Paris, je t'aime

Loads of fun smashing plates after a hearty meal in Paris

Always wanted to tick Paris of his list of places that he has visited. But when he finally embarked on his much-awaited journey, the long flight duration dampened his day. However, his exhaustion seemed to vanish, as soon as he stepped out of the flight and "took the first gulp of Parisian air. It made me realise that every bit of the long flight was worth it," he says. "The airport was overflowing with women dressed in chic solids, dominated by beige and peaches, with whimsically tied silk scarves around their necks. It is with a lot of excitement that I headed to the heart of Paris, to showcase my line for a brand," says the designer, admitting that he just couldn't help but take note of the fashionable people in Paris, the moment he got off. "Paris is such a popular destination but what I enjoyed the most is that the culture has still been kept alive. I preferred walking and explored quite a bit of it on foot. I walked the streets of Rive Gauche after sunrise, in the quaint brick lanes — noticing each age old lamp post. I felt like I was on a movie set!" says. His only grouse is that he unfortunately did not have the time to sight see as much as he would have liked to. "But I did pass the Louvre and took some time out to stare at one of the wonders of the world. This truly is the most romantic city in the world," he says cheering up. One of his main agendas during his stay in Paris was to de-stress and unwind. "I enjoyed lovely evenings at famous areas such as the youthful Latin Quarters and the swanky Champs Elysees. One particular incident stood out for me, when a couple of my friends and I were at this Greek restaurant. The food was absolutely delicious and the tradition there was that after one finishes their meal, they should smash the plate on the street! People were actually denied a table as their quota of plates had run out! The visual of all the shattered pieces of porcelain plates still makes me smile. Something so simple, yet so beautiful," recalls . Walking on the quaint streets of Paris at night, with the smell of roasted chestnuts and wafting around the exotic patisseries is what still treasures. The simplicity of it all, he says, is what inspires him in everyday life and also helps him to create as a designer.

DETOURS Until I was old enough to learn how to pack my bag (which was much after I learned to tie my shoelaces), it was my mother who arranged things for me--the clothes I should take, the books I should read, the board games I should play, and the stuff I should carry, as she took me and my two younger brothers every alternate summer to Nadiad, where my grandparents lived, and then to whichever city in Gujarat my aunt and uncle were living in at the time.

My uncle started as a district collector, and I remember spending summers at his various homes--in Surat, and drinking sherbet with my cousin Neeraj; in Ahwa, and being scared by the stories that he and my aunt would tell me, of wild animals entering their courtyard; in Bharuch, exploring dungeons from the Mughal era with my uncle; in Vadodara, and playing badminton in their garden (and losing most of the time, while my aunt showed the vegetables they had grown to my mother), and finally, in Gandhinagar, the featureless state capital, listening to Simon and Garfunkel on hot afternoons.
At all times, there would be a jeep in the house, and travelling with my uncle in those jeeps was a great adventure.

Several of the summers in between were spent in Matheran with my family; the hill station nearest to us, the toy train, the long walks to the various scenic points, the horse rides and the chikki, made of gur, groundnut, sesame seeds, almonds, pistachio and dried fruit. One afternoon, I recall bowling a rather fast ball to my father, who tried to play it back to me with a straight bat, but the bat hadn't been seasoned properly, and it promptly broke into two. That ended our cricketing vacation.

But then I learned to pack my bags, and started going on summer vacations on tours our school organized. Those were elaborate affairs, the nearly four weeks filled with sights to see. But we were Gujaratis first, so the tour party included a few cooks who would produce dal, kadhi, batata-nu shak, and puris and sometimes even shrikhand at odd locations. But those three summers--in 1975, 1976 and 1977--are etched firmly in my memory. Our group typically comprised about 50 students, boys and girls, all in mid-teens; there would be up to four teachers; and we would pack 10-12 towns and cities within those four weeks.

We would begin with a long train journey to Delhi. May is the wrong time of the month to see the capital: the trees offered little solace from the dry heat to which we coastal folk were unaccustomed, and the monuments reflected light with an intensity and brightness that seemed blinding. But Pathankot--and Kulu-Manali-our next destinations--were only a bus ride away. And how pleasant it became once we were on the banks of the Beas or Chenab! I remember the white foam of the flow of the river, the cool mountain air, the verdant banks, and the tall deodar and (rarer) chinar trees.

One night in Manali, I remember one of our teachers asking me if I knew one Professor Sushil Panjabi from Kolkata--she was in Manali in the same complex where we stayed with her students and her daughter, Kavita. Indeed, I knew them; the good professor was an old friend of my mother's from their college days in Mumbai, and it was the sort of coincidence that only happens in improbable Bollywood films, but the next morning Kavita and I went with our friends for a walk through an apple orchard, making the trip even more memorable. Later that week, with another teacher as our shield, 11 of us broke away from our group, which was headed for Vashisht Kund, and walked towards Rohtang Pass.

Once we started to climb, it became exciting; we ignored our watches, took deep breaths at the spectacular views, and kept walking up. And we discovered snow--solid and yellowing, clinging to the rocks, like dusty, unwashed drapery on furniture.
We had never seen snow before, and the yellowing snow didn't seem inspiring, when, as if to oblige us, fresh snow began to fall.
It was a light flurry, and we were ecstatic, holding out our palms, catching it, letting it settle, and then seeing the flakes liquefy and disintegrate. One of my classmates, a boy called Dhiren who later went on to become a doctor, intoned knowledgeably that what we saw was the phenomenon of latent heat (I probably still don't understand the phenomenon properly so please don't ask and I promise not to attempt an explanation). The teacher who was with us taught physics and mathematics; he was pleased that at least one of us had paid some attention in his classes.

