Mayank Chhaya Daily

Fafda-Jalebi day

Jalebi

Gujaratis eat fafda and jalebi all year round but today on Dashera they consume them with unseemly gusto; almost as if they are eating them for the first time.

Before I say a couple of things about this brilliant snack let me explain what fafda and jalebi are for my legion of non-Indian readers. That would be about three people.

I quote myself from an eternally “to be published” biography of my hometown of Ahmedabad because it makes some reference to this very Gujarati of snacks.

The heavy breakfast ensured that the conversations never really took off and soared. Men burped and hiccupped alternately because of the ajmo (carom seeds) in the fafda (long, coarse strips made of leavened gram flour and deep fried) and extra hot fried chilies. Women plied those men with cups of tea disregarding the unseemly sounds emanating from them.

Everything is fried in Ahmedabad. Sometime I suspect that even oil is fried. When in doubt while cooking, fry it. The deeper it is, the better it tastes. Carcinogens have to be well done. It is impossible to go wrong with frying anything with a dash of salt. Gram flour has to be the culinary mascot of Ahmedabad. There is nothing you cannot do with gram flour, salt and oil.

In between, men would bite into yellow jalebis, filled with and dipped in pure sugar syrup. They would lick their sticky fingers and wipe their hands with the newspaper in which the fafda was packed. It would be helpfully pointed out to you that the traces of baking soda and salt trapped in the packing were efficient at cleaning sticky, oily hands.

The reason why the fafda-jalebi-chilies works so well is because between the three they cover three elemental tastes—salty, sugary and hot. What’s not to like in that? Typically, there is also a fourth piece to this snack. It is shredded raw papayas marinated and—you guessed it right—fried.

If you are a health-freak, this is not the combo for you. If you have acid reflux, this is most certainly not the snack for you unless you are willing to suffer a few hours of agony for a few minutes of divine tastes and flavors.

On Dashera, which is the tenth day after nine nights of revelries of dance and music known as Navratri in Gujarat, fafda-jalebi are practically mandatory. You can be excommunicated if you do not eat the snack. I exaggerate, of course, but you get the drift.

Here in Chicago area we do get fafda-jalebi that compare rather favorably with what one gets in Gujarat but I plan to skip it because I have an acid factory inside my stomach. Acid jumps even at the mention of fafda-jalebi. I will admire it from a distance.

Being au courant with pop culture

This post contains SPOILERT ALERT about the opening episode of ‘Will & Grace’.

I am au courant enough with pop culture to draw a parallel between the way Karen Walker, the character played by Megan Mullally in ‘Will & Grace’, and  Bernadette Rostenkowski, played by Melissa Rauch in ‘The Big Bang Theory’ speak. They both sound as if they had had a light dose of helium and their speech patterns can be phonetically interchanged without making much difference.

I arrived in America almost around the same time as when ‘Will & Grace’ premiered in September, 1998. I remembered having watched the first episodes with mild amusement without paying any particular attention to the sociological consequence of its gay characters. I have a tendency to dismiss how pop culture foreshadows sociological shifts mainly because I have never been judgmental about lifestyle choices of the human race. “Meh” is my most interested response to any human behavior.

I watched ‘Will & Grace’ from the standpoint of its humor quotient and it scored very high. Whether the hit series transformed America’s acceptance of homosexuality and did more to educate the people is a subject I am only marginally interested in. As I said, that is because I treat all human behavior as normal as in meh. Let us just say I was born far ahead of the curve.

Watching ‘Will & Grace’s return last night after 11 years I looked yet again for its humor and found it largely intact. The first episode was an elaborate slam of President Donald Trump and pressed all the predictable pressure points, including a bag of Cheetos. I will not go into the plot details because what would be the point of that? The four protagonists Debra Messing, Eric McCormack, Megan Mullally  and Sean Hayes all looked utterly refreshed and subtly refashioned.Their comfort level with one another was clearly evident. It was as if they never left the set in the past eleven years.

