Travel

London

Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city, even a black city, from pictures he had seen, and he was surprised to find it filled with color. It was a city of red brick and white stone, red buses and large black taxis, bright red mailboxes and green grassy parks and cemeteries. It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange names—Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl’s Court, Marble Arch—and oddly distinct identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists, needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five hundred years of fitful road-widening and unskillful compromises between the needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the needs of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every color and manner and kind.

Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

 

 

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Books, Food

On Curry

curry

Lizzie Collingham – Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors

 

Reading Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors by Lizzie Collingham, and learning fascinating things about different kinds of Indian cuisine.

Among the myths busted and tales told, the most wondrous are the account of the food habits of early Hindus, easily .

One of the best records of Hindu courtly cuisine has been left to us by the twelfth-century King Somesvara III. He belonged to the Western Chalukyan dynasty of kings who ruled over parts of present-day Maharashtra and Karnataka. Unusually for a king, he was more interested in the arts and literature than in waging war. Although parts of the kingdom were slipping out of Chalukyan hands, he busied himself with writing an encyclopedic account on the conduct of kingly affairs. Delightfully entitled Manasollasa, meaning refresher of the mind, it paid some attention to the conduct of affairs of state and the qualities needed by a king.

A king needed to eat a “suitable, healthy and hygienic” diet. This might include lentil dumplings in a spicy yogurt sauce, fatty pork fried with cardamoms, or roast rump steak.Alongside mutton, pork, and venison, “sparrows and rats, and cats and lizards” could all be found on sale in the markets of the capital city. Some of Somesvara’s other favorite dishes sound less appetizing: fried tortoise (said to taste like plantain) and roasted black rat.

Oh, fuck yeah, Chalukyas. A far cry from 2015, when I spent a few hours poking around shops in Sikkim and on the Nepal border looking for dried buffalo meat – sukuti, as it is called locally. Apparently they no longer sell it in Indian towns any more, despite the healthy presence of a Nepali population. My heart still withers at the memory of a 4 kilo pack of sukuti that the cleaning lady in my Hyderabad apartment threw in the trash on her own initiative because it smelt funny. I would have dump-dived to get it back but she also made sure to throw the trash out well before I came back home.

The book goes on to talk about Somesvara’s rat recipe.

The rats which are strong black, born in the fields and river banks are called maiga; these are fried in hot oil holding with the tail till the hair is removed; after washing with hot water, the stomach is cut and the inner parts are cooked with amla [sour mango] and salt; or the rat is kept on iron rods and fired on red hot coal, till outer skin is burnt or shrinks. When the rat is cooked well, salt, cumin and sothi [a flour made from lentils] are sprinkled and relished.

The Mughlai section of the book begins with Babur’s dismay at this strange land, so different from that of his forefathers.

The people paraded about naked apart from grubby loincloths and lacked beauty; society was devoid of grace or nobility, manners or etiquette. No one possessed any poetic talent, a sign of the highest cultivation in his homeland. One of Babur’s chief complaints against Hindustan was that the food was awful. “There [is] no good . . . meat, grapes, melons, or other fruit. There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets,” he grumbled.

I sort of understood. [ref]My personal gripe this time, while visiting Guwahati in February, was that I could not find parsley anywhere. There was however very specific variants of coriander, especially a delicate grassy-looking version that smelled divine.[/ref]

While a lot of description of Mughlai cooking takes up the early part of the book – which includes Abu’l Fazl’s recipe for biryani the way it was cooked in Akbar’s kitchens. His recipe calls for “10 seers of rice; 5 seers of sugar candy; 31 seers of ghee; raisins, almonds and pistachios, 1 seer of each; 2 seer of salt; 5 seer of fresh ginger; 11 dams saffron, 21 misqals of cinnamon. ” [ref]1 seer is 24 lbs or 10-ish kilos, and a dam is 3 oz or 85 grams[/ref] Fazl also adds that this recipe will make four ordinary dishes, which makes me wonder about the appetite of those hallowed emperors and their ilk.

The main missing ingredient at that point in history was introduced into Indian cuisine by the Portuguese, and made its way into Southern India first.