We were scolded when we returned--there were no mobile phones then, and the teacher in charge of the entire group was in a panic, wondering where 11 of us had gone missing. That we had a teacher with us didn't help matters. We, the children, were grounded the next day, which was just as well; the climb up to Rohtang had been exhausting. Of the 11 of us, seven were girls: Not only had they outnumbered us boys, the girls went on to jeer everyone who hadn't come to the pass.
We were proud of our shared secret, the awesome view of the Lahaul and Spiti valleys the 11 of us had seen together, which the rest of our obedient, unpunished classmates hadn't seen. They probably got an extra helping of shrikhand. We didn't mind.

Later that week, we were in that unspeakably beautiful town of Dalhousie, and I remember the sheer expanse of the valley seen from our hotel. In Dharamsala, we saw the river flowing, miles down from where we were. It moved soundlessly; sunlight rested on the water; and rocks forced the river to take amazing twists and turns--and the water turned effortlessly, with the grace of a dancer, circling the rocks.

I saw the truly big Himalayan peaks only the following year, when we went to Nepal and Darjeeling. Annapurna and Dhaulagiri towered on the horizon on a perfect, cloudless day, with the sky blue, the air crisp, the wind mild, and the air cool. Seeing Kanchenjunga was harder, once we returned to India; clouds covered it as though it was a precious jewel that required a prior appointment for viewing.
But then the sun relented, and the clouds parted; with sunlight resting on Kanchenjunga, the peak turned golden, as if it was aflame. The sky turned pink that evening, and the peak's awesome beauty stayed imprinted in our minds. It was meghe dhaka tara, the cloud-capped star.

Then we grew older; studying and preparing for the exams that would follow began to take over our summers. Soon I left India, and the months I understood as “summer“ changed--instead of late April to early June, it became July and August. Visits to India happened, of course, but it meant chasing the monsoon. That has its own joys, like the late-season mangoes, but that's a story for another time.

I was standing in a cave-like underground museum at the Koutsoyannopoulos Winery in Vothonas, a few kilometres from Santorini's Kamari beach. I was there to begin a tryst with the wines of Santorini, which I had heard were unique--but a tryst where actually drinking them would come later. As with any courtship, I would first have to spend time getting to know them. As I stood watching a short film on the history of Santorini in a little room located at one end of the museum, I was entranced by the genesis of the island and its wines--a volcanic explosion that took place three and a half millennia ago. Later, as I sat in the wine-tasting room listening to modern laïká (Greek music) playing softly in the background, I talked to Alejandro, a local who worked in the winery and was our designated wine-tasting guide for the day. “You must have heard of the vanishing Atlantis,“ he said. “It is said that the volcanic eruption was so enormous that it was the source of the origin of that legend.“ Whether Santorini or Thera was indeed Plato's “lost continent“ is a debatable question; what cannot be disputed is the wonder of the silver lining that followed the catastrophe--the breathtaking caldera and the vines which miraculously began to grow in the volcanic pumice and ash.
“The wines from this winery are called Volcan,“ Alejandro explained, “because they carry the characteristics of the Santorini soil.“

Presently, the winery is run by George Koutsoyannopoulos, but its journey began three generations ago, with the passion and grit of his forefathers, brothers Gregory and Dimitris. The story goes that in 1870, the two brothers embarked on a journey from Sparta to the island of Syros with the intention of selling oil. However, fate decided to throw them off course. Midway, they got caught in a violent storm and their boat was pushed by the west winds towards Santorini. Reaching land, they soon realized that Santorini had potential for wine-making. Ten years later, their hard work resulted in the birth of their first winery.

Lava, one of the products of the winery, was the first wine that Alejandro brought out for me to sample. As I sipped this dry and fruity white table wine, I was struck by its lightness and its low alcohol content. Having tried the harsh Retsina in a couple of restaurants, I found this particularly refreshing and enjoyable.

Alejandro explained that vines in Santorini are grown in a slightly different manner.
“It's called the kouloura method, which means that the vines are wound in circles to form a basket which shelters them from the strong wind, harsh sun and the difficult sand. You must have seen some of those crown-like vine coils in the museum.“ I told him I had.

In fact, the inventive kouloura method was a mere speck on the canvas of what the underground museum exhibits. Built over 21 years with heavy funding from the Koutsoyannopoulos family, its maze of hallways chronicles the history of Santorini viticulture from 1660-1970. Earlier that day, as I had navigated my way through the museum with the help of an audio guide, I had seen moving mannequins toiling away in little caves on both sides of the passage. These human figurines were shown working with different tools, from an archaic Bavarian grape compressor to a several-centuriesold, hand-operated wooden press; bringing to life every stage of Santorinian winemaking, from cultivation to bottling.

The second wine Alejandro bought out was the Abelones, a rich, red wine with a distinct oakish aroma. I let the smoky wine swirl in my mouth and then savoured its soft, velvety aftertaste. Later, I learnt that it was made from three tongue-twisting Santorinian red grape varieties, the Mantilaria, the Mavrothiro and the Mavrotragano. I had just begun to agonize over which of the two wines I should take home when Alejandro whipped out the third and last wine for the day, an intense, amber wine called the Vinsanto. “This is the traditional wine of Santorini and is made exclusively from the Assyrtiko and Aïdani grapes,“ said Alejandro.

Both the grape varieties sounded positively Greek to me but Alejandro said the Assyrtiko is one of the best Greek white wine grapes and is typically blended with the Aïdani grape to enhance its aroma. The magical combination of these two white wine grapes resulted in the creation of a perfectly balanced and naturally sweet, aromatic dessert wine.

There are two theories about the origin of the name Vinsanto. One is that the name is derived from “vin de Santo“--“wine from Santorini“, while the other says the wine has its origins in Italy, where a similar sweet wine was used during mass and was called “Vin Santo“ or “holy wine“. Interestingly, until the early 20th century, when Greece gained independence from the Ottoman empire, this Santorininan wine was exported to Russia, where it was used as a communion wine by the Russian Orthodox Church. As I had my last leisurely sip of the Vinsanto, I decided that the wine by any name would taste just as delicious. Its rich aroma of coffee, crème brûlée and roasted nuts reminded me of sinful desserts and left me craving for more. My internal conflict was quelled. This was definitely the wine that I would take home.