The episode ended (SPOILERT ALERT) with a red hat on the computer monitor on the presidential desk in the Oval Office with the inscription “Make America Gay Again.” I thought that was lamely predictable. America is at a stage where sociocultural and political positions have become so entrenched that any attempt to extricate them only pushes them deeper. I don’t know if the episode’s writers believe that by doing what they did they would change any minds on the other side of their beliefs, namely Trump supporters. In my experience of having lived in America since 1998 I think the intransigence is at its most intense.

As an unabashed liberal myself whose default temperament is one of enlightened detachment from life, I keep my distance. The trick is to be superficial by focusing on useless things such as the similarly high-pitch way of talking by Karen Walker and Bernadette Rostenkowski and leaving it at that.

The only reason I have written this post is because I suspect ‘Will & Grace’ might be trending, with the cheap hope that it may get me some extra readership.

Make a hard-pressed hack happy

Santorini—Mayank Chhaya

While watching a short travel video about Santorini, I chanced upon an aerial shot of the spectacular island. That prompted me to do my impression of it in Fresh Paint which became the digital painting above.

The digital work in turn led me to do what I do frequently—upload the artwork on my VIDA studio as part of a merchandising endeavor. The result is a sort of a Santorini collection on VIDA.

Here are three pieces based on the painting above.

The point is go buy one or all three of them and make a penurious painter and hard-pressed hack happy.

What if dynamic dichromatism existed among humans?

There is something called dynamic dichromatism or changing of body colors among scores of species that has caught my attention this morning. Nature magazine has a short piece about this remarkable phenomenon where male frogs change the color of their bodies to essentially say they are horny. As Nature points out, the change of color is also meant to signals other suitors to lay off.

The piece says, “Rayna Bell of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC and her team have identified at least 178 frog species in multiple families and subfamilies that can switch hues, often to become more yellow.”

An abstract from the paper says, “Dynamic sexual dichromatism is a temporary colour change between the sexes and has evolved independently in a wide range of anurans, many of which are explosive breeders wherein males physically compete for access to females. Behavioural studies in a few species indicate that dynamic dichromatism functions as a visual signal in large breeding aggregations; however, the prevalence of this trait and the social and environmental factors underlying its expression are poorly understood. We compiled a database of 178 anurans with dynamic dichromatism that include representatives from 15 families and subfamilies. Dynamic dichromatism is common in two of the three subfamilies of hylid treefrogs.”

What if dynamic dichromatism existed among humans? I mean not just in sexual context but across a range of emotions. What if there was no fixed skin color? What might that do to destroy the foundations of racism? This is quite apart from the arresting visual of billions of people in constantly changing hues depending on their dominant emotion. I see that as an epic painting that is eternally changing its patterns.

Take this a step further where humans express their heightened emotions only visually rather than verbally and reserve spoken language only for everyday, average conversations which do not involve accentuated emotions. One result would be that demagogues would appear at public rallies completely silent but their faces and other visible parts of their bodies bursting with colors. That would be much better than hurling racist invective from a podium. If we must fight, let’s do so by changing the hues of our bodies—silently.

Mattis, Sitharaman and India-Afghanistan

India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis in New Delhi on September 26 (Photo: @nsitharaman)

When President Donald Trump announced his Afghan policy late last month and signaled an open-ended involvement without an identifiable end-game, he sought India’s help, calling it a “key” strategic ally.

He made it a point to take his characteristic swipe by also pointing out that India was making billions of dollars in trade with America.

In an analysis that I wrote for the IANS wire on the announcement on August 22, I concluded with this, “ For India, the important takeaway from the speech is that the Trump administration will lean on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to step up to the plate and show a greater willingness to get involved. It is not clear if Trump expects India to get involved militarily, a prospect New Delhi would shudder at given its own tensions with China and Pakistan.”