Indians were often slow to accept new foods, but only a few years after chillies had been introduced a south Indian poet declared them the “Saviour of the Poor.” They provided a cheap and easy way to give taste to a simple meal of rice and lentils. Even Ayurvedic physicians, who rarely incorporated foreign foods into the cosmic world of diet and health, replaced pepper with chillies in many of their remedies. While the ancient recipes prescribed pepper water for those afflicted with cholera, nineteenth-century Ayurvedic physicians often used chilli both in plasters and in soups to treat the cholera patient. By this time they were a staple of the Indian diet and, “ground into a paste between two stones, with a little mustard oil, ginger and salt, they form[ed] the only seasoning which the millions of poor can obtain to eat with their rice.”

The dedicated chapter on Goan cuisine was tough to read while waiting for lunch to arrive. (Honestly, if you are planning to read this book, please make sure you have had a full meal. It made me want to throw all my notions of daily caloric intake aside and ladle bowls of ghee and cinnamon and lamb and cumin on a frying pan) The way the flavors of that tiny little state come together, and how some of its key dishes, especially in baking, traveled even further East with the Portuguese makes for great reading.

The result of this culinary interchange was a pleasing fusion of Portuguese ingredients (pork)—some of which were derived from Arab influences on Iberian cookery (dried fruit)—and Portuguese techniques (marinating and cooking in vinegar), with the south Indian spice mixtures, sour tamarind paste, shredded coconut, and coconut milk. Added into this already cosmopolitan blend were the recently discovered foodstuffs from the New World such as the chilli. Thus Goan dishes unite in their fiery sauces the culinary histories of three continents: Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

* * *

Over time Goan cooks replaced the European ingredients in Portuguese cakes with others more easily available in India. Coconut milk was used as a substitute for fresh cow’s or almond milk. Jaggery, the hard lumps of raw sugar made from the sap of the palm tree, replaced the more refined sugars used in Europe. Ghee supplanted fresh butter. The far more common and cheaper rice flour took the place of wheat flour. Goan confections were clearly derived from Portuguese cakes and pastries but they took on a distinctively Indian flavor. Bebinca is a typical example of the Goan adaptation of Portuguese cake-making traditions. It is made from a batter of coconut milk, eggs, and jaggery. A thin layer of the batter is poured into a pot and baked, then another layer is added, and so on until the cake forms a series of pancake-like layers. Ideally, it should be baked in an earthen oven fueled by coconut husks that impart a smoky flavor. Bebinca traveled with the Portuguese to Malaya, and from there to the Philippines, where the cooks dispensed with the time-consuming layers. From the Philippines bebinca continued on its extraordinary journey to Hawaii, where it transmuted into butter mochi, a fudgelike rice-flour dessert.

My favorite sections so far have been about Awadh and Lucknow, hardly surprising considering how influential that part of the country has been in the culinary department. Specifically, the Lucknavi reaction to the biryani vs pulao question. Lucknavi gourmets were willing to concede that “a good biryani is better than an indifferent pilau”. But biryanis were considered to taste too strongly of spices that overwhelmed the delicate floral flavor of the rice, and hence called a “clumsy and ill-conceived meal in comparison with a really good pulao.”

Also, the nawabs of Lucknow indulged in food duels! My head reels with ideas of food manga set in 19th century Lucknow, where noblemen indulge in gastronomical blood-feud and one-upmanship, culminating in orgies and general bonhomie.

In Lucknow a story is told of how the last nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah (1847–1856), invited Mirza Asman Qadar, a prince from Delhi, to dine with him. The prince, a noted gourmet, chose a spicy conserve of vegetables called murrabba from the array of dishes set down before him. As he began to chew he discovered to his surprise that he was in fact eating a qaurama of meat. Waji Ali Shah’s chef had taken great pains to disguise the qaurama, and the nawab was delighted that he had succeeded in tricking one of the great food connoisseurs of Delhi. Mirza Qadar went home feeling very embarrassed to have been caught out. He soon took his revenge. Waji Ali Shah duly received a return invitation. As he tasted each dish in turn he was stunned to discover that all the food—the pilau, the biryani, the meat curries, the kebabs, the chutneys and pickles, and even the breads—were all made of caramelized sugar. The nawab was defeated.

Other than Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the other colorful character in Awadhi history of that time is Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah, under whose patronage Lucknow cuisine yielded two major breakthroughs.

