End of an era...

When life is no longer a walk in the park

Regular readers of this column will be familiar with my love of Sunder Nursery – given how much I have rhapsodized about it over the years. It was my lifeline during the Covid years, when the open space and verdant green provided a respite to being cooped up at home. It helped that it had yet to be discovered by most Delhi folks, so there was no overcrowding and it was possible to walk for an hour and not be unduly disturbed by other people. 

In the years since then, of course, the nature of Sunder Nursery changed, slowly but surely. Not only did more Delhiites discover its charms, making it picnic central during the winter months, but more and more events began to be organized there, which increased the footfall tremendously. Like all ‘regulars’ at some place which has now become too popular, I was a little sad about having my own little slice of heaven invaded by the marauding hordes visiting exhibitions, attending dance recitals and the like. But I consoled myself with the thought that at least more people were becoming acquainted with the park – and that could only be a good thing.

Well, my experience last week made me change my mind. It was a rare sunny afternoon in Delhi, so my husband and I decided to head out to lunch at Manish Mehrotra’s new restaurant, Nisaba, in the Sunder Nursery complex. The ride from our home to the park usually takes no more than 20 minutes but this time it took more than an hour. Partly it was that Delhi Police, in its wisdom (sarcasm alert) had decided to barricade one of the main roads leading to Sunder Nursery so everyone had to take a long detour to get there. But mostly it was that the footfall was so great – and the number of cars so large – that it was a nightmare even getting to the entrance. In fact, such was the over-crowding that all the parking slots were full, and everyone had to abandon their cars and trudge along to their destination. 

I arrived there to discover that the Sunder Nursery I knew and loved had disappeared; it had been invaded by a heaving mass of humanity who had no inhibitions about shoving and pushing to get ahead of the crowd. Some of these people were there to visit Humayun’s Museum (part of the same complex), others were waiting for tables to open up at the various outlets in the restaurant hub downstairs, and yet others were just struggling to get into the park itself to enjoy a bit of sun.

We finally made it to our table, a good 40 minutes late, and had an excellent meal. But that is probably the last time I will be making that trek. Sadly, I have to admit that the Sunder Nursery I cherished as my personal haven is long gone. In its place, is a vast commercial enterprise, where every square inch of the space has been monetized without much regard to how it will spoil the ambience of the gardens.

So, I guess I have to find another park for my perambulations from now on. But I won’t be writing about my new haunt, having learnt the hard way that it is important to gatekeep some things. Wish me luck!

Diet bores

 There is nothing more tedious than someone banging on and on about their diets

It is a truth universally acknowledged that January is the month when everyone begins to regret their excesses over the Christmas-New Year period. And as surely as night follows day, those periods of extreme feasting are followed by rigorous fasting. Which is just a fancy way of saying that January finds almost everyone following some sort of diet regime to get back into shape (or, at the very least, into the trousers they were happily wearing until November of the previous year!).

So, like everyone else on this planet, these days I find myself surrounded by people who are not only on a diet, but are prone to aggressively announcing their new eating plans, with the unspoken assumption that I am the only Greedy Gretel, who is still stuffing her face at the beginning of the New Year. Honestly, there is nothing more annoying than the self-satisfaction of these dieters as they munch on lettuce while looking superior when I order a burger and fries.

Sadly, there are as many types of dieters as there are diets these days; and each one of them is annoying in their own peculiar way. Allow me the luxury of listing just some of them:

• First up is the no-gluten, no-dairy brigade. Members of this group turn up at a restaurant – or, God forbid, your home – with a list of items that they are simply not allowed to eat. Then, follows an entirely joyless meal in which they pick at their food listlessly, while everyone else feels vaguely guilty about enjoying their own deep-fried delights. More often than not, their resolution breaks by the time dessert comes around. Then, having virtuously turned down every fattening offer, they order the most calorific thing on the menu, which has every ingredient they just proudly announced that they have renounced. Er, sorry, what happened to that no-gluten, no-lactose rule? And no, a sheepish look is not a good answer.