With US Defense Secretary James Mattis making his first official visit to India the question of the extent of India’s involvement ought to have been an important one for both sides. I am not sure if Mattis specifically discussed with India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman New Delhi’s military involvement in Afghanistan. However, Sitharaman did respond categorically to that question from the media during a news conference saying, “We have made it clear that there shall not be boots from India on the ground.”

That is the sensible approach for New Delhi which has over the past 16 years of the endless war contributed some $3 billion in aid via many development projects. Keeping its ancient ties with Afghanistan in firm focus India has been doing its own version of nation-building there.

While Washington or Kabul have not specifically asked New Delhi to deploy Indian troops as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a NATO-led security mission to Afghanistan, there are expectations of some significant level of security cooperation between India and America in that country.

The extent and nature of India’s involvement in Afghanistan is a source of great anxiety for Pakistan. As recently as last week, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told the United Nations General Assembly that his country wants India to play no role at all in Afghanistan. Left to Islamabad, it would like New Delhi to pretend that there is no country called Afghanistan. (I exaggerate for effect.)

For India, it is a peculiar balancing act in Afghanistan—not doing anything at all as suggested by Pakistan will not earn it any points with its immediate neighbor even while doing just development-focused work will not give it the strategic heft it wants in the region. With America making security-related overtures, India will have to decide its role for the next decade and beyond.

Two still lifes

Let’s do with these two still lifes for today.

Empathetic, watchful, wary, and brilliantly colorful world of Bhupen Khakhar

‘The De-Luxe Tailors’, oil on canvas, Bhupen Khakhar, 1972

I look forward to an upcoming Sotheby’s auction in London on October 24 because it features this remarkable work by Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003) titled ‘The De-Luxe Tailors’. Painted in 1972 it is part of the personal collection of Howard Hodgkin and is estimated between of £250,000–350,000.

Both great painters were very close friends. As a backgrounder on Sotheby’s points out, “Hodgkin was in many ways his mentor and in some ways his liberator. Hosting Khakhar in England at various times in the late 1970s, finding him teaching positions and advocating for his works with galleries and museums, Hodgkin helped Khakhar to expand his horizons: his art seemed to become freer, looser, funnier and unflinchingly honest. It was Howard Hodgkin’s friendship and encouragement that may have sparked Khakhar’s recognition as one of India’s greatest 20th century artists.”

Khakhar was an accountant by training and belonged to a rather conservative Gujarati family who took to art as an act of liberation. During a career spanning 40 years he went on to become what many regard as India’s first pop artist. He was self-taught painter in whose works you see not the slightest trace of his training as an accountant. Not that there is anything wrong in being an accountant. Someone has to do that too.

Among other things what strikes me about Khakhar’s works is that because of the brilliant colors and structures of the figures in them they seem playful at first. On closer scrutiny they become a range of human emotions such as empathetic, intrigued, watchful and wary.

Just to be clear, the works below are not part of the October 24 auction.

‘Man in Pub’, Khakhar, 1979 (Courtesy: Tate, U.K.)

‘Grey Blanket’, Khakhar, 1998 (Courtesy: Tate, U.K.)

‘The Weatherman’, Khakhar, 1979 (Courtesy: Tate, U.K.)

Rahul Gandhi and his reboot via America

Congress Party vice president Rahul Gandhi

I did the following Comment for the IANS wire. It is out today worldwide.

By Mayank Chhaya

Chicago: Two weeks of a well-orchestrated tour of America may not be enough to answer whether Congress Party vice president Rahul Gandhi is a reflective and seriously analytical politician, as his supporters insist, or a privileged nincompoop, as social media so churlishly characterize him as.

However, what it appears to have done somewhat successfully is lend him some sheen for the urban constituencies that has been missing in his public engagements in India. At the very least, the tour helped him reboot even though it remains to be seen if all apps fire up subsequently.

His visits to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Princeton and New York exposed him to a diversity of opinion makers but put together, along with the audiences that attended his three events, were no more than 5000 people. While the numbers do not necessarily tell the whole story, what they did tell was that the attendees were mainly props to transmit a more credible message back home some 10,000 miles away where his voice either is instantly derided by a frenzied social media trolling culture or ignored altogether.