One of Lucknow’s most famous cooking techniques was perfected as a result of the need to provide food for the poor. In 1784, Oudh was struck by famine and Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah responded by paying the hungry to work on the building of the Imambara. Thus, he was able to prevent his subjects from dying on the streets while he continued to beautify the city to his own glory. Nanbais (bazaar cooks) were charged with the difficult task of supplying the workers with warm food at any time of day or night. They used the Mughal technique of dum pukht (meaning to breathe and to cook), a recipe for which can be found in the Ain-i-Akbari. The Indian cook also served a “dum poked”[ref]My next band, for those interested in this bit of TMI, will be called “dum poked”.[/ref] chicken when John Ovington dined with the English merchants in the factory at Surat. In Lucknow, the nanbais set up enormous cooking pots filled with meat and vegetables that were sealed with lids of dough and placed on hot coals. In this way the food cooked slowly and hungry laborers could be fed at a moment’s notice with tender pieces of meat that fell from the bone. When he went to inspect the work, the nawab is said to have found the smells rising from the steaming pots so inviting that he ordered the palace cooks to learn the recipe from the nanbais. Dum pukht was also applied to good effect to a dish of mutton and turnips that was brought to Lucknow by Kashmiris, looking for alternative sources of employment now that the Mughal court was in decline.

* * *

Indeed, Asaf-ud-Daulah became so fat that he could no longer ride a horse. He managed to gain vast amounts of weight despite the fact that his ability to chew was compromised by the loss of his teeth. Shammi kebabs are supposed to have been created in order to accommodate this problem. They were made out of finely minced and pounded meat, known as qima. The Mughals liked minced beef but in Lucknow the cooks preferred lamb, which produced a softer mince. They would grind the Korma meat into a fine paste and then add ginger and garlic, poppy seeds and various combinations of spices, roll it into balls or lozenges, spear them on a skewer, and roast them over a fire. The resulting kebabs were crispy on the outside but so soft and silky within that even the toothless Asaf-ud-Daulah could eat them with pleasure.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the wife of a British army officer passing through Lucknow noticed that “three distinct dinners” were served at the nawab’s table. “One at the upper end, by an English cook; at the lower end by a French cook; and in the centre (where he always sat,) by a Hindoostanee cook.”

I am about half-way through the book, around the time of the British residency, when there is still a fair bit of cultural disruption in progress, where the people coming in as traders and occasional meddlers in local political affairs have taken to calling themselves Anglo-Indians, and represent a new class hierarchy at par with noblemen and ruling houses. This is where the first rumbles of the term “curry”comes into being at least in its present usage, and also clarifies a bit of what makes that term so – pardon my use of the expression – bland.

What the British in India ate, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, was curry and rice. Anglo-Indian dining tables were not complete without bowls of curry that, eaten like a hot pickle or a spicy ragout, added bite to the rather bland flavors of boiled and roasted meats. No Indian, however, would have referred to his or her food as a curry. The idea of a curry is, in fact, a concept that the Europeans imposed on India’s food culture. Indians referred to their different dishes by specific names and their servants would have served the British with dishes that they called, for clarity, rogan josh, dopiaza, or quarama. But the British lumped all these together under the heading of curry. The British learned this term from the Portuguese who described as “caril” or “carree” the broths that the Indians “made with Butter, the Pulp of Indian Nuts . . . and all sorts of Spices, particularly Cardamoms and Ginger . . . besides herbs, fruits and a thousand other condiments [that they] . . . poured in good quantity upon . . . boyl’d Rice.” The Portuguese had adopted these terms from various words in south Indian languages. In Kannadan and Malayalam, the word karil was used to describe spices for seasoning as well as dishes of sautéed vegetables or meat. In Tamil, the word kari had a similar meaning (although nowadays it is used to mean sauce or gravy). As the words karil and kari were reconfigured into Portuguese and English they were transformed into “caril” and “caree” and eventually into the word curry, which the British then used as a generic term for any spicy dish with a thick sauce or gravy in every part of India.