• Far worse are those dieters who seem to think that calories don’t count if they eat them off someone else’s plate. These are probably the most irritating people to share a restaurant meal with. They will order salad (dressing on the side, obviously) and then steal the French fries you ordered, while sneaking bits of someone else’s pizza or pakoras for good measure. They will put on a saintly expression as they refuse dessert. And then – yes, you guessed it – it will be open season on everyone else’s pudding. Honestly, darling, who do you think you’re kidding?

• And then, there are the Diet Bores. You know the ones I am talking about. Yes, those people whose only conversation is about the calorific value of every dish, the benefits of every diet they have ever been on – all the way from Atkins to the Zone diet, taking in General Motors along the way – and how much weight they have lost on each of them. Tellingly, they never tell you how much weight they put back on; or they wouldn’t need to be on another diet in the first place, right? And that, quite frankly, tells me all I need to know about diets – and dieters.

A mouthful of nostalgia

Some tastes only exist in our memory

As I have said many times before in this column, the Christmas-New Year period in Calcutta – where I grew up – is truly magical. So, this year, my husband and I decided to bring in the New Year in the city of my birth – and the city in which we first met. The idea was to enjoy the lights of Park Street, make a pilgrimage to Botanical Gardens, and relive memories of our youth.

But it was in pursuit of a childhood memory that I decided to venture out to some nearby mishti dokans to buy the favourite sweet of my growing-up years: the gaja. But no matter where I went, the shop assistants informed me (with a certain grim satisfaction) that they no longer made gaja. Undeterred, I asked some local friends for help and they very graciously tracked down some shops that still made gaja and sent it to me. Sadly, though the sweets were tasty enough, they were nothing like the gaja of my childhood.

I happened to mention this when I visited my childhood friend, Kavita Walia, and she very kindly sent out for the gaja from the same shop that I used to frequent in my early years. Back at my hotel, I very excitedly opened the packet and took a peek inside. Oh yes, this looked exactly like what I had been dreaming of. The dream crumbled, however, when I had my first bite. Don’t get me wrong. It was delicious. But, sadly, it was not the gaja I remembered from my childhood.

This whole experience got me thinking. Could it be that some tastes only exist in our memory? And that no matter how much we try and recreate them later in life, we can never get it quite right? Or is it just nostalgia we are tasting in our minds; and that is impossible to replicate in real life? In other words, was I just imagining that the taste of the gaja was different so many years ago, because my mind had imbued that childhood memory with magical qualities?

Another childhood taste memory that I have tried to recreate – without much success – is the shredded coconut ‘cake’ that my mother used to make to celebrate Lord Krishna’s birthday on Janmashtami. This was truly a labour of love, with the coconut being freshly shredded, then cooked with lashings of sugar syrup, and set to cool in a circular bowl so that it looked like a cake, which would then be ceremonially cut and distributed as prasad at midnight. I can still taste the unctuous sweetness of the sugar, the crunchy chewiness of the coconut, which came together to create a taste bomb that we kids couldn’t get enough of.

A few years ago, on Janmashtami, I decided to pay tribute to my mother’s memory and recreate her special ‘cake’ for Krishnaji. I following her recipe as closely as I could, and sat back impatiently, as the coconut cooled in a round dish. When it had set, I cut out a slice and took my first bite. It tasted great; but it simply wasn’t the cake I remembered from my childhood.

So, I guess some tastes do exist only in our minds; and the only way to enjoy them is to use our own imagination. 

Giving thanks

 The best way to do so is keep a 'gratitude journal'

I have written in earlier columns about the importance of keeping a ‘gratitude journal’, in which you can write down all that you are grateful for at the end of every day. It is, I believe, a good way of keeping a positive perspective on life because no matter how badly things may be going, it is always possible to find glimmers of joy in every single day. It could be in the birdsong that you hear on your daily walk; it could be the dimpled smile of a bouncing baby you encounter in the market; or even a passage from a book that you are reading. But if you are actively seeking out moments of joy in life, moments to be truly grateful for, you will always find them.