Unfortunately for him Gandhi, the smattering of people with whom he interacted, to the pleasant surprise of many of them, with sobriety and substance are of no consequence to him in his larger political strategy back in India. Even his much emphasized message to the 21^st century non-resident Indians (NRIs) of India’s independence movement being propelled by the early 20^th century NRIs such as Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Babasaheb Ambedkar and Vallabhbhai Patel had only a limited resonance.

His first public speech at the University of Berkeley, the famed home of unfettered liberal bastion of America, did make some news in India because of Gandhi’s clarity of purpose on subjects such as the rate of growth versus very low job creation and India’s syncretic culture coming under a serious strain by divisive political forces. Ironically, what made most news from the speech was his rather glib dismissal of dynastic politics saying that had become the way things are done in India even in professions beyond politics.

From all available accounts, his interactions with the mainstream political and policy communities in Washington left most of them rather impressed by his understated but substantive style. The image of Gandhi within these fraternities has been one of an absentee politician riding his family name. However, the Washington meetings seemed to have changed that uncharitable point of view.

Perhaps the most extensive policy-focused engagement that he had was in front of perhaps 200 students at the Princeton University where he displayed hitherto undemonstrated grasp of broader economic, political, cultural and social trends. His central point during the Princeton was creating large-scale jobs as a vehicle to impart a broader vision to India’s increasingly frustrated population. He kept citing the number of 30,000 Indians entering the job market every 24 hours and barely 450 of them managing to find employment.

The thrust of his argument was that unless this was dire statistic was urgently addressed it would be impossible to think in terms of a vision for a great future. To his credit, he acknowledged his own party’s failure to meet that number even while saying that the current government too had failed. He did speak in terms of working unitedly to address the central question of jobs.

One recurring feature of his interactions was India’s reputation as a tolerant and harmonious culture having suffered a major setback in recent months. He said he was asked throughout his tour what had gone wrong with the country and his response was to speak in terms the rise of “a divisive politics.”

The showcasing of the 47-year-old’s serious side outside the relentless ridicule he faces in India may help him personally in attending to the Congress Party’s decline with a renewed vigor. However, the scale of the party’s disaffection is so widespread that its rejuvenation is unlikely to come via Berkeley or Princeton but through his unfailing engagement across the length and breadth of India. The role that the NRIs could play in boosting Gandhi’s prospects as a credible rival to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is rather limited but to the extent their positive attention can lift his personal spirits in a way he can achieve that goal the tour could be particularly useful.

The Teen Rebel and coercive celibacy

Dear friend, fellow poet and raconteur Bharat Thakkar’s novel ‘The Teen Rebel’ is now available on Amazon.  The 222-page novel charts the story of an Indian American teenager in Silicon Valley battling family and community pressures to commit to a life of a celibate monk.

Dr. Thakkar, a highly regarded mechanical engineer and professor at several prestigious institutions in Chicago area with a career spanning nearly five decades, is also a greatly admired poet in Gujarati with several collections to his name.

As a Gujarati poet he adheres to the demanding classical grammar of poetry and its exacting rhythmic requirements. It is a tribute to his prolific creativity that he is also releasing his latest collection of Gujarati poetry on the heels of this novel even as he prepares to turn a long kept screenplay based on a remarkable true story from his own life into another novel.

My tangential association with this particular novel is that its cover has been designed by me using one of my own paintings. While the original painting hangs in my daughter Hayaa’s bedroom, now it is also on Amazon as a book cover.

I have been trying to get The Teen Rebel optioned as a movie because it has all the dramatic hooks for a rather engaging feature. I am in the middle of organizing a test shoot for a few scenes. The scenes involve an American anchorman discovering the story of coercive celibacy. It so happens that the actor to play the anchorman has already been roped in.

Stonehenge for no reason

Today, for absolutely no reason, three versions of my Stonehenge. Incidentally, I have never visited there.