While Alejandro packed the bottle, I asked him about the popularity of the Santorini wines abroad. “They are popular, but not as much as they have the potential to be.“ Despite the ongoing financial crisis in Greece, Alejandro seemed optimistic about the future of Santorinian wines--but the fact is that tourism is one of the key threats to the local cultivars.

Many farmers have built hotels or shops over their vineyards to get a share of tourist euros. Santorini's atypical weather and soil have created interesting, unique wines, but have also meant that the vineyards yield much less than they would in conventional wine terrains. Despite valiant attempts by the local wineries to protect the island's vineyards, and with tourism offering an alternative, there is a danger that the Santorini wines--little known and regarded to begin with--may go extinct. It would be a shame if the island's heritage sank into nothingness, like Plato's mythical continent.
Write to lounge@livemint.com GETTING THERE Aeroflot flies DelhiAth ens via Moscow. Return economy fares start at `28,833. The best way to get to Santorini is to take the ferry from the Piraeus port in Athens and past the island of Paros or Syros. The two most popular ferry services are Hellenic Seaways (www.hellenicseaways.gr) and Blue Star Ferries (www.bluestar ferries.gr). Fares start from 35 (around `2,320). Santorini also has an airport, situated north of Kamari, with regular halfhour flights from Athens. To get to the Volcan Wine Museum, take a bus from Fira towards Kamari. The museum is on the way to Kamari beach and is open from noon8pm. A rare vintage A quick guide to the wines of Santorini Domaine Sigalas Santorini A fresh, fruity white wine with a crisp and dry finish; from the Sigalas Winery Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: 1118 (around `7301,200) Koutsoyannopoulos Santorini A fullflavoured white wine with balanced acidity and powerful fruity finish Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: 1134 Santo Wines Vinsanto A rich, sweet, fullbodied dessert wine with a high proportion of the robust Assyrtiko, blended with the aromatic Aïdani Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: 2355 Boutari Kallisti Reserve A refined, complex and fullbodied goldenyellow wine with a strong aroma of fruits, roasted nuts and honey Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: 918 Gaia Thalassitis A crisp, dry white wine with a subtle honey aroma and sharp acidity Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: 1118 Estate Argyros Atlantis Red A light, smooth, fruity red wine composed of 90% Mantilaria and 10% Mavrotragano Grape variety: Mantilaria Price: 1015 Estate Argyros Assyrtiko A mediumbodied golden wine with citrus aroma, balanced acidity and a characteristic volcanic mineral tinge Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: 1120 Hatzidakis Nykteri A beautifully balanced, organic white wine characterized by a fruit and butter aroma Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: 1420 All prices are exclusive of sales tax.

CHENNAI TIFFIN READY

CHENNAI TIFFIN READY At 5am, walk the streets of Chennai. It's safe to do so: The heat does not set in at this early hour. This will be about the coolest the city will get for the next four months. Notice, as you walk, that Chennai wakes up pretty early. Newspapers are being sorted, the milkman's already done his round, trucks roll by. Walk (or drive) to Purasawalkam. It's easy: Follow the smell of fresh sambhar.

Udipi Welcome is a little, old world Chennai restaurant that serves one of the best things to eat in the morning: hot idlis drowned in the hottest, freshest sambar. Get yourself a newspaper, order your breakfast and dig in. Two idlis or 20, no Chennai breakfast is complete without a little pongal. Order a plate of the good stuff, and begin working on the crossword.

Purasawalkam, a busy market area, is in north Chennai. It's known for quaint, tiny streets with old houses, and the Gangadeeswarar Temple.
Just down the road from Udipi Welcome, Gangadeeswarar Temple was built by the Chola dynasty, and pretty much left to its own devices. With shops hedging in on its space, and its tank hidden by new construction, Gangadeeswarar remains a quiet, cool place to puzzle over 15 Down: Disturbed new sect seen growing old (9).
PHILOSOPHIZE The Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) is on Greenways Road, not far from where the river Adyar meets the sea. A sprawling, green campus, KFI is ideal to spend an afternoon. An Art Deco, two-storeyed building houses books, lectures and discussions of the KFI, and writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Pick one up, find yourself a spot under a tree (there are many) and read. Or listen to your music. There is no formal membership and no agenda for the foundation, and great stress is laid on doing your own thing in search of truth. As the day cools, regulars and newcomers meet on the lawn and talk philosophy, religion and Krishnamurti while the birds come home to roost. KFI is a good place for birds; and if you are a birdwatcher, for you too. The kingfisher, the parakeet, the cuckoo, the spotted owl and many more come here, to this large park on the banks of the Adyar.

Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan Write to lounge@livemint.com DON'T MISS Close to the KFI is Eco Café/Anokhi, a coffee shop that makes superla tive espressos and pretty good food all day. Walk in, order, and spend as long as you want. The Croque Madame is a per sonal favourite. Wash it down with good coffee and some French vanilla ice cream. NEW DELHI IN BLOOM As the mercury crosses the 40-degree Celsius mark, head to Hailey Road. Tucked away behind the high-rises of Connaught Place, it is a traffic-free stretch with tree-lined pavements, old world bungalows, mossy brick walls and a 14th century ruin.
In May and June, Hailey Road glows on both sides with a spectacular display of yellow. These are the flowers of amaltas, which bloom only in the summer. The yellow flowers climb up the electric poles, crawl around the metal plaques and entwine the branches of an occasional peepal or neem tree. All through the day, the flowers keep dropping (reminiscent of snowfall), turning the road into a thick yellow carpet. Even those who have never heard of Monet might feel transported into the world of an Impressionist painter's canvas. Start the walk early.
CLOUDS OF GREEN Twelve kilometres from Delhi lies nature's miraculous gift to a dry, dusty city. A 100-hectare jungle, Mangarbani valley turns a glowing green in peak summer. This forest in the Aravallis has dhau trees which grow on dry rocky terrain. Unlike most trees in and around Delhi that remain bare throughout the dry season--from December to midJuly--dhaus sprout new leaves in May. “It's one of the most beautiful sights in Delhi,“ says Pradip Krishen, author of Trees of Delhi. “Standing at a cliff with the valley below you, it's like looking at a giant cloud of green.“ To go to Mangarbani, take the road to Chhattarpur and drive down towards Faridabad. A few minutes after crossing the Delhi border, you will spot a large dumping site on the right. Turn into the rutty track and keep driving till you reach a dead end. Go there at 6am.
Mayank Austen Soofi DON'T MISS Mangarbani also has a temple dedicated to an invisible mystic called Gudariya Baba, who is believed to strike terror if somebody cuts a tree.
Tourists can learn more about him from children who live in the valley's sole village. They recite poems on the baba every Sunday under the village's banyan tree. MUMBAI BUTTERED COAST The Arabian Sea is Mumbai's best feature, as Juhu and Girgaum Chowpatty's teeming crowds, even during the summer, will attest. Not the best spot for a lunchtime picnic, but you can follow the coastline to arange of places and events over this summer.

At the tip of Worli is one of the city's oldest and most visible fishing villages. The Koliwada has been called a slum, perched on the edge of the hyper-urban, new Worli, which includes the local passport office and Atria mall, but it is an ancient neighbourhood. Local tour operator Shriti Tyagi conducts informal sunset walks through the area, starting from the Golphadevi temple, dedicated to the traditional deity of the Kolis, through the bylanes of the village, exploring its food, religion and politics, ending with tea on the ramparts of the historic Worli Fort. For details, email beyondbombay@gmail.com.

On Mumbai's starboard side, the flamingo walks organized by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) at the Sewri mud flats may be over for this season, but the “flats“ still offer a wide variety of birds and flora to see, including the common greenshank, common redshank, curlew and green sandpiper. BNHS will also take a nature trail to Elephanta on 22 May which will focus on the island's fauna--yes, more than just monkeys and other tourists--rather than its history. For details, email bnhs.programmes@gmail.com INSIDE STORY All outdoor activity is best undertaken early in the morning, before the sun and traffic intensify. To escape indoors, remember that the National Centre for the Performing Arts and Prithvi Theatre are both on the coast--at Marine Drive and Juhu, respectively--and have summer performing arts festivals through the season. For details, visit www.ncpamumbai.com or www.prithvitheatre.org Supriya Nair DON'T MISS For some people Gorai Beach is best known as the landing point for the ferry to EsselWorld amusement park. While it's no longer a proto Goan paradise, part of it remains one of Mum bai's cleanest and qui etest beaches. As with most of north Mum bai's coastline, its cur rents make it an unsafe swimming hole, but its walks are exhilarating, and the adjacent east Indian village of Gorai includes a real gem: the late 16th century Portu guese church of the Holy Magi.

own these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.“ This was the private detective of Raymond Chandler's dreams, a man who struck a match in the darkness of the big city.

All travellers are detectives of a sort, determined to discover truth by following maps and guides. Stories are just another kind of map then: opening up a world in which plots become milestones and characters become a layer of the landscape. It's why backpackers on Colaba Causeway are seen clutching, not the Lonely Planet guide, but Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram.

In the 19th century, hackney cab drivers in Marseille would call out thanks to Alexandre Dumas as he passed them on the street for bringing their ill-reputed port city to international attention in The Count of Monte Cristo (Suketu Mehta might have liked Mumbaikars to do that). Indian writing in English has similarly broadened the world's imaginative horizons about the subcontinent. Readers may well complain that the last few years have cynically overexposed the slums of Dharavi (Vikas Swarup's Q&A) and the gated colonies of Gurgaon (Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger). But not all of the most famous vistas that Indian writers opened up are quite so neo-Dickensian. Over the last few decades, each quarter of the country has had a representative who brought the landscape to life in complex, delicate feats of literary cartography. What would some parts of India look like if you used their awardwinning novels to navigate them?
Canvas: (clockwise from above, left) History and geography meet in Ghosh's Kolkata; Rushdie evokes Malabar Hill's lovable humanity; Roy's Kerala is far from backwaters tourism; and Ali's Old Delhi is caught up in turmoil. THE EAST AMITAV GHOSH'S WORK GHOSH'S WORK Other big cities may fight their respective corners, but like Renaissance-era Venice or pre-war Vienna, our expectations of a cultural capital are still deeply informed by India's imagined Kolkata: not so much a place as a radical conversation between languages and histories, houses and streets, industry and intellect. It can be difficult to detect a physical city that frames the humans who loom so large over its literature.

But there are those books which shade the landscapes of the East into the lives of its people.
In the fiction of Amitav Ghosh, for whom geography and history have always been simultaneous, ordinary settings develop startling backstories. To walk through bylanes in residential Kolkata with The Shadow Lines is to realize a whole complex of Partition and ideology that envelops their histories. To sit in a tea shop is to unravel the pasts of the unknown young men who share your table.

In The Hungry Tide, the story of an imaginary settlement on the Sundarbans reconstructs its entire ecosystem: to walk through its unparalleled forests in real life will forever be a quest for Lusibari and Garjontola. And in his Ibis trilogy, whose second instalment River of Smoke comes out this July, everything from Kolkata's commerce in opium to the colonial histories of the India-Myanmar border becomes part of a wild intercontinental odyssey that begins on the banks of the Hooghly. There can be no better way to learn history, Ghosh says, than by making it personal.
Shamik Bag THE WEST SALMAN RUSHDIE'S WORK There is no city that does not dream,“ begins an Anne Michaels poem. If you went looking for the Mumbai of Kiran Nagarkar's Ravan and Eddie, you would be hard-pressed to find a moment to dream in the unceasing churn of the workingclass eastern dock neighbourhoods. In the Mumbai of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, you'd be too busy trying to preserve your morals and your life to care. Literary Mumbai's most rococo avatar is still found in the pages of Salman Rushdie, who wrote of his childhood home in the key of both celebration and lamentation.