It is in that spirit that I have decided to compile my own year-end version of the ‘gratitude list’. So, here, in no particular order of importance, are the things that I have been grateful for this year.

• Early this year, a respiratory tract infection triggered my asthma after many years of it being in remission. I spent weeks struggling to breathe, pumped full of antibiotics and steroids, spending sleepless nights because I couldn’t lay prone without triggering a coughing fit. Ever since, the asthma has never quite gone away, and now, thanks to Delhi pollution, it is worse than ever. So, why is this one my gratitude list, you ask? Well, because if I had been born a couple of centuries ago, without recourse to the wonders of modern medicine, I would probably be dead by now. So, being alive and being able to breathe – albeit with difficulty – is kind of a miracle, and something to be truly grateful for. 

• A few months ago, a college mate of mine set up a Whatsapp group for the English Honours batch we were part of in Loreto College (Calcutta). I duly signed up and so did many others of my batch, from as far afield as America and Canada. I can’t begin to describe the giddy delight we all experienced as after many decades apart, we began posting about our current lives, our memories of college life, our experiences with our professors, and so on. The best part, of course, were those grainy photos that popped up intermittently, as we went through our photo albums from our college days. But while the photos may have been faded, the memories they evoked were as fresh as ever. Reconnection is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

• And last but not the least, this was the year when one of my most cherished dreams came to fruition. Ever since I read Tracy Chevalier’s masterful book, Girl With A Pearl Earring, I have been burning up with a desire to see the Vermeer painting that inspired it. I made many plans over the years but for one reason or another, they fell through. But 2025 proved to be my lucky year, when my husband organized a trip to the Mauritshuis Museum in the Hague to coincide with my birthday. As I stood there mesmerized in front of the canvas, I felt truly grateful – not just for the genius of Vermeer but for my privilege in being able to witness it.

No time like the present...

 To think of the perfect Christmas gift

The older I grow, the more disenchanted I become with possessions. The truth is that like most others of my age, I have accumulated so much stuff over the decades, that I have quite lost the taste for buying anything else. So, when it comes to birthdays and anniversaries my only request to my family and friends is not to buy me any more stuff but to gift me with experiences that they know I would enjoy.

It is in that spirit that I come to you today with advice on what to buy your loved ones for Christmas, which is right around the corner. Steer clear of shiny baubles, bad-taste jumpers, or endless varieties of cakes and pastries. Instead, put your thinking caps on and come up with experiences that you can treat your friends and family to as a Christmas surprise.

To get you going, here are some ideas, off the top of my head:

• Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas Day lunch can sometimes be the most traumatic thing about the festival. Catering to a large number of individuals with varying tastes is not for the faint of heart. So, why not take the sting out of this enterprise for your chosen recipient by booking the services of a young chef (or catering service) who can come and complete this task for them in their own kitchen? This way, the host/hostess can truly enter into the Christmas spirit thanks to your genius gift idea.

• Gifting someone a spa certificate or a gift card to a bookshop is all very well, but why not push the boat out this Christmas? If your cousin is interested in food, gift her a guided food walk through the streets of Old Delhi. If your bestie is into drama or music buy him tickets for a play you think he will enjoy or book him into a musical performance by one of the many wonderful Christmas choirs who perform around this time. If you are willing to break the bank, you may even be able to organize a performance for your musically-inclined friends in the privacy of their homes (while the chef you booked cooks up a delicious meal).

• If you live in Delhi, the odds are that there are innumerable monuments you have never seen in the city because you keep thinking you will get around to visiting them one day. Don’t let your friends or family members procrastinate on this score any longer. Book them guided tours with well-versed guides to the places they have never been. If you are feeling particularly generous pack them an exciting picnic basket to take along. They are guaranteed to have the best time ever.

