush Saikia, Penguin, R299

Donbok, popularly known as “Bok”, a guitarist with a Shillong-based wedding band, gets entangled in a vicious plot when his brother loses `50 lakh on an arms purchase trip to Nagaland and finds himself in bad company. Bok not only has to save his brother’s life, he must avoid getting lured by a beautiful, mysterious woman whose intentions seem to be misleading from the outset.

Shillong and its unpredictable weather, its idyllic settings mixed with a tinge of nostalgia, the hustle-bustle of the Polo Bazaar and the clubs, all these elements intertwine to create a gripping atmosphere. As significant as the locations are to the novel, equally important are the little eateries, teashops and jadoh stalls, which often act as a foil to the narrative plot. Bok and his fugitive brother Kitdor meet over steaming plates of Khasi specialty rice and fatty pork cooked with chicken blood at a jadoh stall. After discussing Kitdor’s future, the brothers decide to eat. “They dug into rice cooked with chicken blood and fiery fermented fish chutney. His brother sitting beside him, the kettle boiling on the coals, the patter of rain on the tin roof… it was almost peaceful.”

Other instances of food playing a part in the book include Bok’s dinner table conversations with his parents while eating his mother’s rice, pork with black sesame paste, fried potatoes and boiled vegetables; ordering in egg chow and chilli chicken at The Paradise hotel just before he plans to barge into an adjoining room and steal a bag of money at gunpoint; and The Lhasa restaurant where, to calm himself after being shot at, Bok gobbles up pork momos with a watery chilli chutney and knocks back a stiff peg of Royal Stag whisky.

Gone with the Vindaloo

Vikram Nair, Hachette, R350

This is a humorous tale about the goodness of food that travels back and forth in time as well as between continents. A successful restaurateur by profession, Nair has a palpable love of food combined with a no-holds-barred flair for storytelling. He ensures the committed attention of his readers throughout the book.The story opens in the bustling city of Varanasi during the pre-Independence era. We are introduced to three close friends, Kalaam, Mateen and Arth Purabiya, whose lives are about to change during British rule. As a result, Kalaam, the expert Muslim weaver who possesses the inherent skill of making “brocade”, the most enchanting fabric of Varanasi, is quickly cast off because of the divide and rule policy employed by the British. He is also blissfully unaware that his true calling lies not in threads but amidst pots and pans, spices and herbs. Fortune strikes early as he stumbles upon a group of English burra sahibs on a camping tour and ends up cooking chicken curry and rice for them. Thence begins his culinary expedition – from working as a cook at the Palmers’ residence to perfecting the nuanced vindaloo.

Every dish he cooks is loved and praised by all, but it’s the vindaloo that wins him admiration and fame. His signature style of cooking the dish uses a secret added mixture of tamarind pulp with chilli flakes, sugar and garlic to round off the tart flavours of the synthetic vinegar. Another story runs parallel, about the Mahadev household. An Imperial Civil Service (ICS) member by profession, Mahadev is a classic authoritarian family patriarch. He aspires to rub shoulders with the British and dreams of his son carrying forth his legacy. Pakwaan, who works in his kitchen, yearns to replicate his grandfather’s magical vindaloo, the recipe of which comes to him in a dream and is about to take him places. But cooking is a personal skill; it is instinctive and not merely about following instructions. From descriptions of flatulence to frank gestures of sexuality that border on the coarse, the author leaves no stone unturned to cook a flavoursome story – much like the vindaloo. Readers will leave with a satisfied burp. Arunima Mazumdar.

More than just Biryani

Andaleeb Wajid, Amaryllis, R399

After reading this book, we wondered for days how lauz would feel on our tongues. Lauz is a sugary sweet made of reduced milk turned into khoya along with powdered sugar, which is thickened and made into a dough and rolled out into different shapes. The enigmatic sweet is described in Andaleeb Wajid’s book as “sugary sunshine” that melts on your tongue and “little crumbly sugar-coated bits that dissolve slowly and make you light up from inside”. More than just Biryani is full of such evocative, beautiful descriptions of food that transpires through three generations. The story begins when Sonia Kapoor, a journalist with a food magazine, befriends a young girl called Zubi in Hong Kong after watching a food video done by her. The reticent Zubi gradually opens up to Kapoor and helps her put together a narrative spanning three generations, including Zubi’s mother Tahera and then grandmother Ruqaiyya.

