One more cup of coffee for the road

(the best-ever spoof of the original)

There is something almost cerebral about sitting in a cafe sipping a cuppa with good conversation, or a good book for those who trammel the solitary path. I grew up in a pre-liberalization era when neon-lit chain coffee shops did not dot every single neighbourhood in the country. The American, British and European chains had still not made inroads into metros and most people had vague ideas about the pronunciation and spelling of espresso and cappuccino. My notion of cafes was derived from the old colonial tea rooms and coffee houses where I got the first whiff of freshly brewed coffee and also learnt that meeting for a cup of coffee was a leisurely activity that had little to do with the temperature of the coffee in your cup and more to do with the cash in your wallet that allowed you to order endless cups, the conversations that meandered over topics and issues with differing levels of engagement, the number of cigarettes remaining in your packet and time that was remaining to while away the in-between hours, to seek shelter and succour on rainy days, to kindle romances old and new, to strike up intellectual debates, to share confessions, to have tear-stained goodbyes, to people watch and to invigorate the body reeling under a late summer afternoon lassitude. Going back in time, there are cafes that I remember as milestones in my life.

College Street Coffee House
As a young student, peeling walls, grime, cigarette smoke, jholas, khadi kurtas and the occasional strain of guitar accompanied to Dylan songs had an unbelievable and near-irrational attraction for me. Thus the first time I ever stepped into the legendary College Street Coffee House, my own imagination sufficed to make this a place of unmatched atmosphere. Redolent with stories of the revolutionary Naxals who hatched their plots over cups of the famous coffee, artists and filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Ritwick Ghatak and Aparna Sen who had adda sessions accompanied by mutton cutlets and the literary icons of the Hungry generation including Shakti Chattopadhyay who used this buzzing space as a platform for hot debates, Coffee House is an indelible part of any Calcutta student's growing-up years. This coffee house fuels romantic notions of history and revolution and is a near time capsule of the 60s and 70s when flower power, anti-
establishment struggles, protest literature and music was at its all-time peak.

 The Tea Stall at Prafulla Chandra Sarkar Street

As a wide-eyed rookie reporter, I have drunk cups of lebu cha and milky tea boiled beyond oblivion in a kettle that had probably been around since the beginning of time. Sitting on the grimy steps of old hardware shops under the magnificent arches of a quintessentially colonial building in Calcutta that housed one of the foremost papers of the country, it was this ever-bubbling kettle that was companion to many hours spent in the company of all manner of journalists, smoking cheap cigarettes and discussing a city in political disarray.

Flury's, Park Street
 Flury's, an age-old tearoom in Calcutta's famous Park Street is the place that always made me linger over my cuppa. For a pastry shop that opened in 1927, this cafe has seen a changing world and its own rather remarkable journey has been from neighborhood confectionary to a decrepit colonial coffeehouse to a stylish cafe/restaurant/bakery after the fashion of a turn-of-the-century European tea room done up in pink and a rich chocolate brown. This was a far cry from its earlier stodgy avatar as a dingy, cavernous room with air conditioning that would chill you to the bone. I saw the downed shutters on a holiday one summer. I was about to begin the process of mourning when I heard the whispered word "renovation" that was murmured by all who passed the mysteriously shrouded corner. And one fine day it reopened. The new Flury's straddled history and a modern chic. I returned to the city. I returned to Flury's and it became a place for endless conversations, bitter reminiscing, good-natured camaraderie, sweet romance, and maddening love. I lived out all my separate selves here – as a poor student scraping together just enough for that Viennese coffee; as a struggling  journalist looking for a story; as a  tourist introducing others to the delights I had known. I fell in love with my husband over cups of coffee in Flury's and made life decisions about leaving the city and all that I knew along with Flury's. Till date, I have never found a replacement.

 A Parisian Cafe
 As a traveller, I have joined the legions of map-scanning, Lonely Planet toting, sunblock wearing hordes who have sat in a cafe in the shadow of the Louvre in Paris. The love affair with the city has been as much about walking the streets by night as it has been about sharing space with skinny French women on the outdoor terraces of cafes in the August sun watching the world go by as we all sipped on our cafe au lait in comfortable silence. Paris was the city I had dreamed about my whole life and in those dreams, I was always sitting by the Louvre or the Seine, drinking black coffee, smoking elegant slim cigarettes, eating flaky croissants and talking to strangers about Sartre.