Rushdie's Mumbai may seem overly dependent on the fluted columns and yellowed stonework of the neighbourhoods around Malabar Hill, with its parks where people from other parts of the city still come “on chutti“ (holiday). But it is also the constantly crumbling, constantly remade world of the Irani cafés and art galleries of south Mumbai, of the Western Railway's stations, of central Mumbai's pickle factories and red light areas.

The star attraction of Rushdie's Mumbai, though, is always its grotesque but lovable humanity. His disaffected Parsis become rock stars; his psychotic cartoonists become political overlords; his magical midnight's children become seers, beggars, lose their homes, find love. Rushdie was perhaps the first English-language author to bridge the gap between two wellworn clichés: In his novels, it made sense that the city that never sleeps is also the city of dreams.

Supriya Nair THE NORTH TWILIGHT IN DELHI First published in 1940 by Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, Ahmed Ali's novel Twilight in Delhi is the best guidebook to Old Delhi for the sophisticated traveller. While the area is fast shedding its history, one can glimpse the vanished world.
Keep a copy in your back pocket. On reaching Turkman Gate, flip to page 14. “The air was filled with the shouts of the pigeon-fliers who were rending the atmosphere with their cries of `Aao, Koo, Haa!'“ Look up. There are boys on rooftops, flying their pigeons, and crying, `Aao, Koo, Haa!' At a kotha (brothel) on GB Road, next to Ajmeri Gate, open page 52. “From all around came the sounds of song, whining of sarangis, and the tinkling of bells, as the dancing girls entertained their customers.“ The girls still dance. At Jama Masjid, turn to page 77. “Vendors were selling small round kebabs fried in oil, and others still fried fish or meat cutlets, pulao or vegetable cutlets soaked in curds. Many sold sherbet...“ And today, the vendors are selling kebabs and sherbets. Set in 19th century Delhi, the novel traces a civilization's decline. Through a world of lovers, poets, pigeons, havelis, kothas, kuchas, mosques, dargahs and bazaars, it elegantly records the inner turmoil of a great capital. Today, Ali lies buried in Karachi and his Walled City is a maze of open drains and overhanging electric cables. But Delhi's soul has survived in hidden corners which a tourist can discover if armed with this novel.
Mayank Austen Soofi THE SOUTH THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS The killer massage. The hilly retreats amid the tea gardens. The pristine beaches.
The houseboats glowing in the dusk. Kerala offers tourists so many easy ways out that these may often be the most overwhelming impressions that casual visitors take away from the state. The classical splendours of other places in the south are absent in Kerala's vistas of blue and green, the human imprint reluctant to intrude on the tourist reverie.

There are neither beaches nor tea gardens in Arundhati Roy's Kerala, a place anchored to its time, not its advertising. It is overflowing with human energy: a place where a stop at a toddy shack might bring you in contact with a communist radical and a factory-owning capitalist at once; where a bus ride can be overwhelmed by protesters walking in the other direction; where an evening by the village river can change your destiny. It is a place of whitewashed churches, frenetic party offices and homes full of secrets.

True, Roy's Ayemenem is underpinned with such darkness that it may put you off the most quotidian activities, like going to a movie theatre (or at least its drinks counter) for some time after you've travelled through it. But unlike the tourist Kerala, it can be visited in the rainy season. It invites serious engagement.

And we hear the pickles are delicious.

Disconcerting weather is one of Scotland's specialities.

It all begins with barley.

Heaps and heaps of this cereal grain sit on the second floor of a three-floor warehouse building on the grounds of The Balvenie Distillery Co. Ltd in Dufftown, Scotland. Outside, the weather is a disconcerting mix of bright sunshine and chilly wind.
Too hot to keep your jacket on.
Too cold to take it off.

Disconcerting weather is one of Scotland's specialities.

Inside the stone-walled warehouse, small windows let in patches of fierce sunlight, but otherwise the air is evenly cool and a little musty. Besides the fact that there is a lot of it, the barley looks utterly unremarkable. But David Mair assures us that this indeed is where the process of whisky-making begins. All that wonderful, golden liquid that makes grown men and women weak at the knees, wet in their mouths and uncontrollable in airport duty-free shops is born unceremoniously in barley warehouses just like this one.

Mair is what is known in the whisky business as a distillery ambassador. At Balvenie, a distillery first established in 1892 and part of the mammoth William Grant and Sons group of spirit brands, Mair's job is to welcome visitors to the distillery, take them on 3-hour, behind-the-scenes tours of the facility and then introduce them to the nuances of pouring, nosing and tasting a good whisky.

My visit to Dufftown, which is situated just south of Moray Firth, the triangle-shaped inlet of the North Sea that cuts into Scotland, is as part of an international group of journalists invited for the launch of a new whisky vintage by Balvenie. Called Tun 1401 Batch 2, the spirit comprises a blend of 10 casks of single malt Balvenie of vintages ranging from 1967 to 1989.

The journalists include budding whisky expert Joel Harrison, of funky whisky blog Caskstrength.net, and Belgian magazine editor, writer and amateur bartender Dieter Moeyaert (whose claim to fame is being a stand-in for Colin Farrell's left hand in the movie In Bruges).

Dufftown houses a number of large, active distilleries such as Glenfiddich, Glendullan and Balvenie. Together they make Dufftown, the “Whisky Capital of the World“, the largest malt whisky producing region in Scotland.