• The best experience you can offer parents of young children is, of course, the gift of time together. So, offer to take the kids off their hands for an afternoon or an evening so that they can spend some quality time together, while you have a blast with the young ones, secure in the knowledge that at the end of the day, you can hand them right back. 

Take a deep breath...

 And head out for an 'aircation'

This is the time of year when people’s mind veer inexorably towards thoughts of a vacation. Not just because the year-end is around the corner but also because almost every Indian city is surrounded by a miasma of polluted air. And the only way to escape it is to travel to a destination where the AQI is in double figures. If you’re among those looking for not just a vacation but an aircation, then here’s a handy list of places where you can head. 

I know, I know, everyone tends to gravitate towards Goa at this time of year. But frankly, I find it overrated as a holiday spot. The flights are insanely expensive, the hotels are overpriced and don’t even get me started on the taxi mafia which makes life miserable for all visitors. You are much better off heading to Vietnam, where you can enjoy a luxury holiday (and much better food) at a fraction of the price. Both Saigon and Hanoi are great cities to explore, and when you tire of the urban life, you can head for such beach destinations as Phu Quoc and Nha Trang. If you want something further off the beaten track, head for Con Dao Island or Ninh Van Bay.

Thailand is another good option though Bangkok has probably been done and dusted by most people. Instead, take a direct flight to Phuket or Krabi to enjoy a beach holiday. Islands like Koh Samui need a connecting flight but are well worth the effort. And if its mountain air rather than beaches that you are looking for, then you can’t go wrong with Chiang Mai or Chiang Rai. The food is amazing, the hotels are good value, and nobody has even heard of an air purifier.

If you are looking for a country that has a little bit of everything, then you simply can’t go wrong with Sri Lanka. There are seaside destinations with the most pristine of beaches; there are hill resorts that haven’t been overdeveloped to within an inch of their lives; there are rolling tea estates with verdant green as far as the eye can see; and there are temple towns galore. And no matter where you go, there is clean air. 

Bhutan is another option for those looking to take a breather (quite literally). You can explore the capital city of Thimpu; visit Punakha Dzong to visit the Palace of Great Happiness; trek to the Tiger’s Nest monastery or simply drive to the Dochula or Chele La pass to enjoy the breathtaking (there I go again!) scenery.

If you want to stay within the boundaries of India, then your best bet is to travel to the south. Such hill stations as Ooty (Tamil Nadu) and Wayanad (Kerala) have an AQI that doesn’t go above the 20s. The North East is similarly blessed with clean air all across, whether it is Sikkim, Meghalaya or Arunachal Pradesh you visit. You can go hiking, white water rafting, or simply enjoy the sight of stunning blue skies which are such a rarity in north India.

But remember, once you come back, it will be hermetically sealed rooms and air purifiers running all day once again. So, make the most of your aircation – your lungs will thank you for it.

It's all relative

Who do you call aunt and uncle? It all depends where you come from

What do you call the cousin of your father? I only ask because Zohran Mamdani (who will probably be New York mayor by the time you read this) was accused of being a liar when he referred to his father’s cousin as his aunt. According to Mamdani, his Fui (paternal aunt) was so scared of the Islamophobia rampant in NY after 9/11 that she stopped taking the subway for fear of being targeted for her hijab. 

Whatever you may think about Mamdani focusing on his aunt’s transportation woes after one of the most horrific terror attacks on American soil (if you ask me, I think it was a grievous error and minimized the suffering of those who lost their loved ones in the attack), there is no denying that Muslims were targeted by bigots in the aftermath of 9/11. But strangely, it was not the substance of Mamdani’s statement that drew the most flak. Instead, most people focused on the fact that neither of his father’s sisters wore a hijab, or indeed, lived in New York. When Mamdani clarified that he had been referring to his father’s cousin, the criticism grew even louder.

Who calls their father’s cousin their aunt, the chorus of opprobrium went. Well, the answer to that was very simple: every brown person.