Urban Cafe Crawlers
Today, as an urban migrant moving from one city to the next, anonymous as I search for the familiar -- the cafe that I can haunt. Since I have no emotional maps to refer to any longer, all I can do is break down the familiar into familiar smells and tastes of caramel macchiato and hazelnut frappes. Thus I have become a part of the floating population that lives in neon-lit chain coffee shops, drinking cups of characterless coffee and over-sweet confections in order to stave off being a legal alien.

(This was published in the New Indian Express Bangalore on 30 October 2014)

A Sweet and Savoury Superhero

Diwali is the time for all things sweet and a representation of the victory of all things good. Drawing the two themes together is an artist whose unique creations will pique your curiosity and your sweet tooth at the same time.

Artist Rajkamal Aich is the man behind some essentially Indian and quirky superheroes like the Samosa Boy, Jalebi Woman, Laddoo Boy, the Misti-Doi Man and the Bengali Vampire, all of whom represent the common men and women and a rather uncommon imagination.

These superheroes are a departure from the rather cliched interpretations of mythical characters and gods and draw on one of our country’s greatest universal as well as diverse aspects—its food! Each of these characters are common folk who don their super avatars when threatened with real injustice. Thus the ordinary Chotu Lal turns into Samosa Boy who can throw his samosa with “a deadly accuracy which explodes when it comes in contact with chutney.” Similarly Jalebi Woman is a regular Bengali girl called Mishti Bose who takes on the bad guys in her superheroine avatar where she “dunks enemies into sugar syrup after tying them in knots.” His characters are drawn from personal food memories like the jalebi. “I remember eating freshly made and hot jalebis after cricket practice at 6:30 am when I was a child. And this memory somehow translated into the inspiration behind the Jalebi Woman.”

Then there are the characters who have a slightly darker bent like the Bengali Vampire who sucks life out of plump and juicy rasgullas, leaving them as juiceless corpses. He is the scourge of all things sweet. Perhaps his polar opposite is the Misti-Doi Man who is an ordinary government employee hassled by his bosses and his wife. He finally finds meaning and purpose in his life as the Misti-Doi Man after he discovers that he can give his enemies high blood sugar.

 Rajkamal Aich’s creations capture a child-like innocence where ordinary street food items transcend their humble origins to become a representation of the common man who could be a superhero by night. ‘Just like kids can transform a cardboard box into a plane, a castle or a ship with their imagination, I have taken food like jalebis, laddoos, the Bengali favourites of mishti doi and rasgulla and turned them into anthropomorphic super creatures who fight against evil with their very unique culinary powers. Interestingly, Rajkamal doesn’t really envision a comic book life for his characters.

Meanwhile, one can enjoy the brief linear tales of these sweet heroes on his Facebook page called Indian Superheroes. He is also the perfect artist for Diwali and his beautiful limited edition art prints are an ideal festive gift adding that touch of humour to your walls. The 14”x14” prints can be ordered via his Facebook page.

(pics from Rajkamal Aich's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Indian-superheroes)


(This story appeared in New Indian Express Bangalore on 20 October)

A Bellyful of Celebrations In KL

 Kuala Lumpur or KL glitters by night. It is Fritz Lang’s Metropolis where towers and spires of chrome and glass exuding a diamond brilliance stretch towards the skies competing with the glittering stars. The city is a futuristic and grand sonnet in steel. It is also a city of brand names and numerous malls--Southeast Asia's offering to the capitalist gods.

As me and my husband are driven to our bed in the 22-storey tower in the heart of the city with
a lovely rooftop pool in the shadow of the Petronas Towers, we are shocked by the contrast with
our own home city of Kolkata from where we boarded the flight some 4 hours ago. The two cities
are a study in opposites and if there is one place they converge -- that would be in its largesse -- in
welcoming migrants and refugees and offering them a place they can call home on this crowded earth.
It’s two days before Christmas and a nice feeling to wake up to a gorgeous view of the city’s
impressive skyline.