While Ruqaiyya struggles with cooking in the Vellore of the ’50s as a young bride, and slowly realises that desserts such as lauz, badam ki jaali and firni are her forte, her daughter Tahera is known throughout the extended family for her culinary acumen, for her shammi kababs, biryani, khatta sherva, kali mirch ki phaal, kheema samosas and more. When Tahera’s husband dies in a freak accident, life takes a turn for the worse. She goes into a shell and loses interest in cooking. As her wounds heal, her cooking comes back to life. Zubi, who lives in Hong Kong with her husband and child, also finds her own identity and strong connection with her family by recreating her mother and grandmother’s cooking through a video format online. Recipes are woven into the narrative beautifully, rather than conventionally presented, and help move the plot ahead effectively.

The Obliterary Journal vol 2: Non-veg

Blaft, R795.

“Meet your meat” used to be a popular People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals slogan where the animal rights group would reveal to people the cruelty inherent in the meat industry. It could very well fit Blaft’s latest publication, the second volume of their graphic novel The Obliterary Journal.Edited by Rakesh Khanna and Rashmi Ruth Devadasan, the graphic novel brings together works by some of India’s most interesting artists, writers and activists, who look at the social, cultural, ethical and political dimensions of non-vegetarian food in India.

The book starts in a tongue-in-cheek manner with Durrrrk Mister Grinder Serial No 30277XM03’s comic, where a Legpiece has to make its way across a desert (lots of puns here), battling Space Idlies, to deliver, against all odds, this very book to an indie bookstore. Then Aneesh KR traces the history of emu farming, a venture that started with a lot of promise in India and went bust when there were few takers for the bird’s meat. A veggie UK Krishnamurthi talks about how “people eat for pleasure… everything is cultural”. There’s plenty of food for thought in this book, including Appupen’s eclectic renderings of the hunt for what we call “food” in modern times, “How to Make a Bitch Give Up Beef” by Dalit activist/writer Meena Kandaswamy with illustrator Samita Chatterjee, and Sathyanarain Muralidharan and Mihir Ranganathan’s refreshing and quixotic take on the food chain. We will leave you with just this taster to whet your appetite for The Obliterary Journal, but there’s plenty more to explore in the book.

Three Dog Night

Gouri Dange, HarperCollins, R250.

Viva is on the wrong side of 60, but that doesn’t mean she is ready to retire. A widow who lives alone in Mumbai, Viva begins to de-clutter her life, like giving away her gorgeous black coffee/milk-coffee combo Kanjeevaram silk sari to her much younger friend, Moni. Her son and his family live in Pune, and she dotes on her grandson, whom she bonds with over giant glasses of sitaphal milkshake and potato-mince patties. Her daughter is busy saving the world until some mysterious Nepal connection pops up to complicate matters.

Gouri Dange puts together a warm, fuzzy story about relationships, Mumbai and food, and of course animals, all with a healthy dose of wry humour.Three Dog Night is a beautiful read, made even more interesting by the recipes embedded in the narrative. For instance, when Viva gifts her Coffee Crystal sari to Moni, we also get her recipe of the alcohol-laced eponymous caffeine drink. Coffee, demerara sugar and brandy come together in what “wires you up for a range of post-dinner activities, from the routine to the sublime”. When Viva goes out for dinner at the “new off-Colaba Causeway place where the chef-owner combines strange and wondrous things”, she promptly offers a recipe for Fillet of Vietnamese Basa with Dalimbi Usal, the dish that she orders at the restaurant. Not unlike our mothers who eat at restaurants only to size up the ingredients and rattle off a makeshift recipe which tastes exactly like the restaurant speciality.

The Anger of Aubergines – Stories of Women and Food

Bulbul Sharma, Kali, R150.

In this wonderful collection of short stories, Sharma pays tribute to several of her grand-aunts, who were brave, fearless women and knew their way around the kitchen as well the tricky business of dealing with men. Each story is themed around food – food used as a means for passion, as a way to seek revenge and as a handy tool for power. While the title story deals with a couple who hate the sight of each other except when the husband turns up once a week to eat aubergines cooked by the wife, freshly plucked from the garden patch, “Food to Die For” is the story of an old lady who whips up the most elaborate feast for the brahmin priest who will perform the last rites of her dead husband. “A Taste for Humble Pie” sees an orphan girl who is otherwise neglected being fought over by relatives because of her pakora-making skills, “Feasting with a Vengeance” follows the story of newlyweds whose families want to outdo each other in the wedding feast stakes. Every short story is accompanied by a lovely recipe at the end according to the theme of the narrative.