Although they used the word curry to describe dishes from every Indian region, the British were aware of regional differences in the cooking of the subcontinent. In his cookery book on Curries and How to Prepare Them (1903), Joseph Edmunds stated decisively that “in India there are at least three separate classes of curry, the Bengal, the Madras and the Bombay.” “The Bengal artist,” wrote Edmunds, “is greatest in fish and vegetable curries. Bombay boasts of its peculiar gifts in its bomelon fish and its popedoms. Ceylon curries were usually piquant with chillies and made with coconut milk.”

And thus are generalizations born.

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Mixtapes, Music

The May 2015 Playlist

Unforeseen reasons deny totes destroyed my attempts to create an April 2015 playlist.

Commentary, because you deserve it:

  • RedRed feat Sarkodie – Ghetto This is a happy fucking song, with a happy video (shot in Accra, Ghana, btw). I would dance to it till the cows come home. RedRed is a dish from Ghana made with (ahem) blackeyed peas, and the musicians hail from Ghana and Budapest. What a combination, I say.
  • Lydia Ainsworth – Malachite Such an evocative and kooky artiste. Reminds me of the likes of Grimes and My Brightest Diamond, especially in the myriad influences in the music. The video is a single take, and sometimes I feel like I should do a playlist of single-take videos. She is performing in Pasadena on June 6, I am so there!
  • Ratatat – Chrome When I heard Ratatat first, I was going to dismiss them as generic 80s-influenced band, but then I discovered that they do fascinating things with the electric guitar. Ratatat’s new album comes out in July – they played a set at Coachella this year, and that’s where this track premiered. The freakiest thing about the innocuous video happens around 1:00, keep your eye on the screen. Oh look, the neon lights from the Malachite video make an appearance in this one. (And it’s kinda single-take too, if you consider the static camera)
  • Royksopp – I Had This Thing Goddammit, how much better can this band get? The song is from their 2014 album The Inevitable End, and for the longest time I thought that was it – khattam-shud for Royksopp. Thankfully it’s not, they have a Kafka-themed album coming soon. Vocals on this song about a break-up are by Jamie Irrepressible, and the lyrics/video/feel of it is otherworldly.Yet another exhibit to prove my hypothesis that we should outsource all music-making to the Scandinavian countries.
  • Brandon Flowers – I Still Want You Sometimes this song makes me feel like it’s one of those Hugh Grant pastiche songs from a Richard Curtis romcom. But then I listen to it more closely and it has this peculiar class to it – the mellow chorus, the female backing voices. Flowers, going solo off his Killers gig for the second time, gives off a charming Jagger/Bowie vibe in the video, albeit a little more accessible version.
  • Zella Day – Hypnotic Zella Day has been making waves recently with one of her songs in the Divergent OST, though she has been around since 2012. I kinda think I like this song more because of the slightly-NSFW video but I don’t deny how it grew on me.
  • Ryan Hemsworth – Snow in Newark I ventured inside an interesting-looking store called VNYL, on Abbot Kinney in Venice ( the American, not the Italian version, just to confirm) who sold vinyl records and record players. They had some great records available for listening, and I pounced on the Purity Ring album just because I wanted to see if it sounded better on vinyl (it did, though not 600$ better). The sweet lady helping me out also mentioned that she liked FKA Twigs and – Ryan Hemsworth, who I hadn’t heard of. This was the first of Hemsworth tracks that I heard. For a song with ‘Newark’ in its name, it was shot in Nepal. Go figure.
  • Jim James – State of the Art (AEIOU) I had added the Regions of Light and Sound of God album to my Spotify albums because I had seen Jim James pop up in some best-of list, but had dismissed them after one listen because of the slight religious tone to the songs. I revisited it recently thanks to the TV show The Blacklist, where this particular song was used to brilliant effect. Repeat listens have convinced me that this album is a work of astonishing depths, from beginning to end. The way the bass and drums kick in in this particular track – subhanallah!
  • Chromeo – Jealous Such a fun 80s throwback. I have been tripping on the album since N, a lady with wonderful and much eclectic taste in music (and mutual interest in art, literature and other assorted things of beauty), pointed me to it. Apparently they are performing in Santa Barbara next month with Com Truise. Worth the 2.5 hour drive? Watch this space.
  • Lisa Hannigan – Song of the Sea The most unlikely song to appear on this playlist. But this is the most unlikely of movies I have seen this year – on my last evening in Spain, when we were all mellow and looking to do something together – with the kids, Pablo suggested this movie. I mistook it for an anime at first, but Secret of Kells came up, and once the movie began, the gorgeous animation and music spoke for themselves. This haunting song (and its Irish version) stayed with me after.
  • TMJuke – Marbles and Drains This song came up in a random playlist that my pal Chuck was playing in his truck – umm, yeah, I know how that sounds. Very strange combination of a koto, flute and a breakbeat. I am usually skeptical of Asian take-out fare like this, but somehow it works here. And it made me go listen to Vangelis’s ‘Tao of Love’ later, a track that I hadn’t heard in years.
  • Cornershop feat Celeste – Non-Stop Radio Another recommendation from the lady N, who offered this in retribution for the extended listens of Yelle, Stromae and Zaz that I subjected her to. “Your kind of music”, she said. She was right, as usual.
  • Jabberwocky feat Elodie Wildstars – Photomaton French electronica: check. Sultry female voice: check. Slightly NSFW video: triple check. Pulsating ear-penis of a synth-line: yup. What’s not to love?
  • Flo Rida feat Robin Thicke & Verdine White While I like Flo Rida’s music, I cannot claim to be the biggest Robin Thicke fan in the world. But there is no denying the booty-shaking, hop-and-skip potential of this little ditty. It turned up in the Morning Commute playlist on Spotify, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already doing the radio rounds at the moment. The reliance on the Facebook UI in the video all but guarantees automatic minuscule half-life and time-capsule relegation, possibly by end of the year, maybe even earlier.
  • French Horn Rebellion – Swing Into It Ah, Electro-swing. A genre that I like quite a bit, but find myself unable to listen to for more than a few tracks at a time because it all begins to blend into one common sound after 15 minutes. (See also: reggae, country) But the few stray tracks that come forward every now and then manage to sustain my interest in the sound – and this song is one of them. Which makes me sound uncharitable towards it, I know, but bear with an old man’s rambling, yeah? Lovely use of scratches and beats and the single-take (again!) video, while a little poorly-lit for my taste, features excellent dancing. Almost as good as the fan-dance Parov Stelar track, you know which one I am talking about, yeah?
  • Fallulah – Dragon Ah, the pleasures of revisiting an old favorite. Fallulah’s 2013 album Escapism finally released worldwide this month, and this track’s video, made painstakingly by hand-drawn animation cels captures the whimsy of the song so perfectly. The art is like a nifty mashup of Noelle Stevenson and Tara McPherson’s work, and the symmetry of the neon-lit visuals is hypnotic. The music, ah, the music. Built around a nifty piano loop, the song cascades breathlessly with growling, simmering bass line, while the drums pack a brutal kick-punch combo in the background. Chinese violins rasp along with the chorus, keeping with the title of the track. Who’s got the key to your heart? This song and its singer, of course. (One of this days, I need to do a rave post on Fallulah’s Escapism. Someone remind me?)
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Myself

