Hate, Love, Rain

I hated rain. 

During my growth years, the onset of the “monsoon season” in India equalled the start of the academic year. Those were dark, grey days, literally and otherwise. I did not like school. Not one bit. The education dished out was not meant for me. The soul was burdened with the weight of woe and the school bag. Umbrellas were a luxury and the raincoats were designed for Cindrella's dwarves rather than a chunky, fast growing lad. My school took “mass education” literally – 5,000 brats hummering away made it difficult to stand out in class and recognised as a budding genius. Unless you sat on the first bench and kept raising your hand all the time. All in all the combination of rain and a curriculum designed to turn the student into a drivelling, gibbering snorter made me wonder if Nietzsche actually had a point. 

The manic tremolo of raindrops on the awning over our windows at home is a sound I will never forget. It disturbed my sleep, my meals, my studies (such as they were) and was a background VFX that I can do without today.

Moving to man’s estate I finally got the chance to experience rain as a gift from the gods and not as a dam(p) nuisance. My love affair with rain was kindled in Paris, where the autumn rain helped me effortlessly dish out maudlin musings and robust food and wine pairings. London was wet through and through but the vision of huge Union Jack umbrellas, beers and scotch eggs in a cosy tavern just north of Swiss Cottage, vast swathes of rolling green fields glistening in the rain and hot tea in a village called Little Slaughter with lightning and thunder for company as the world stood still are some of my best memories of the city and the country. And West Africa is a byword for rain of course – it probably needs a separate post!

Unlike Paris and London and to an extent Amsterdam, Mumbai in the rain is not the best of places to be out of home in. The mud, the smells, the overflowing drains and on select days the tide in the affairs of (Mumbai) man, which when taken at the flood, leads to your shoes and trousers (and more) getting damaged beyond repair! Not to mention water-borne illnesses! Do not for a moment get trapped by lurid descriptions of roasted corn / spicy snacks / hot tea outside in the rain. These are mere projections of a weak mind.

The infamous Mumbai floods of 2005 convinced me it was time to move to a place where “rain” is chimeric – heard of in song and lore perhaps but rarely seen. Dubai happened fortuitously but with my usual impeccable sense of timing I landed there on its Annual Rain Day - when I believe the camels are decked up and let loose to frolic in the drops of rain while the natives roll up the windows of their Rollses – and was stuck at the airport for 3 hours.

However in the decade and a half since I have basked in sunshine through the year, with the memories of grey monsoons during school days like an old wadi in the desert - lifeless and dry. How I now crave for a flood to fill up that wadi! (for a glimpse of dubai in the rain check out my 1st ever blog post: dubai rain

I love rain. I am at my happiest when indoors with a cup of the steaming and a good thick novel (no Bookers please) at hand, while the heavens above open up. There is something about the sound of rain, pelting down on rooftops, tippering on leaves, that makes me sigh with a sense of what could have been, of unfulfilled desires and wishes (unkind folk who suggest that the sigh is really a wheeze are wet behind the ears). The occasional lightning and thunder are value additions which uplift the soul. And sometimes scare the beejezus out of me due to volume and intensity.

At these times, I like to think that the Guv’nor is up and about with a wee dram, about to tell me one of his lawyer stories.

And I am sure he would agree with the revered sage Baxicius’ advice on how to handle rain: Better to be wet inside and dry outside.

Travel broadens the…waist

One of my favourite dictums (dictii?) is “Travel Broadens The Mind”. Usually delivered with a lot of gravitas by an armchair traveller whose furthest travel has been to what we Indians call “native”, or “hometown”. This was perhaps valid in the early days when travel was a more leisurely and refined activity rather than the frantic, Instagrammable, group dash it is today.

In pre-Google days people not only took a long time to reach their destinations, they also took the trouble of learning about the history, ethnography, language and culture of the destination by actually reading up on the available literature of the place. So, not only did we broaden our minds, but by doing moved that much higher up the evolution scale (when was the last time you saw an ape reading up on “Thing To Do In Deadhorse, Alaska”?)