Whether you live in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, or indeed, Uganda, if you are of South Asian heritage, then you refer to your father and mother’s cousins as aunts and uncles. Not just that, you have specific names for these aunts and uncles, depending on how you are related to them (Masi/Masad; Fui/Fua; Tai/Taya; Chachi/Chacha; Mami/Mama). It doesn’t really matter how far removed these cousins may be, they are still regarded as aunts and uncles. Nobody would dream of calling them cousins or even Bhaiyya and Didi.

Speaking of cousins, I wonder how the white world will react when they discover the peculiar sub-continental nomenclature of ‘cousin brother’ and ‘cousin sister’, which is how we refer to the children of our aunts and uncles. That’s when we are not simply calling them ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ and using the terms ‘real brother’ and ‘real sister’ to distinguish our siblings from them. 

In my own family, like in millions of others, I am Masi and Bua to the children of both my siblings and my cousins. And now that my nieces and nephews have begun procreating, I am happy to answer to ‘Nani’ even though technically I am a grandaunt rather than a grandmother. That’s the way it’s always been in Indian families, and that’s the way it will remain for generations to come. 

And why should it change? Why should we be expected to follow Western constructs when it comes to our own definition of family? Why should we surrender the concept of the Great Indian Extended Family to some Western concept of degrees of consanguinity? One of the most admirable things about Indian society is the strength of our family bonds – which are not restricted to the nuclear family unit but to a larger family that provides us with a sense of community. 

So, let’s not allow the carping critics from the West tell us how to address our father’s (and mother’s) cousins. Aunts and uncles they are; and aunts and uncles they always will be.

Winter is coming...

And it's time to prepare for industrial levels of pollution

In more innocent times, the arrival of winter – signaled by that early-morning or late-night nip in the air – was something to be celebrated. In my childhood home, it meant that the razais, sweaters, coats, etc. that had been packed away with mothballs, would be disinterred ceremonially and laid out in the afternoon sunshine to get an ‘airing’. My favourite activity as a child used to be to roll around on my mother’s velvet jackets to enjoy the luxurious feel of the fabric.

These days, however, the arrival of winter (especially in Delhi where I now live) has become something to be dreaded rather than celebrated – given that it brings eye-watering (quite literally) levels of pollution with it. So, preparing for the winter has taken on a slightly desperate edge as we deal with apocalyptic levels of bad air. Sure, we still spend time sunning our shawls and overcoats so that they lose that slightly musty odor, but along with that there is a military-style effort to save ourselves from the foul air that we are forced to breathe at this time of year.

There are some lucky people who have the time and resources to plan what I like to call an aircation (i.e. a vacation to a place that has breathable air). And sometimes I am fortunate enough to be of their number, escaping for a week/fortnight to a nice hill station or beach either in India or abroad. But the thing about aircations is that – much like vacations – they come to an end sooner rather than later. And one fine day, you find yourself back at home, breathing in the same noxious air that you had escaped from. 

So, what’s a girl to do. Well, let me count the ways.

First up, invest in good air purifiers. Over the last few years I have built up quite a collection, and I now have them running in every room of the house. But before the air pollution season starts, I make sure to clean the filters thoroughly and replace the ones that have clearly given up the ghost. It is not feasible to stay indoors all the time, but I find that my asthma gets less aggravated the longer I spend huddled next to my air purifiers. So, it makes sense to spend good money on these, rather than endless visits to the doctor.

The other thing that has become an essential in the Delhi winter is the nebulizer. Even if you are a completely healthy adult, you will experience some breathing problems during this season. And the problems will be even worse when it comes to young children and older adults in your household. So, it makes sense to have a nebulizer at home, ready to do service the moment anyone at home begins to find it hard to breathe.

One other way of trying to improve the air in your home is to buy some plants that are most effective at purifying indoor air. Spider plant and snake plant are supposed to be the best at this. Others that can do the same trick are money plant, peace lily, or even the areca palm.

Of course, there is no guarantee that these tips will keep you well all winter. But, at least, it won’t be for lack of trying.

Eom