What You Should Do When You are in Granada

A detail on an arabesque pattern

Where the walls are alive with the sound of music.

If you have never been to Granada, a city in the south of Spain, you should head there. Not because I say so, but because it is a fabulous city that is oozing with history and romance, and was one of the centers of civilization a millennium ago. But also because I say so.

If you have never been to Granada, you should know that it is just as beautiful as Sevilla, three hours to the west. But I have friends and family in Sevilla, and I fear my recommendation will be tainted by the wonderful experience that comes with being there in the company of loved ones, so I will not ask you to go there. Go to Granada instead. Go there in the spring, or in the summer.

But wait. Before you go to Granada, you should do some homework first. Read up a bit about Moorish Spain –  specifically, about the most famous architectural remnant of that era.

At Granada, in 1248, Muhammad ibn al-Ahmar (1232–73) ordered the erection of Spain’s most famous edifice, the Alhambra—i.e., “the red.” The chosen site was a mountain crag bounded by deep ravines, and looking down upon two rivers, the Darro and the Genil. The emir found there a fortress, the Alcazaba, dating from the ninth century; he added to it, built the great outer walls of the Alhambra and the earlier of its palaces, and left everywhere his modest motto: “There is no conqueror but Allah.” The immense structure has been repeatedly extended and repaired, by Christians as well as Moors. Charles V added his own palace in square Renaissance style, solemn, incongruous, and incomplete. Following the principles of military architecture as developed in Eastern Islam, the unknown architect designed the enclosure first as a fortress capable of holding 40,000 men.