But an ancillary benefit of this kind of travel has not really got its place in the sun – the opportunity to try different cuisines, in the countries of their origin. Globalisation has made it possible to eat sushi in Saki Naka (a suburb of Mumbai, India) but does it have the same feel-good factor as going to Sushi Saito in Tokyo?

Travel for travel’s sake may have been a fad during the times of da Gama and Columbus, but today with the growth of digital media, there are “bucket lists” of things to do which usually include dining at “famous local eatery in Timbuktu” and posting photos of you holding the dead goat’s head on Instagram. Food For Likes.

Ancient cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, Beirut, Fez and Amsterdam have a whole host of famous eating spots and you cannot visit these cities without eating in at least one of these spots. The mushrooming of food blogs, restaurant review sites and cooking shows fuels an urgent desire to “travel to be seen to be eating in the right place”. As long as you are travelling to eat, I suppose it is OK.

As a resident of Dubai, the world’s most worldly city, I can access a host of international cuisines within half an hour of driving from home. Many restaurants try to recreate the ambience of the country whose cuisine is on offer. But the whole effect is ruined because the person serving you is never of the right ethnicity – surprising for a city with over 200 nationalities! I would rather enjoy Oktoberfest with a bevy of lederhosen-clad dralle Damen from Germany. Know what I mean?

I have had some very fine meals in the 29 cities that I have lived in during a rather chequered life and career (camel meat in Kano, Nigeria and so forth) I have also had some of the same meals in Dubai (camel burgers included), led on by memories of meals past. But the experience has always been spicier, more fragrant and much more insightful in the city itself. But as a microcosm of the world, Dubai serves its purpose of allowing you to sample cuisines from places you might not visit, and not just because of a virus.

So, the next time you feel hungry remember what renowned sage Baxicius said: “getting to table is also about journey, not just destination”.

train journeys: a bellyful of tastes and flavours

there is something about train journeys that re-assures us that not all transport is at light speed, hurtling hapless humans into voids only to arrive at destination before they have even begun to adjust to the departure!

india being a railroaded country, most indians travel from one station to another for work, love, escape, holidays, marriage and all the myriad occasions that make up a typical indian experience. from toy trains to local trains to metro trains, the great indian train journey is an experience beyond compare! we ourselves have been part of this merry throng on countless occasions and the experience has always been exhilarating, though not always the most comfortable.

for us every train journey has been all about food [we don't care much for staring out of the window, especially when we are travelling 2nd class sleeper, non-AC across vast distances]. and the bombay-howrah geetanjali express, a 1,968 kilometre way of life [it just cannot be called a train journey] would rank high up on our list of favourites. it cuts a huge slice across the belly of the indian sub-continent, linking sea, hills, plains and rivers in one vast canvas of colour, smells, flavours and people! the journey is best divided in to meal times rather than departure and arrival times, else 31 hours will seem like a life time! from soggy omelettes to die for to crisp singhara with tea in clay pots to a chicken curry redolent of the empire origins of the railway, every morsel is a delight.

our school holidays were wrapped around the mandatory "visit to native", in our case to the far western town of jamnagar in kathaiwar. in those days, differences in gauges meant that the journey was divided in to two - bombay to ahmedabad and ahmedabad to jamnagar. with a 4 hour halt at ahmedabad [viramgam actually]. since the bby-abad journey was at night and the onward journey was during the day, breakfast was at viramgam and elevenses somewhere along the way. the traditional kathiawari cuisine has a lot going for it, especially its avoidance of sugary tastes, and the spice, tang and coarse flavours are ideal for a journey through the semi-arid region that is our home region!

european trains are of course a world apart in terms of speed, design, comfort and cleanliness. but then if they were to travel 1,968 kms west to east they would be kissing the russian border! we used to travel frequently between our work place in holland [hilversum] and amsterdam. a 55-min journey punctuated by copious quantities of saucijzenbroodjes [sausage rolls] and a large thee met melk [tea with milk]. all that a student budget would allow us.

we had wanted to do train journey in africa but when the tracks disappear into elephant grass midway you know that isn't the best way to reach point B from point A. one day we shall!

and yes, our journey bucket list includes london to edinburgh on the flying scotsman. we wonder if they have haggis on board. with a wee dram.