Book of Rachel

Esther David, Penguin India, Viking, R699.

Rachel, who belongs to the Bene Israel community of Danda, Alibaug, lives alone in a house by the sea. Her husband has passed away and her children have moved to Israel. Looking after the village synagogue and creating traditional recipes from Bene Israel Jewish cuisine is her sole focus in life now. With the dwindling Bene Israel community in her neighbourhood, Rachel being one of its last surviving members, she opens and cleans the synagogue every day in the hope that it will once again be a scene of happy, communal gatherings. Rachel also spends her time painstakingly recreating ancient Bene Israel Jewish recipes of dishes such as kippur chi puri or poha cooked with coconut, fried fish, chik cha halwa, a sweet dish made of wheat extract and coconut milk, and mince cutlets. The making of every recipe in this novel also traces its origins and history in the Bene Israel context.

Fasting, Feasting

Anita Desai, Random House, R299.

The novel opens with an important discussion – are fritters enough or must sweets go, too? A package is being sent by parents to their son in the US, and instructions are given to the cook that yes, sweets must be part of it. Anita Desai’s iconic novel is a bittersweet read, delving into the life of an Indian family and their patriarchal attitudes that inform the way their children grow up. Desai writes evocatively in her characteristic style, painting the book vividly with food and how it weaves the complexities of the family that forms her central characters.

Life & Food in Bengal

Chitrita Banerji, Penguin, R195.

Banerji’s seminal book on the eating habits of West Bengal and of Bangladesh, influenced by history and geography, spins a sweet little fictionalised account of a girl called Chobbi who takes us through the vast repertoire of Bengali cuisine and the cultural mores associated with it through her life and her joint family. The recipe section is divided according to seasons, such as basanta (spring), grishma (summer), barsha (monsoon), sharat (early autumn), and hemanta (late autumn), and sheet (winter). Apart from several classic Indian Bengali recipes, you will also find a smattering of those from Bangladesh, such as dimer halua or egg halwa, kamala koi, or fish cooked with orange pulp, and beef or lamb handi kebab.

The Mistress of Spices

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Black Swan, R499.

Thanks to reruns on television, most people are familiar with Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan’s character Tilo, the stunning, mystical woman who runs a magical Indian spice shop in the US. The movie is based on Divakaruni’s book which coaxes open the healing powers and the flavour of spices. There’s plenty of poetry and sensuality in this book, but it’s also over-the-top mystical. Here’s an excerpt: “But the spices are my love. I know their origins, and what their colors signify, and their smells. I can call each by the true-name it was given at the first, when earth split like skin and offered it up to the sky. Their heat runs in my blood. From amchur to zafran, they bow to my command. At a whisper they yield up to me their hidden properties, their magic powers”.

A New World

Amit Chaudhuri, Picador, R395.

Jayojit, a professor of economics, returns from the US to visit his elderly parents in Kolkata with his son Bonny for the first time since his divorce. The book follows the lives of these four characters with the slightly crumbling edifice of Calcutta as the backdrop. Though no real plot changes or turning points happen throughout the book, the protagonists’s descriptions of his mother’s simple cooking and her offerings of hot luchis served with slivers of pumpkin cooked with nigella seeds and green chillies to feed her grandson, or the description of the lifeless mach (fish) which has been brought from the market to be cooked into a watery gravy, are evocative.

Smell

Radhika Jha, Penguin, R299.

After her father is killed in a riot in Nairobi, Leela is packed off to her aunt and uncle’s house in Paris. Leela has a rare quality. She possesses an extraordinary sense of smell. This heightened attribute overwhelms her perception of everything from sex to food. Radhika Jha writes, “When the wind blew hard, as it did very often that spring, the smell of fresh baguette would fight its way into the Madras épicerie to do battle with the prickly smell of pickles and masalas”.

The Vendor of Sweets

RK Narayan, Indian Thought, R120.

Jagan is a vendor of sweets who lives in RK Narayan’s delightful Malgudi. A staunch Gandhian, Jagan’s fragile and unidimensional world becomes confounded when his son returns from the US and questions many of his hypocritical beliefs. While this isn’t exactly a book steeped in food, the sweets and the religious practices of shunning beef are some of the pivotal elements of The Vendor of Sweets.