(Excerpt from The Age of Faith :Volume 4 of The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant)

So yes, the Alhambra. If you do not book tickets in advance, you will probably be in for a shock when you turn up at the gates. There will be lines, and you will probably not get in if you stand in line after 10 AM in the morning. You could do the right thing, and book tickets in advance and waltz right in, like I did the first time I went there in 2011 (or rather, as Pablo did. That man is an organizational wonder). But should you choose to be adventurous – and I heartily recommend it – walk to the gates of the Alhambra at 6 in the morning. You will see the streets in a new light – pun intended – and you will also notice the unique design of the street-lamps, brazenly modern compared to the city’s vibe. You will also see a name you did not think to associate with the place – the writer Washington Irving, who wrote his famous Tales of the Alhambra way back when, and made the place even more famous than it was. There is a fountain in his honor and a beautiful bronze statue, on which time has woven a respectable green patina.

My recommendation is to spend about 6 hours in the Alhambra. Visit the Generalife gardens first. It’s a good warm-up for what is to come, and there is nothing like walking through flowers in bloom accompanied by the sounds of water gargling through fountains and stairways (yes, water stairways). The Palace of Carlos V, with its museum comes next. When I was there in 2011, there was an MC Escher exhibit that took nearly an hour of my time – Escher’s work was apparently inspired by the intricate mathematically-precise patterns in the Alhambra. This time, the museum showcased the work of Andalusian artist Carmen Laffon, whose smoky landscape and still-life painting gave me goosebumps. Also take the time to go to some of the bath-houses and the cathedral. Take a fifteen minute break. And then go inside the Palace of the Nazaries.

The more luxurious taste of the next two centuries gradually transformed this fortress into a congeries of halls and palaces, nearly all distinguished by unsurpassed delicacy of floral or geometrical decoration, carved or stamped in colored stucco, brick, or stone. In the Court of the Myrtles a pool reflects the foliage and the fretted portico. Behind it rises the battlemented Tower of Comares, where the besieged thought to find a last and impregnable redoubt. Within the tower is the ornate Hall of the Ambassadors; here the emirs of Granada sat enthroned, while foreign emissaries marveled at the art and wealth of the tiny kingdom; here Charles V, looking out from a balcony window upon the gardens, groves, and stream below, mused, “How ill-fated the man who lost all this!” In the main courtyard, the Patio de los Leones, a dozen ungainly marble lions guard a majestic alabaster fountain; the slender columns and flowered capitals of the surrounding arcade, the stalactite archivolts, the Kufic lettering, the time-subdued tints of the filigree arabesques, make this the masterpiece of the Morisco style.

(Excerpt from The Age of Faith :Volume 4 of The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant)

To say that the Nazaries palace is stunning is an understatement. It is an Orientalist’s wet dream, the ornamental outpouring of a civilization at its peak, a period where conquest was replaced by consolidation and decoration. One might argue (and the Durants make a mention of this) that the Moors went beyond elegance to excess, but why should one complain against beauty that has lasted centuries? Against precise geometric patterns that manage to give us weak knees and purified souls even in this day and age? I have to admit that I went a little crazy over the arabesque designs.

The palaces deserve at least a few hours of your time. From various points around the courtyards and corridors, you see vistas of the city, red and white lego blocks clustered all along the horizon. But the lighting is bad, and your pictures will probably come out over-saturated. The best panoramic views of the city are seen from the western fortifications, called the Alcazaba. There, atop the Torre Quebrada and the Torre del Homenaje, you get an inkling of how the defenders of this fortress and its 40000 inhabitants kept a close watch on the land surrounding it.