And the first sight on our agenda is Petaling Street with its impressive gates opening on to an older world removed from the glamorous malls and corporate skyscrapers--the city's age-old Chinatown. Once inside, we were greeted by strange snake-like creatures on grills, herbal concoctions being served out of beautiful Chinese teapots in tea shops, vendors selling 'fake originals', stores with a line of roast ducks hanging from
hooks. There were stalls selling longan (a litchi like fruit), stalls selling Chicken Rice and Indian food especially virulent orange tandoori chicken. Most of these stalls encroached on to the road itself, making sure the food was literally in your face, tempting you as you took your next step forward. And if somehow you resisted, then there were the old toothless ladies waving bowls under our noses, a live advertisement for their stalls which were slightly less conspicuously placed. Unable to survive the sensory assault, we stopped at a stall which had a crowd milling around it.Chicken Rice could very well be the national dish of this country, considering its ubiquitous presence just about everywhere -- from the Air Asia flight into the country to mall food court kiosks. Our dish came with a giant bowl of stock, little servings of red chilli paste, sliced cucumbers and a large portion of sliced chicken. The chicken was poached with its shiny outer skin providing nice texture. The reason this dish is so popular is because it’s a simple balancing of flavours and textures--the smooth tender chicken, the sticky grains of rice, the sharp edge of the red chilli, the cool crunch of cucumber and the hot broth to dunk your rice into.

After many icy tender coconut drinks and many miles walked on burning asphalt and air conditioned
mall floors, we decided to make our next food stop at the giant among malls – Berjaya Times Square.
From steamboat restaurants to tropical fruit salads to sushi bars, it was all under one cavernous roof
and like in the adventurous spirit of things, we made our way from one kiosk to the next ordering bits
and bobs of grills and poaches, sushi and fried chicken, shaved ice, coconut and red mung beans, till
we were ready to pop at the seams.

KL despite being the capital city of a predominantly Islamic country, was the proverbial melting
pot of food, language and culture. Its population is largely made up of Malays, Chinese and Indians
with Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism being predominant religions and yet, none of these facts deter
its cosmopolitan crowd from coming out with it Santa Hats and bells and whistles and celebrating
Christmas eve with an unmatched gusto. We were told to make our way to Changkat Bukit Bintang, the busy-buzzy street lined with bars, al fresco restaurants and cafes specializing in food from across the world, this was a street with character and drama. Quiet and sunny during the day, this looked like a street grabbing a quick afternoon siesta in preparation for the big night ahead. As I sipped on fruity cider in a quaint wine shop, we watched the late afternoon sun fade into a dusky orange, I watched the city begin to heave and awaken for KL was a city of the night.

I pondered over the cultural chequered the fabric that clothed this country and marvelled at its ability
to integrate with all. It was a traditional country keenly aware of its history, its religion, its language
and its roots. It was also a supremely liberal country. A small case in point was the fact that I was
sitting in an outdoor cafe, drinking my cider near the heart of a predominantly Muslim city. Across
the road, a Tamilian family in traditional attire were dumping bags of groceries from an international
supermarket chain into the boot of their car. A few streets away, pretty young things were powdering
their noses for a night out on the party strip at Jalan Sultan Ismail. A few intersections away, Chinese
housewives were gathering their pots and pans with simmering soups and crackling roasts and making
their way to the night markets on Petaling Street.

While, we were eating lunch, Bukit Bintang had bedecked herself with tinsel, silver bells and fairy
lights. Even in the sharp humid air, the smell of Christmas cake and mulled wine were hard to miss.
As the muezzin gave the call for the evening prayer, I linked arms with the husband and made our
way back to our temporary home in the clouds only to emerge a few hours later when the Christmas
Eve celebrations were in full swing. Malaysians (the mixed Indian-Chinese and Malay populace), migrants, expats and tourists jostled for space on Bukit Bintang. It was a night that took me back to Park Street in Kolkata, where people of all faiths and all walks of life come together on a brightly decorated stretch of the city, celebrating Christmas, far away from the land of its origin, with great bonhomie and fervour. Maybe the two cities weren't so different after all.

My thoughts were interrupted by a group of bikers who looked straight out of the Terminator series
who had arrived at a pub across us with much fanfare. They just added to the oddball mix of people.
We readjusted our Santa hats with glittering light baubles on its end, dug into our roast turkey with
stuffing, counted down to midnight with the rest of the street and burst into crazy impromptu jigs with
strangers who had become friends over the course of this crazy evening and we ushered in a truly
merry Christmas on a balmy tropical night.