By Amrita Bose, Bijal Vachharajani on April 11 2014

To bee or not to bee

Posted on April 28, 2014 by bijalv

http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/kids/features/interview-karthika-na%C3%AFr-jo%C3%ABlle-jolivet

Interview: Karthika Naïr & Joëlle Jolivet

Young Zubaan’s latest book is a stunning blend of prose and art

It’s a day like any other in the picture book, The Honey Hunter, as the story unfolds in a neighbourhood not far from where the reader is. There’s a discussion of some importance on at a dinner table, about honey. A child wants more honey, but the last of the summer honey is over and the bees don’t make any during winter. That leads to another story, one about a land of 18 tides, where three rivers meet, and gazillions of honeybees gather golden honey. Thus begins a beautiful story within a story written by poet Karthika Naïr and illustrated by French artist Joëlle Jolivet.

Naïr, a poet and a dance curator based out of Paris, weaves a lyrical tale that is riveting and thought-provoking. The story was earlier written as part of the script of DESH, a dance-drama produced and performed by UK choreographer Akram Khan. It subtly shows how climate change is impacting the mangrove forests and islands of the Bay of Bengal, wreaking havoc with nightmarish cyclones and unruly tides. Shonu lives on one such island with his family and finds himself constantly displaced in the wake of the changing weather. Food is hard to come by and Shonu craves honey. He sets off in search of honey, even ready to raid the beehives. However, Bonbibi, the guardian deity of the Sundarbans, has a pact with the demon king, aka the defender of the forest, aka He-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Taken, that she cannot save anyone who harms the forest. What follows is a fascinating narrative of hunger, greed, the environment, kindness and indigenous beliefs.

The book is not only a delight to read but also to hold and savour for readers of any age. A big-sized book, roughly the size of a table mat, The Honey Hunter is probably one of the most gorgeous tomes to have been published this year. Jolivet, who has studied graphic art and advertising at the School of Applied Arts in Paris, usually works with lithography. Her illustrations are phantasmagorical – from the intricate renderings of the characters and the Sundarbans forest, to the pop of colours like gold and neon pink. Each page is a beautiful painting, delicate with detail, yet boldly rendered. Over email from France, Naïr and Jolivet told Time Out about their collaboration and the kind of research that went into this picture book.

Tell us how The Honey Hunter came about?
Karthika Naïr The Honey Hunter exists primarily because Anita Roy – senior commissioning editor of Zubaan Books – read the first pages of the story (then written as part of the script of DESH, Akram Khan’s dance production) at a dining table in south Delhi, and decided it had to be made into an illustrated children’s book. I was in India on a short trip after an intensive phase of workshops with Akram and about a dozen actors in London, where we had been testing out different rough drafts of tableaux forDESH, and we had decided that one of the tableaux to develop from the various openings I had written was “The Boy, the Bees and Bonbibi” (the working title of what has become The Honey Hunter). Well, Anita dropped in at my friend’s place, read the story I was working on, and asked me to complete it. By the time Anita came to watch the DESH premiere six months later, we were in the thick of the “Great Hunt for the Illustrator”. But that’s just the beginning: it took another two years for the story to become this book.The book uses indigenous art with some really pop colours.

Tell us about the illustration process.
KN This one is really Joëlle’s territory, though I must add that she did about six months of research to make sure she got all the details right – the topography, the costumes, the physiognomy, the iconography of Bonbibi and Dakkhin Rai. This was not easy because there are few formal photos: we see them mostly through street theatre and temple shrines, or local festivals – and that is one of the many reasons it has been so synergising to work with Joëlle! Her attention to detail – both in the text and the real “environment” – was so impressive, even as she adapted it into her visual language and the signature style I adored the very first time I had bumped into one of her wild animals.

Joëlle Jolivet When I work on a new project, in a new cultural background, I’m always curious about popular art, graphics, designs, anything that can feed my inspiration. My usual media is linocut, but for this book I quickly realised that it would not be the right tool. I needed something more spontaneous, more moving. So I decided to use ink and brushes, with black lines and a few strong colours. Blue-green for water and forest, yellow for bees and honey, and pink, because for me, India is shiny pink (Indian pink, of course). As the project evolved, I softly twisted these colours, to get something less obvious. Yellow turned to ochre and pink to neon pink. And Karthika showed me patuas and patachitra, which have something in common with comics. Their narrative streak helped me conceive some of the trickiest pages in the book. To get shiny and deep tones, the book was printed in solid colours. I worked on tracing paper, with black ink, one sheet per colour.