The Dufftown area also has one other claim to fame. In the Harry Potter universe Dufftown is located near Hogwarts. In reality, nothing ever happens in Dufftown. Last year, in the local town of Huntly, they realized after winter that the police vehicles at the local station didn't have to be moved from the parking lot for four months. Nothing had happened. At all.

Inside the Balvenie distillery, tonnes of barley is tipped into vats of warm water and then aerated for two-three days. This softens the grain and prepares it for germination when the grain begins to sprout roots.

The barley is then thrown on to a malting floor where it is allowed to germinate. From this point onwards the process has to be overseen carefully. Germinate for too long and the grains run out of sugar. Germinate for too short a time and there isn't enough sugar.
The four who man the malting floor, one level below the warehouse, work in physically demanding conditions. The barley needs to be turned over several times to ensure even germination; originally this was done with a massive wooden shield at the end of a staff. Turning the barley is such hard work that malt men began to develop “monkey shoulders“, one dominant shoulder substantially bigger than the other.

Nowadays, malt men at Balvenie use a motorized scoop to turn the barley over. And “Monkey Shoulder“ is the name of a nice blended whisky, also sold by William Grant, that is crafted by malt master David Stewart.

Stewart is also the brains, or nose rather, behind all of Balvenie's products. He chooses what spirit goes into what cask, what cask goes into what blend and what blend goes into what bottle. Every day, Stewart tells me, his job comprises tasting samples from various casks, deciding what is ready to bottle and what isn't.
In the course of a day he routinely tastes over 100 spirits.
How, I ask him astonished, does he stay sober?

“Oh, I just nose them mostly,“ Stewart says. I ask him if his sense of smell is good enough to completely make the actual tasting process on the tongue redundant. He thinks for a moment and then nods shyly, as if embarrassed by his superpower: “Yes.“

Once the damp barley, or green malt, has completed germination it is dried in a malt kiln, ground to a flour called grist, then rinsed with spring water, at 64 degrees Celsius. This warm water completes the conversion of starch into fermentable sugar. The waste solid is removed and the sugar water is then combined with yeast to start fermentation.

At this stage one can't help wondering something: Who discovered fermentation? Who was the first human being who wondered what would happen if you let wet barley, for instance, rot and then, instead of throwing the stinking thing into a river or over an enemy, distil the mess and drink the outcome?

The liquor from yeast fermentation, Mair tells some thirsty journalists, is drinkable and would taste like a beer. But it is the next crucial stage that makes whisky happen distillation.

There are six massive copper stills in the distillery. They look like giant margarita glasses made of copper placed upside down. Inside the stills, the product of fermentation, or wash, is boiled repeatedly till the alcohol is driven off, condensed and captured.

What is left now is the longest step: casking the whisky.

What happens inside a cask is almost alchemy: base alcohol to gold whisky. The distilled alcohol begins to absorb flavours from the wood and from the residue of the spirit that was previously contained in the cask.
Balvanie usually uses casks that held bourbon, sherry and port.
Bourbon casks impart a mild, vanilla flavour to the whisky.
Sherry and port casks, on the other hand, make the spirit darker in colour and lend more fruity flavours. All in all it is inside these casks that the whisky, as you taste it, begins to take shape. Over the years, these casks will also concentrate the alcohol, thanks to absorption and evaporation.

Despite the centuries of experience in making whisky, casks can still be eccentric. “Sometimes when you open one after 40 years you find almost nothing left in it.
Sometimes you find superb spirit,“ explains Stewart.

Malt master David Stewart's work begins now. That evening the journalists are ushered into a dank, dark warehouse and he pours each one some of the first drams from a massive barrel of Tun 1401 Batch 2. We swirl, we nose, we sip. Even to the untrained palate the whisky is both powerful and complex.
There are many strong flavours here, but none that make your eyes water or your tongue burn.

A few days later, Harrison had this to say about Tun 1401 on his blog, CaskStrength: “Wow, this is a whisky with a big personality and the nose jumps out the glass at you; citrus fruit juices come through first, followed by a dumbing down of the energy thanks to some runny honey tones and finally oak and wood spices add some last min left turns to the aroma.
A huge hit of spiced pineapple, as if used in a mild curry with some lime chutney and Seville orange marmalade.“

In comparison my palate is philistine. I wouldn't be able to recognize Seville orange marmalade if you hit me in the face with a bottle of the stuff.

But the whisky was beautiful.
Write to lounge@livemint.com GETTING THERE Flights to Aberdeen take off from airports all over the UK, including London. The Balvenie conducts two tours a day from MondayThursday and one on Fri day. The tours are 3 hours long and include a nosing and tasting ses sion. They cost £25 (around `1,840) per person. Visitors can buy a bottle of their own Balvenie from a cask for a further £25. Res ervations are essential. For details, visit www.thebalvenie.com

Geek getaways MEMORIAL MUSEUM OF COSMONAUTICS | MOSCOW, RUSSIA ··················································· COSMONAUT COUNTRY Even the memorials to the Soviet space programme are punctuated with a sense of enigmatic hyperbole.

Down Cosmonauts Alley in north Moscow, where the wide boulevard is lined with busts of engineers, scientists and space-faring dogs, a gigantic titanium structure shaped like a rocket's exhaust plume rises out of the ground.

This is the Monument to the Conquerors of Space, first designed to commemorate the Soviet Union's early space victories when they put the beeping Sputnik 1 into orbit in 1957.
At the foot of the monument, peering into the distance, is a life-size statue of rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (the man responsible for the oft-quoted line: “The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever“).

Tsiolkovsky, who died in 1935, wrote more than 100 scientific treatises on the specifics of space travel what fuel a manned rocket would use, how the propulsion would be generated and the kind of pressurized suits that cosmonauts would need to wear. His writing was astonishingly detailed and the precursor to the advances of both the US and Soviet space programmes. Tsiolkovsky even devised a 16-step process of how humans would conquer space, a list science is still trying to play catch-up with (we're still working on point 6 of 16).