This was published in the New Indian Express, Bangalore on 16 October 2014

When the Devi transforms the city

The crisp Sharad sky is corn blue and there is a light breeze fanning the dusty trees on
the arterial roads of Calcutta. There is a particular smell in the air as the season begins to turn. The kaash phool (which is actually not a phool or flower but a species of invasive perennial grass) makes its appearance on empty fields and abandoned lots, dressing them up in beautiful white. Rendered immortal through Tagore's poetry and captured for posterity in Satyajit Ray's lens, the bobbing white heads of the kaash phool are nature's way of ushering in the Devi Paksha or the fortnight of the goddess.

Every year during Durga Puja, the old city heaves a sigh, tucks its ungainly bits under her and rolls over, presenting her best face to the world. Just like Ma Durga who returns to her parental abode every year bringing renewed hope and joy, for those five days, Calcutta also transforms into the grand doyen, reliving her remembered past as the proverbial big city with bright lights.

Durga Puja is entirely unique in its scope as it transcends its religious connotations and becomes a social event celebrating the arts, the culture of the city and its people. Ma Durga is a goddess for all and as sweaty faces jostle against each other, eager to catch a glimpse of her multi-hued glory at the various pandals (temporary structure housing the idol or protima) dotted across the city, the invisible curtain between communities and classes falls away.

I joined the hundreds and thousands of people from various walks of life, dressed in their Sunday best, milling about on the once familiar streets of the city, now rendered entirely unrecognizable with the decorations and the lights. And despite being a witness to the goddess year after year, I am still as wide-eyed as when I saw the first idol inside the first pandal in my neighbourhood. From my point of view as a knee high toddler, Ma Durga was a study in perspective. Nothing loomed larger or appeared grander in my universe. And surprisingly, every protima and every pandal I saw in the subsequent years continued to inspire the same feeling in the years that followed. I have seen visionaries and lunatics, touches of genius and touches of the absurd - from a Harry Potter- inspired Hogwarts pandal to one created out of Maggi noodles, from the US presidential campaign represented through lights to a goddess bedecked in a see-through white sari, from an edible biscuit pandal to a 3D printed goddess battling a centaur, there are no boundaries and no inhibitions as far as interpretation is concerned.

The colours of the Rio de Janeiro carnival, the splendid costumes and craftsmanship of the Venetian masked festival, the music and gaiety of the New Orleans Mardi Gras and the spectacular floats from the French Riviera -- all fade in comparison to the spectacle that is Durga Puja. The sheer scale and magnificence of the craftmanship that defines the festival, the reverberating frenzied tempo of the dhaak (local drums), the journey of the exquisitely cast idols from the lanes of Kumartuli (the potter's lane in Calcutta which has been making idols of gods and goddesses for several generations) to the Byzantine streets of North Calcutta, the modern thematic twists of South Calcutta and reimagining of the tableau in which the Mother slays the buffalo demon, Mahishasura, the image of married Bengali women resplendent in their white saris with red borders smearing each other with the bridal sindoor -- each sense is engaged in this celebration and they all seem to come together in one perfect and unanimous whole.

Greasy food, noisy cap guns, joyrides on ferris wheels, old fashioned flirtations in pujo pandals and a wonderfully dressed-up city and her people -- this festival celebrates the goddess and her great feats as well as art, life, youth, nostalgia and hedonism with equal gusto. Armed with a camera, good walking shoes and an appetite for the offbeat and the unusual, Durga Puja in Calcutta is right in the heart of the madding crowd, where the pulse of the city lies. For five days, the city does not sleep and the sounds, lights and excitement that is Durga Puja keeps spiralling upwards from Shashti to Saptami to Ashtami to Nabami and finally ends with the bittersweet immersion on Dashami.

The city sleeps thereafter reeling under the weight of her acquired persona. But then there is the rallying cry of Aashche Bochor Abar Hobe (It will happen again in the coming year) and I return to a different city, a different life with the assurance that I too shall return to my homeland in the coming year to witness yet another visit from Ma Durga.