How difficult was it to adapt a script into a children’s book?
KN To be honest, I didn’t think of a young audience at all. Initially, I wrote it as part of the script of a dance piece and that defined the process considerably. Akram and I had discussed the sequence in detail, and how he wanted to stage it – without words, with animation and abhinaya – even before he knew what the story would be. My primary audience was Akram, and Yeast Culture [the animator], who needed to picture a full-fledged world from the text, a world they could transmute it into their respective languages (animation/movement). And even after the story went into “children’s book” mode, I didn’t have to change that approach.

My publishers – Sophie Giraud of Editions Hélium in France and Anita Roy of Zubaan Books – were both quite amazing. They never asked me to “make it more child-friendly” or to change the ending, which is not exactly in the happily-ever-after mode. We did have a lot of discussions about the two-person/dialogue format because it was unusual for children’s fiction in France: there was some initial hesitation about breaking away from an accepted pattern but Sophie was really committed to retaining the spirit of the story (also in publishing, so much text in an illustrated book – that was another instance of going against the norm), and all she asked me to do was add an introduction, so that a child, on reading it, would have a context, a sense of being moored. As you can see I have done that, but without specifying location or time, because I really wanted it to be a tale that could begin anywhere, in any urban household, in any part of the world.

The Honey Hunter narrates a story that delivers many messages without being didactic. How difficult is it to write something like this?
KN I think the intermeshing of myth and quotidian modernity, of proximity and the distant sources of things we take for granted (like honey) in our urban drive for immediate, unthinking consumption is just a reflection of our lives today, anywhere in the world but perhaps more so in an Asian context where millennia-old beliefs drive our lives as much as the new flashy trappings.

What kind of research went into the book?
JJ I met Karthika totally by chance. I received her text by email, in English, and forgot all about it for quite some time, until she called me. Ashamed, I finally read the text and was completely enchanted. I called her back and that’s how Karthika and I met and decided to do the book together. Our respective publishers joined forces and decided to bring it out together in France and in India. During the following months we met often, and I showed her my sketches. Karthika helped me a lot to understand that culture. I did a lot of research on the Internet, never having been to either Bangladesh or West Bengal. I also looked at a lot of regional iconography of Bonbibi and Dakkhin Rai. My imagination is also fuelled considerably by actual, existing details.

KN I did about five months of research before our R&D trip to Bangladesh in November 2010, and then the core creative team was in Bangladesh for about ten days. We travelled from Dhaka to Jessore, Gopalgunj and Khulna, to towns and rivers, and visited the docks and Drik, listening to Shahidul Alam’s [Bangladeshi photographer and human rights activist] accounts of the Dhaka Blockade, and met migrant workers from Bihar and child labourers who were building mammoth ships. We spoke with activists and otter-fishermen, textile conservators (Bangladesh had the largest repository of natural dyes in the world – an industry that was ruined by colonial British import policy, but committed people like Dr Ruby Ghuznavi have made it their life’s work to revive it, to sustain the practice), NGOs, singers and dancers and filmmakers. People were incredibly generous in sharing their experiences.

And then, of course, Joëlle did a huge chunk of research for the visuals. We would have joint sessions whenever we could, where she would show me everything she had found, and I’d add as much as I could to that, or suggest possible sources. She would show me the drafts of the pages, and they were such complete, exquisite worlds in themselves, I was often just dumbstruck at how brilliantly she had morphed the images in my head into something so much more phantasmagorical and vibrant.

The Honey Hunter, Young Zubaan, R395.

By Bijal Vachharajani on April 25 2014

The hills are alive

Posted on April 8, 2014 by bijalv

Time Out speaks to author Ruskin Bond about his new books
http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/books/features/interview-ruskin-bond

Stepping into the pages of a Ruskin Bond book means stepping out of the world around you. With every sentence you read, you’re cocooned a little more snugly in crisp mountain air. The noise of traffic fades, letting in the gentle rustle of leaves tickled by a breeze, the chirps of many birds. The city recedes, allowing your imagination to travel to remote lakes and hamlets nestled in the hills.

Beautiful as its setting may be, Bond’s fiction does not always inhabit an idyllic world. Here, there be ghosts (albeit harmless ones) lurking in desolate bungalows, whip-smart thieves with nimble fingers, and tales laced with melancholia. If there’s one thing that you won’t find in Bond’s world, it’s horror. This is something Bond’s young readers have noticed. One observed to him that his stories aren’t scary enough. “I told him, I have never met a scary ghost. Usually they are rather gentle,” Bond said, recalling the incident while speaking on the phone from his Landour home. He paused. “I have never met a ghost.”