This sense of boundless vision is what makes the Soviet space programme so intriguing. While the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (Nasa's) Apollo missions were a supremely well-engineered team project, the Soviet Union's was a haphazard endeavour that relied on flamboyant genius and miraculous luck.

At the base of the monument is the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics filled with nearly 3,500 artefacts from the space programme from a golden spreadeagled Yuri Gagarin greeting you at the entrance to a preserved life-support pod from the planned “Luna“ manned moon missions.

The museum is open to visitors from 11am-7pm, daily, except Tuesdays. BONUS BIKING TO BAIKONUR This is a trip only for the bravest of space nuts. The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakh stan is ground zero for everything spacerelated. Here's where Gagarin took off in 1961, and where the mon strous N1 rockets, which then Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev hoped would take them to the moon, were tested. Trouble is, Baikonur is a spe cially administered Russian zone that's a 23hour train journey from Kazakhstan's capital Almaty. Opting for an official tour, either from Almaty or Moscow, is the best way to reach. Or you could bike across the steppes. It's possible. For details, visit www.globalbiketours.com/ tour/show/536 GETTING THERE Aeroflot has direct flights to Moscow from Delhi. Return tickets start at `23,622. You will need a tourist visa to enter Russia.

Contact the Russian consu lates in Mumbai (02223633627) or Delhi (01126110640), or visit www.visatorussia.com For entry to the Baikonur cosmodrome, contact the Russian consulate. COMPUTEX 2011 | TAIPEI, TAIWAN TECHNOLOGY RULES Taiwan is an obvious and frequently overlooked geek destination. It's home to many of the world's leading technology companies smartphone maker HTC, motherboard giant Asus, and bicycle makers Merida. It's also the site of Computex, the world's second largest annual consumer electronics expo.

Computex 2011 starts 31 May, and it's a perfect excuse to explore Taiwan. On one hand, you're in technology heaven expect 3D tablets, new gaming consoles and self-driving cars to be showcased. But step outside the exhibition halls, and you'll find a fascinating country to explore.

An hour away from downtown Taipei is Yingge, the “Ceramic Town“. Yingge is a small artists village that specializes in pottery. You'll see rows of small kilns and workshops, as well as independent stores selling the work of local artists. Further out from the city are Taiwan's many national parks all of them are stunning and many let you roam around on a bicycle. Not to be missed is Nanya, a spot on the north-east coast with wonderfully bizarre seasculpted rock formations and a pristine view of the Pacific. To the south is Yangmingshan, known for its hot springs and hiking trails, and the Taroko National Park, with its waterfalls and temple shrines. After dark, hit the Shilin Night Market and eat the best pork buns and oyster omelettes in South-East Asia. GETTING THERE Return tickets to Taipei on China Southern from Delhi via Guangzhou start at `30,314. You can also fly Cathay Pacific, via Hong Kong (from Bangalore), `32,350 onwards. Indian passport holders do not need a visa to enter Tai wan, but you will need to register yourself before arrival with the country's immigration agency at https://nas.immigration.

gov.tw/nase/. Taipei is connected to all of Taiwan's tourist destina tions by highspeed train.
For details about Computex 2011, visit www.computex taipei.com.tw COMICCON INTERNATIONAL | SAN DIEGO, US STRIP TEASE Welcome to pop culture central. On your left, an honest-to-goodness flash mob of costumed zombies with fake blood splats over their ripped clothes shamble about convincingly.
On your right, legions of Batmen and Wonder Women browse through new comics or playing a video game. Ahead, a queue of people with a shock of purple hair, wait to enter a special preview of a yet-to-air horror TV show. Spiderman creator Stan Lee is somewhere in the vicinity, signing books. In the evening, there's a panel discussion on the use of cephalopod monsters in fantasy novels.

The San Diego Comic-Con, which starts 21 July, is only incidentally about comics. Comics are there, often in significant numbers, but the event has mutated in the last 10 years to embrace every form of pop culture manga and anime, horror and fantasy, board games and toys. Everything new and exciting in all these fields makes an appearance here first. It premieres network shows, films and documentaries months before they first air or release. Outside the event, there are Diego's miles of beaches, ripe for surfing, sailing or jet-skiing. Mexico is an hour's drive away, as is Temecula wine country.

Your interest in pop culture could be a curious little niche or gloriously mainstream Comic-Con has something for everyone. All literary, cinematic and ludic condescension is discarded for the four days of the event. This is a celebration of fancreators who've shaped the way you think while dressed as a two-headed cow, or discovering that you're not the only fan in the world of a cult Korean sitcom. GETTING THERE United flies Delhi San Diego via Los Angeles. Return economy fares start at `68,465.

Entry to the US requires a tourist visa. Be sure to apply for it at least three weeks before your flight date. Pack a costume superhero, zombie, vampire, etc. to blend in with the crowd.

I remember being at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, a couple of years ago. My daughter, 12 at the time, would have been disappointed if Donald Duck had not been around to shake her hand and sign her slam book. But there he was, fabulous blue eyes and such an outsized smile we could almost say hello to his epiglottis. That's the guarantee of a Disneyland--you get your ticket's worth. No such luck at Our Native Village, on the outskirts of Bangalore, where we recently spent a couple of days in search of peacocks.

In fact, the resident turkey of the village had just died. If we wished, we could milk the cow, we were told. That's the big difference between “doing“ Disneyland and “doing“ Our Native Village--fictional animals are guaranteed in the former, real life and nature are elusive in the latter. Maybe that's why we loved it. My daughter didn't complain. Instead, she learnt to play gilli-danda and went cycling across the open grassy savannah landscape.

But I get ahead of myself.