 This was published in the New Indian Express, Bangalore on 9 October 2014

Durga Puja: a time to eat and pray

 It is a fact universally acknowledged that conversation at a Bengali dinner table will inevitably revolve around food and matters of the digestive tract. And it is in perfect sync with this idea that almost every big or hole-in-the-wall shop selling sweets and fried savouries is flanked by a medicine shop for that quick after-meal pudin hara digestif. Thus for any self-respecting Bengali, all festivals big or small are as much about the special foods prepared for the occasion as they are about the rituals and religiosity. Durga Puja, which is the biggest festival of the Bengali calendar is an occasion to pray to the goddess, show off the entirely new Puja wardrobe (with a new daytime and nighttime outfit for each of the five days) and eat with abandon and without a care for diets or restrictions otherwise followed through the year. And this is hardly a tradition restricted to Calcutta or the big metros across the country. Every community or household puja in India, has its own special menu for each day of the festival. Typically, most Bengali households close their kitchens for the five days of the puja and queue up for the afternoon bhog. The evening is a different ball game altogether when all and sundry dressed in their Sunday best make their way to the numerous food stalls and gorge on deep fried and terribly delicious temptations on offer. Here is an easy primer to help identify the foods blessed by the goddess and eaten by her ever-hungry devotees.  

Bhog
Among one of the unique aspects of the Durga Puja is the fact that there is a clear demarcation between sacred food or food that is offered to the goddess and then eaten by her devotees and street food. Bhog (or the offering to the goddess) is typically vegetarian and comprises Khichudi (the Bengali version of Khichdi or Kedgeree). This wholesome dish has its own special recipe in every puja pandal and household. Accompanied by deep fried vegetable fritters and a mixed vegetable preparation, the khichudi, while varying in its sweet and spice index, remains a community puja food, cooked in giant cauldrons and relished by thousands on a daily basis. Dashami is usually celebrated with a lavish meal of Kosha Mangsho (dry spicy mutton) and Luchis (the Bengali version of pooris made with maida).

The Street Food
Large food courts serve tangy chaats, jhaal muri (the Bengali version of the popular bhel which is dry puffed rice with julienned onions, green chillies and peanuts and topped with a generous sprinkle of mustard oil), fat kathi rolls overflowing with kebabs, fried and crumbed fish fillets, chicken and lamb.
Interesting Bengali innovations and Puja pandal favourites include the Dimer Devil or the Egg Devil (a hard boiled egg covered in a minced layer and then crumbed and fried), the Kabiraji Cutlet (literally the poet’s cutlet where minced mutton or chicken is crumbed with bread and covered with a layer of egg to create a greasy, filling) and the mochar chops (a minced banana flower filled chop). For those looking for a more substantial meal, there are numerous specialties like Hilsa fish and prawn stalls offering generous portions of curried, steamed and fried fish with mustard sauces and steamed rice. Then there is the Kolkata-style biryani — a unique evolution of the saffron yellow Awadhi biryani, but with a whole boiled egg and potato.
There really are no rules and from all— vegetarian thalis to tacos and burritos, the Durga Puja street food courts straddle the local and the international, the big brands and the neighbourhood caterer with equal laissez faire.

Anandamela
Literally translated as a fun fair, this all-woman initiative brings together families, old and the young as they turn cooks as well as entrepreneurs for an evening. Wives, daughters and mothers of committee members and associates of a particular puja whip up their family favourites gleaned from age-old recipes and set up little stalls to sell their produce. From pickles to pakoras, from cakes to pilafs, the sky is the limit and the imagination is extraordinary. This little food festival encourages healthy competition between the ladies and also provides first timers with a perfect and expansive introduction to Bengali cuisine.

 This was published in the New Indian Express, Bangalore on 29 September 2014

Where the God of Small Things Lives

While The God of Small Things created ripples in the world of literature way back in the nineties, I waited 13 years to read Arundhati Roy’s magnum opus. Today, my copy of the book is a memory of my holiday, tattered and misshapen and stuffed with stubs, pressed petals and brochures about god's own country.