This is the sweetness and good humour that has made Bond the most popular Indian author in the world of children’s fiction. The author agreed that over the years, his stories have become less serious and more humorous. “Life seems to get funnier as I get older,” said Bond. “I see that in my 20s I took life too seriously. Now I am going to be 80. There is so much to look back upon, more stories to tell and so many people to write about.”

The lyricism of Bond’s writing lilts through his new books for children – Thick as Thieves: Tales of Friendship, A Little Book of Friendship and Ruskin Bond Children’s Omnibus, Volume 2. In Thick as Thieves, Bond writes about forging friendship in strange places. In one story, a lonely writer seeks the company of a little mouse. In another, old characters from stories such asThe Room on the Roof make an appearance.

All three books are semi-autobiographical. They tell the story of a writer who instead of becoming yet another Beetle Bailey in the army, headed to a cottage on the outskirts of a hill station. The narratives intersect with Bond’s own life, his childhood friends and his adopted family in Mussoorie, all turned into fiction that’s distinctive for the dry wit of his storytelling.

In the first chapter of Children’s Omnibus, “the writer on the hill” talks about the stolid mountains and how it was only after he came to live in the hills that he was able to start writing for children. “In a way that’s true but I won’t give all credit to the hills,” said Bond with a chuckle. “My first years of writing were directed to the general reader. Some would have been suitable for children, although they weren’t really written for children. In the mid ’70s, I had written a long novella, The Angry River and sent it to a publisher in England. The publisher suggested I trim it for a children’s book. My first children’s book is a story that was meant for everyone.”

More than 40 years later, Bond still writes for everyone, as is evident inTales of Fosterganj. Fosterganj and its inhabitants exist only in Bond’s imagination, although he admits that “some of the events recorded really happened”. The stories are set in the ’60s, when a young, reclusive writer moves temporarily to “a forgotten hamlet on the outskirts of Mussoorie” named Fosterganj.

“It’s sort of fun and frolic,” said the author. “I guess I like writing about small places, and in a way, eccentric out-of-the way places which are usually overlooked by the world at large. I thought I would go back in time a little, bring this hamlet to life for the reader and myself, and weave a few stories.”

Most of the stories are staple Bond fare – tales of ghostly encounters, a meeting with a leopard and tales peopled with a handful of curious but endearing characters. “Tucked away in a fold of the hills,” writes Bond inTales of Fosterganj, “its inhabitants had begun to resemble their surroundings: one man resembled a willow bent by rain and wind; an elderly lady with her umbrella reminded me of a colourful mushroom, quite possibly poisonous; my good baker-cum-landlord looked like a bit of the hillside, scarred and uneven but stable”.

In his books, Bond manages to write about everyday occurrences in a way that makes them seem out of the ordinary. “This is all part of my interest in nature,” he explained. “If there’s a ladybird on my desk, I want to know where is it going next. Will it climb up a wall? It becomes an epic in itself. These little things have always interested me. The life of each living creature is an epic or story in itself. A snail crossing the road – is it going to get across or is the truck going to run over it?”

Bond’s love and reverence for nature shines through his writing. He talks about finding inspiration in a stream at the end of a hill, the neighbouring villages and the many rambles that he took in the mountains. “Perhaps, many who have read my stories might have been influenced by my feelings for the natural world. In my stories there is a certain respect for the world of animals, trees, birds and everything that’s part of the natural world.”

Listening to Bond talk about nature is as enchanting as reading his stories. “Leopards are good survivors, they conceal themselves well,” he said. “I have had them on my roof looking for monkeys who go to sleep. They eat dogs, picked my neighbours dogs (so he keeps a cat).” The keenness with which he observes the world around him is almost childlike in its intensity, which perhaps explains why Bond is such a favourite among young readers.

“It’s a different sort of challenge,” Bond said about writing children’s books. “You have to catch a kid’s attention straight off. Recently a girl came up to me and said ‘I like your stories but can’t you give more action?’ I told her I will do my best next time.”

A Little Book of Friendship, Rupa R295. Ruskin Bond Children’s Omnibus, Volume 2, Rupa, R250. Tales of Fosterganj, Aleph, R295.Thick as Thieves: Tales of Friendship, Puffin, R199.