Later in the evening, you should think about walking through the maze of streets and alleys that weave through buildings ancient and modern. Orange trees cast magical shadows on red tiles, and as you turn into random alleys, it feels like being transported into a different century. The sound of running water is everywhere, not the petulant glug of sewers or the furious energy of a river; what you hear in Granada is the murmur of fountains, a gentle gurgle that calms you down, and asks you to drink in the sights without worrying about missed schedules. Occasionally, you peek through the grilles of gates, and sniff at the smell of oranges wafting through well-manicured gardens. A cat saunters fearlessly across the street, pauses and stares at you, indignant at your intrusion into its neighborhood. Every now and then, you pass by clusters of tourists, a multitude of tongues and camera models immersed in and creating worlds of their own. There are times when you may have to flatten yourself against a door to let a brash, overconfident vehicle pass you by – seeing a chariot or two would not be surprising, but these are our familiar beasts of iron and smoke, both buses and cars. Take care, because Moorish bathhouses and medieval villas remain frozen in time and semi-hidden throughout these streets, and most of them are free to enter and gasp at. If you look closely at the tiles, you will find them covered with saplings – there is silent life everywhere, in Granada.

When it is dark, and you are back in the modern part of the city, walk over to this bar called Poe’s. It’s run by a British guy and his Spanish wife, and they serve a free tapa with every drink you order. Try all 9 items on the food menu. By the time you are done, there is a happy buzz in your head, though you realize that the day is over and it will be time to leave soon. But you will be back. Oh, you will be back.

Panorama from the Alcazaba

A view to remember

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Myself

The Shoes Post

A break from your regularly scheduled programming to talk about something that has not been talked about on this blog: shoes. To be more specific, men’s shoes.

I suppose one has to start at the very beginning, and that beginning in this story would be a particular day in my childhood. Picture this: my father and I are faced by a man seated on a wooden stool. The man is a cobbler. We are there because my father decided that instead of going and buying Bata shoes like everyone else we knew, it would make more financial and logical sense to get my school shoes made by the gentleman sitting in front of us. We were there because this was the day I was getting new shoes, and personally, I did not give a damn about the shoes other than the fact that they should be black (school uniform rules) and that they should not hurt.

They hurt. They really hurt.

“Oh, they will stretch out, become looser the more you wear them”, the Destroyer of my Toes exclaimed nonchalantly. “They will fit your feet.” My father seemed to agree, based on his own boundless experience. I would much rather have walked out bare feet, but was convinced by both adults to keep my shoes on. Lucky for me they did not want me to sleep in them too.

In the weeks that followed, the shoes showed no sign of becoming any more comfortable than they were. Eventually, I resigned myself to my fate. I guess my feet gained enough calluses for me to stop wincing every time I walked. But what I took away from this life experience is that: leather shoes are the devil’s shoes. Nobody in their right mind should wear leather shoes. And this was a lesson propagated by everybody else I knew. You wore leather shoes if you did not have a choice. They were either too tight, or too loose –  making your ankles flick up at the wrong moment, forcing you to walk gingerly towards your destination. Nothing felt better than taking them off at the end of the day. Sneakers and sports shoes were what we wore, when we did not wear open-toed sandals. I got adventurous enough to wear sneakers that kind of looked like leather shoes, and sometimes I got away with it.

Until one fine day in 2012, when I was looking at the rows of shoes in the Nordstrom Rack opposite my office and giving myself a bad headache. Because, obviously, I had no idea of how to decide what shoes to buy. Pal Sasi had given me specific instructions: “Don’t buy cheap shoes. You need one pair of formal shoes for special occasions, so make it count”. And I was. I tried on various shoes half-heartedly but just couldn’t stomach the idea of paying a random number between 20$ and (gasp!) 400$ for a pair. Where was the logic? Why would that pair of Kenneth Cole shoes cost a hundred-something dollars and this pair of Rockports be 30$, even though they look exactly the same? It couldn’t all be about labels and stickers, right?

So I went and did some light Internet reading. And that – much like it normally does, in my life – turned into a bit of heavy Internet reading.

The gist of what I learnt was that good shoes matter. And that good shoes uniformly cost money. But in return, good shoes also last longer – much, much longer. In my mind, two years for a pair of shoes was pushing it; there were the occasional shoes that made it to Year 3, but even I realized that I was doing myself no favors by letting my feet be encrusted with a bedraggled mess. What the Internet promised was mind-boggling – apparently some shoes would even last upwards of 20 years. Over time, I would learn about the difference between terms like Oxfords, Wingtips, Brogues and Cap-toes, about lasts and welts; about shell cordovan vs calfskin, the difference between leather and rubber soles, and the perceived formality of a shoe. Guides like this helped, as did a bunch of Reddit forums.