For me, The God of Small Things was my faithful friend through my journey in the backwater state of Kerala. It was my travel guide, my food bible and my local encyclopedia of trivia. It was a compendium of magic words that brought the backwaters alive with an epic tale. Although the book released way back in 1997, I waited for many summers and winters to pass in order to find the perfect moment to read it. In between jobs and having liquidated all my meagre savings in order to go on a holiday, I decided to embark on my first solo trip in India. This is also when I decided to read the book.

As a woman in India, travelling alone on public transport itself can be daunting, thus a single female holidaymaker is a rare and unheard of species rarely dotting the tourist map. Yet, I persisted, having known gentle people from the state, eaten great food and heard about the remarkably low statistics of violence against women, I was convinced that Kerala was where I must go. The only companion I had was the book. And it managed to transform my ordinary holiday into an imaginary universe. The God of Small Things seemed to appear to me at every twist in the roads of Kerala. I expected the land to be no different from what Arundhati Roy described:

“...by early June the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with. The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn mossgreen. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers burst through laterite banks and spill across flooded roads. Boats ply in bazaars. And small fish appear in the puddles that fill the PWD potholes on the highways...”

As my aircraft descended rather bumpily towards the tarmac at the Cochin International Airport, the first thing I saw through the tiny window was a lush, deep-green sea below me. Gradually miniature trees and fields and foliage appeared. Then came the discernible coconut trees waving their heads, and then came the first streaky droplets of rain forming patterns on the outside of my window. Filled with trepidation, I felt strangely comforted by the rain. I had just started reading the book and was at the point when the whole family made a trip to watch The Sound of Music one afternoon. This ended up being a pivotal moment in the book that foreshadowed later tragedies and small and large betrayals. I left the airport humming old tunes from the Hollywood classic just like Estha, one of the fraternal twins who make up the cast of characters that populate the family home at Ayemenem. As I collected my bags, my thoughts still scattered all over wondering whether cinemas like Abhilash Talkies still existed in 21stand versatility of the Keralite mundu after witnessing the ease with which the men all round me irrespective of age and body types showed off their legs. I now also had a mental picture for Velutha, the untouchable antihero of sorts who impresses in his mundu and white shirt as he marched in a party demonstration with a red flag.

I was also thinking about how the afternoon sky would change it colours at random as the sun played hide and seek with the clouds. A few afternoons later as I saw the sky turn red with an impending storm, I remembered another red sky that Rahel (the other twin) sees through her cheap red plastic sunglasses which gradually turns to a sickly orange as her brother Estha is abused by the creepy Orangedrink Lemondrink man.

As I travelled through the banana-fronded backwater country to the secluded Phillip Kutty’s farm set on a manmade island in the middle of an exceptionally large canal off the Vembanad Lake, I realized that I was just a few kilometers from Roy’s Ayemenem and in a little town just like it. Just like the book, this too was a place where life happened on the backwaters. Thus my first ride on a country boat or vallom to see the rising moon was a moment enhanced by Roy’s lyrical poetry. I dipped my hand in the waters and the words came to life.

“It was warm, the water. Greygreen. Like rippled silk.
With fish in it.
With the sky and the trees in it.
And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.”

I spent the balmy nights reading the book out on the porch of my room overlooking the silver waters of the backwaters by the light of a single lamp casting its yellow pool in the darkness and bringing all the silken winged moths to my door to die. I could smell the brooding air of the of Ayemenem. I could hear the fluttering of Pappachi’s moth. My heart ached for Ammu. Just like it ached for the young widow Anu Mathew (the owner of the wonderful homestay that I was staying in). She was a brave and feisty lady who was fulfilling her husband’s dream all by herself. Her farm, where I spent three lovely days, radiated all her family’s warmth and reflected the hopes her husband had for the place before he suddenly passed on.

All these thoughts played into my understanding and love for the book. As I ate homemade banana jam for breakfast, I thought of the Paradise Pickles and Preserves run by Mammachi and the strange consistency of banana jam/jelly. I learnt about the history of the Syrian Christian community through the food that I gorged on every day. I learnt about the produce of the land through Anu Mathew and her mother-in-law over shared conversations on the dinner tables. In the dark hours of the night, Arundhati Roy’s magical prose brought me closer to the land I was passing through. She gave me a language to tell my story about Kerala to the world. I am glad I had waited to read it all these years for now I remember it like no other. The characters in this book gave me a few oddball companions on solitary walks and the story itself became a bookend for my own journey into this beautiful country ruled by the god of small things.