Down with a cough that wouldn't go away despite intense medication, I needed to get away from the city. At one time such places would have been called sanitariums. But Our Native Village is an eco-resort for holistic healing.

So we woke up at 6am for a walk in 600 acres of forest with the air full of the smell of fresh rain. When we got back, there was hot breakfast waiting, much of the produce brought in from the organic farm on the property.

Don't be silly--of course you can get an Ayurvedic massage. This is south India, where there is no healing without a good oil rub or a shirodhara (a mesmerizing warm drip of medicated oil and milk on your forehead). Even better was the sound massage my wife wanted--lying on a wooden table while a therapist played 50 strings in the hollow below her. The vibrations had her stress knots all straightened out--somewhat like a trance party, except this was bespoke for an audience of one.

I don't know when, perhaps between reading the P.D. James mystery below the coconut tree in the afternoon and drinking the delicious jaggery-spiked coffee in the evening, my cough decided to abandon me. Talk about holistic healing.

Arun Katiyar Katiyar is a Bangalore-based content and communication consultant.
Write to lounge@livemint.com GETTING THERE Our Native Village is located in Hessarghatta, 40km north of Bangalore, off Tumkur Road. A night's stay for two costs 6,800 (exclusive of taxes). This includes room cost, breakfast, lunch, dinner, group yoga, meditation, use of the pool, and certain village games and activities. There are also special multi-day packages. For details, visit www.ournativevillage.com

MOUNTAIN SONG The “getaway“ music festival is the curse of Indian indie

MOUNTAIN SONG The “getaway“ music festival is the curse of Indian indie. The lure is easy to understand--spend a few days camping in the foothills of the Himalayas or on the banks of a river, and listen to eclectic, edgy music with hundreds of like-minded people. But 2010's Ladakh Confluence, set 11,500ft high near Leh, came to an abrupt stop after protests by local tour operators. 2011's Ujaan Festival, due to be held at the beach town of Frasergunj at the border of the Sundarbans, was cancelled after concerns about the event's ecological impact.

The criticisms and concerns are all valid. Music festivals are hardly low-key events, and they're often rightly seen as urban “invasions“ by local communities shut out from the festivities.
But the Escape Festival (starting 20 May), at the Naukuchiatal Lake Resort in Uttarakhand, seems to have got something right. The fest is now in its third year, and is one of India's few “camping“ festivals, in the spirit of European festivals such as Glastonbury.
“We thought carefully before scaling up our event from the little private party that it started out as,“ says Escape founder L. “Mama“ Tochhawng. For one, the festival is held at a rented-out resort, and doesn't encroach beyond its pristine 32-acre confines. Tochhawng and his team also seem to have their priorities right. “In 2010, which was the year we had an influx of over 1,000 people, we looked seriously at keeping our carbon footprint minimal,“ he says. “We also had to make sure that local communities were involved and participated at all stages of the festival.“
The three-day festival has three stages, and the line-up for 2011 includes glitchy dubstep duo Teddy Boy Kill, and alternative acts Menwhopause and Indigo Children. There will also be plenty of interactive events, including guitar and drum workshops with many of the participating bands, and a “Flee“ market with stalls from local artists.

Krish Raghav GETTING THERE Naukuchiatal is 35km from Kathgodam, and 41km from Nainital. Both towns are well connected by bus and train to Delhi and Dehradun. The Ranikhet Express and the Uttaranchal Sampark Kranti Express ply daily between the capital and Kathgodam.
Once there, taxis and buses are available at the Haldwani road ways bus stand. Festival passes are priced at `2,500 and camp ing packages start at `6,700. To book, visit www.escapefestival.in

Explorer caves in Meghalaya

DEEPER UNDERGROUND Meghalaya's luxuriously rich flora and fauna, fuelled by some of the heaviest rainfall in the world, has been a wonderland for thrill-seeking travellers for decades. What was hitherto hidden, however, was an incredible system of subterranean caves that ran deep below the green hills in the Khasi, Jaintia and South Garo regions.

Led by the intrepid Brian Dermot Kharpran Daly, a caver and wine-maker from Shillong, the Meghalaya Adventurers Association began exploring and mapping the caves in 1992. Now more than a thousand such caves, including South Asia's 10 longest cave systems, are open for any traveller. Nothing can prepare you for the thrill of a vast underground world--rivers and creeks run through them, crystal-clear ponds appear out of nowhere, “cave pearls“, perfect calcite spheres, are scattered along the path, massive stalactites and stalagmites hang majestically, and an incredible variety of sculptured rock formations, millions of years in the making, offer limitless visual delight.

Then there is the sheer excitement of being deep in the underbelly of the hills, exploring tiny passageways and massive halls, squeezing through rock formations, rappelling down narrow shafts, or following a subterranean river, all in the spooky light of headlamps.

For the East Khasi hill caves, Cherrapunji forms the base. Krem Mawmluh, just half a kilometre away, features a large subterranean river system, and Krem Phyllut has a massive “fossil passage“, an older area of the cave through which a river once ran. Jowai, a hill town that forms the base for caving in the Jaintia Hills, is 64km from Shillong along the Shillong-Silchar National Highway. Krem Um Lawan, the longest and deepest cave in India, is the main attraction here. It dates back to the Eocene Age (35-56 million years ago), and has some spectacular cataracts and waterfalls.

For the caves in the South Garo hills, Tura, a town situated at the base of Nokrek mountain, is used as a base. Siju Dobakkol, the third largest cave in India, and home to thousands of bats, is probably the most popular caving spot in the country.
Rudraneil Sengupta `24,320 (exDelhi) and `21,142 (exMumbai). The Meghalaya Adventurers Association, based out of Hotel Centre Point in Shillong (for details, call 364225210), provides caving guides and equipment, as well as customized packaged adventure tours.

Mallika Sherawat car wash!

Mallika Sherawat Car wash!

FORCES OF NATURE

FORCES OF NATURE

--