Obviously, the prices quoted were sometimes ridiculous – you could pay thousands of dollars for a great pair, but it wasn’t necessary to do so – there were other factors at play. Fortuitously, a book called Deluxe came into my life at around the same time, and it talked about brands and fashion and the intersection of economics and utility, and I was starting to take a look at the utilitarian things that I owned in a new light. I looked at names of shoe companies that were talked about on forums. A name that appeared frequently in such circles was an American company named Allen Edmonds, based out of Wisconsin. They had provided shoes for the US military, the Olympic team and were the shoemakers for multiple American presidents. And in an age when manufacturing was moving to China, it transpired that Allen Edmonds shoes were being exported there.

So I went over to Nordstrom Rack again and tried on a pair of AE McAllisters that was on sale. A great Merlot wingtip (a younger version of me would have used the term reddish-brown, but I was aware by then about the different kinds of reddish brown – oxblood, merlot, bourbon or chili), for sale at lower than official price. To say that it felt good was an understatement – it fit my feet like nothing before. It was not too loose, not too tight; most importantly, I wanted to keep them on. I tried other shoes that same day –  some felt lighter, some were tight around the toes or the sides, others just did not look right. It took me another week before I could sufficiently convince myself to take the plunge though – they were definitely pricier than my mental limit, but I realized that I wanted those shoes when I walked into the Rack and found myself getting panicky when they weren’t at their usual place.

I did go on to buy more from Allen Edmonds, and I have had uniformly good experiences with them. People comment on why I am wearing leather shoes instead of more comfortable ones, and I find it hard to explain that no, these are really comfortable shoes, even after a day of keeping them on my feet. Also, the inner soles are set over a layer of cork and over time, they seem to have molded to the shape of my feet, which make them uniquely my shoes. It pays to take care of them, and I find it therapeutic, much like folding laundry or ironing shirts, to sit in a corner and polish them while watching something. I have tried other shoes every now and then – especially being interested in some British companies like Barkers or Crockett and Jones. (It was a revelation finding out that Northampton in the UK was the center of the men’s shoe-making world. I had known that place to be the center of the universe for another reason altogether)

That would have been the end of this story, except:

In February, while in Sheffield, I came back home one evening and something felt off. I had been wearing the same McAllisters from 2012, and my feet felt a little damp and – tired. I thought it was because I had been walking through cobblestones in the rain, but a closer look and I realized what was going on: there was a nasty hole in the right sole. A small one, but very clear indeed; I could see the cork underneath clearly. Water had seeped in. “That’s it”, I thought. “End of the road for a great pair.” But I figured I could always try recrafting them – that’s a service that AE offers at a price, and so I sent an email to their customer service asking them whether I should go see a cobbler myself or send it over to them. I got a reply 2 working days later, where the lady asked me not to do anything until I was back in the States, and then to contact them again. A week later, when I emailed them again from Los Angeles, they sent me a shipping label – all I had to do was put my shoes in a box and drop the box (with label) at a UPS center.

Another week later, I got an email from customer service.

Thank you for sending in your shoes.  We apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced with the footwear.
We would like to recraft the footwear for you at no charge.  The recraft would include new soles, heels and refinish the leather uppers.

If you would like us to proceed please let me know.

I will admit to being caught off-guard by this. I mean, it had been three years since I bought the pair of shoes! They could very well have just charged me for the recrafting. I don’t know about you, but I found this kind of customer service bewilderingly awesome. It took 10 working days for the shoes to get back to me. They look like new and feel just they used to.

And it is clear that they put in a phenomenal amount of work into the whole recrafting process.

I had never really looked at my shoes as an investment, but I realize now that they might very well be. AE claims that their shoes can be recrafted up to 5 times – one may ask why you would want the same old shoes for years and years, instead of picking a new pair every few years, but that leads to deeper philosophical discussions about materialism and chemical footprints and what-not. But the basis of all discussions about men’s fashion seems to be that certain things are timeless in terms of look and utility – formal shoes are among them, as are grey woolen suits, navy wool blazers and white shirts. Above all, it is important to recognize craftsmanship, value for money and customer service. Allen Edmonds seems to have the perfect blend of these three qualities – and they deserve to get my money.

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