This was published in the New Indian Express, Bangalore on 25 September 2014

A 'Scrumdiddlyumptious' Treat

Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory published in 1964 is something that has percolated through a myriad storytelling sessions and assumed a permanent spot in the collective memory of generations of children who have come of age in the last five decades.

Set against the unusual backdrop of a mysterious chocolate factory, this curiously dark and often bittersweet tale is in equal parts fantasy and fable and above all a story with startling original content that has captured the imagination as no other.

Adapted variously into films, musicals, games, radio and stage productions, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has rarely been out of the public eye for long and its characters have become a part of the cultural iconography of our times inspiring dinner menus, tea parties  and of course candy. The real-life Willy Wonka Candy Company which is currently owned by Nestle actually manufactures goodies like the Everlasting Gobstopper which was first imagined in the pages of the book. Then there was the magnificent televised feast inspired by the book created by world-renowned chef Heston Blumenthal who called Willy Wonka his "sixties childhood hero" and went on to recreate a magnificent Lickable Wallpaper.

Based on the real-life spy-thriller tactics employed by rival chocolate companies in order to steal each other's latest innovations and Dahl's own love for candy, Willy Wonka's chocolate universe is one that is as fascinating as it is terrifying. With taffy trees that grow jelly apples, mushrooms that spurt whipped cream, a boiled sweet boat that takes the crew down the chocolate river, this is truly a magic landscape. However, it is also one where danger lurks in the sweet depths and holes and crevasses open up swallowing the greedy and the proud — the veritable bad eggs of the group — and send them off to a sorry unsweet end.

The tiny Oompa Loompas from Loompa-Land who work in Willy Wonka's factory, enamoured by the chocolate and glad to have escaped the predatory Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers and Snozzwanglers from their own land, judge the bad kids with a song and dance and are oddly gleeful at their odd transformations.
The odd childishness of adults like Willy Wonka himself and the rather adult observations of the very astute Charlie Bucket make this a book that turns conventions on its head, subverts established norms as well as presents the majority of children as well as adults as not very pleasant or likeable characters. Apart from this, the unmatched imagination, colour, drama, poetry, humour and unforgettable cast of characters in this book has the power to hold any child in its thrall.

Timed perfectly with its fiftieth birthday, two previously 'lost' chapters of the book were published only last month, thrilling legions of fans, researchers, academics and a whole new generation of 21st century children whose love affair with candy continues unabated. Among other things these chapters show more of Willy Wonka's marvellous inventions like the The Warming Candy Room where —
"There's an amazing machine, a bit like the gum machine we know, but it produces these extraordinarily hot sweets that you're only supposed to eat one of."
 And like all his extraordinary candy that come with certain warnings, this one is no different and promises to delight those who show restraint and punish the greedy with consequences that verge on comic horror. Thus those who gorge on the hot candy, overheat and need to be locked away in refrigerators in remote corners of the factory for a long, long time. Similarly the characters (and these newly published chapters reveal that Roald Dahl originally included ten children in the party) who trespass on the forbidden areas of the Vanilla Fudge Mountain, where hunks of fudge are constantly being pried and taken away also meet a sorry fate. They fall into the 'pounding and cutting room' and —
"into the mouth of a huge machine. The machine then pounds it against the floor until it is all nice and smooth and thin. After that, a whole lot of knives come down and go chop chop chop, cutting it up into neat little squares, ready for the shops."

This is the perfect bookend to a year which is full of celebrations for fans both old and new. The publishers as well as the Roald Dahl Trust have a whole range of goodies lined up which include the launch of a new Roald Dahl Audio App, A West End musical production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka inspired desserts by star chefs, Golden Ticket trails at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, a Dahlicious Dress Up day in schools across the UK later this month,  and fifty fundraising sky-diving folks dressed up as Oompa Loompas!

When I found out about these new chapters, I felt like doing a little jig just like the 96-year-old Grandpa Joe did when he found out that Charlie had won the Golden Ticket and an entry into the magical factory. It is true for many of my generation that fifty years later, this book is still a scrumdiddlyumptious treat to be savoured one page at a time.

This was published in the New Indian Express, Bangalore on 23 September 2014