Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Can wine be described well? for Mint Lounge
KRSMA Estates has invited me to a tasting of their wines next week, and frankly, I am a little nonplussed. Robert M. Parker, the influential American wine critic, once described a Haut-Brion as having “a sweet nose of creosote, asphalt…” and an array of berries. Having never tasted asphalt, and having no idea what a creosote is, this description is absolutely useless to me.
Are you listening to the Kodaikanal rap?
The old woman in Palani—down the hill from Kodaikanal-- was trying to recruit me to be a movie extra. Muniamma looked like a rock star. She was about 80, with weathered skin about the colour of a coffee bean. She was clad in a soft white cotton sari sans blouse in the fashion of village women in Tamilnadu. Muniamma’s recruitment strategy was fool proof.
The Art of Judgment: for Mint Lounge
My uncle Sivaramakrishnan called from Mumbai this morning stating that he wanted to “capture Twitter". Do you have good judgment? How do you teach it?
Memories are made of buttermilk for Mint Lounge
My first memory of buttermilk is warmth and darkness. I must have been five or six years old. Still confused by the mists of sleep, I walked into my grandmother’s kitchen, drawn by a comforting swishing sound. My grandmother was sitting on the floor, her legs spread-eagled and resting on the wall. Soft light filtered through the window in front of her. In between her legs was a heavy mud pot that was held firmly in place by a coiled towel.
Birds in culture– the last of the four part series that I hugely enjoyed writing.
Everyone says that bird-watching requires patience. I don’t think so. I think that the pleasure of bird watching comes from the questions you ask. You can watch a crow and try to figure out why it is cawing at that moment. You can listen to the variety of calls that a common mynah makes and try to see if there is a pattern. I watch the birds come and go in the trees in front of my home and see if there is a reason or pattern that they follow when they sit down and take off.
So of course I had to write about yoga: for Mint Lounge
Actually, my editor suggested that I write about yoga on yoga day. It is here and below It is a little disconcerting, but ask yourself this question: what unites India? I have tried asking this question in various forums. It is hard to agree on three or four things that form the value system of this country. It cannot be religion because we are secular. It cannot be language because that changes every few hundred kilometres. It cannot be clothing style because even that varies from region to region. We listen to different music in the north and in the south. [...]
Birding: seeing versus hearing
In the beginning, with pig-headed ambition, I decided that I would memorize the Latin names for all the bird species that I saw. I have given up that endeavour now. It is complicated enough to keep track of the markings and learn the common names. This then is the other learning that will occur: spotting minor differences between birds that belong to the same species: White-cheeked Barbet, Grey-headed Barbet, Coppersmith barbet, Blue-throated Barbet, you get the picture. They all belong to the Megalaima species.
Trees and birds
The best thing that is happened to me as a result of this year-long journey is the cliché: I feel connected with the universe. Let me be clear. I don't think you wake up one morning and suddenly feel at one with the cosmos. It is a gradual process of shedding layers of armor that you have built around yourself. The way it happened for me, and I am by no means there yet, has to do with connecting multiple species and seeing a greater whole.
How to bird-watch. How to watch birds
It begins with a pair of binoculars; and a balcony, if you have one. If there is some greenery visible from your balcony, even better. But you need binoculars to begin this voyage. Mine are Bushnell binoculars from Amazon for about $35. They have a magnification of 10X50, which didn’t mean anything to me except that it seemed better than the 8X40 advertised by other brands. I use them every day, except during travel, and even that, I want to change.
Astrology of the Apple Watch
The problem with the Apple Watch is that it aspires to be a timekeeper; a gadget amd a fashion accessory.