Blessed by an elephant

Sugar and Spice

My very first taste of Indian food (in India) was sambar (a rich vegetable and lentil stew) and potatoes, which we had for breakfast over eggs and roti. This was the morning after our 30-hour trip. The dish was delicious, restoring in a way only thick, spicy food can be, with a flavor so complex I couldn't distinguish more than a few ingredients. So I called room service and asked what was in it. "Onions, ma'am".

Later, I looked up the most common used spices in Indian food. Amchur (mango powder), bay leaves, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, cloves, cumin, curry leaves, fennel, fenugreek, garlic, ginger, basil, kokum (this gives dishes a purple hue), lemongrass, mace (the red lacy membrane that grows around the nutmeg seed), mint, mustard, nutmeg, pomegranate, poppy seeds, pepper, sesame, tamarind, saffron, and turmeric.

In Hyderbad, our first stop, I tasted biryani - the typical Hyderbad one-dish-meal served with raita - and was so taken by its flavors I called the server over and asked how to go about preparing a dish like this. What do you put in it? He thought for a second. "Onions, ma'am". Further research revealed that some of the ingredients of Biryani are rice (although I also tried one with millet), saffron, milk, papaya paste, yogurt, chili powder, ginger, garlic, caraway, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, mint, green chili and lime. And, yes, onions.

Hyderabad offers a mix of Hindu and Muslim cuisines. And I can say I tried a good number of the dishes in that region. How? Well, we were invited to a wedding. Number of guests: 25,000. (twenty five thousand, so you don't think that’s a typo.) It resembled a colorful, exotic, particularly joyous trade show, with a whole pavilion dedicated to food. I went from stand to stand trying really small bites of everything (except the international booths - who needs to try Italian food in Hyderabad?)

My two favorites were a dish that someone said was made with "the hottest chili pepper known in India" which I ate with gobi (cauliflower) and was so tangy it made my mouth pucker; and a sweet pistachio based dessert covered in vark (edible silver foil.)

We spent the rest of our trip in the Tamil Nadu region, known for some of the world's most delicious vegetarian food. The term "curry", in fact, comes from the Tamil word "Kari", black pepper. It turns out that what I knew as Indian food - daal, tandoori, naan, aloo gobi, lassi, tikka - comes from Punjab, a state up North. Fortunately for me, there are an additional 29 states in India, each with its own distinctive cuisine.

Our two favorite dishes from the south were dosas, soft, thin crepes made with fermented rice flour that you then dip into chutneys and relishes; and idlis (steamed cakes of fermented rice flour and daal) - which you eat with sambar ladled on top. (Luca and I took to exclaiming "IDLI!" whenever we saw them on a menu.) We also loved palak paneer (fresh cheese and spinach curry) and pappadams (crispy, super thin daal wafers with buried cumin seeds in them.)

The fundamentals of food in India haven't changed for thousands of years. Ayurveda is an ancient science of diet and healing and is, to this day, the most widely practiced form of medicine in that country. Often, ingredients are added to a dish for their curative qualities, as much as for their flavors. (For example, turmeric is anti-inflammatory, and cardamom relieves heartburn.)

The basic principle is that you cannot sustain a healthy body with unsuitable food. One purpose of Ayurveda is to maintain balance – you must eat in accordance with your own individual needs. Put simply, you crave what you are missing in yourself.

As soon as the jet lag subsides, I'll try to figure out exactly what that says about me.

India

If countries had a gender, India would be a woman. She is sensual, curvaceous, languid, the unattainable seducer. Fragrant and dark, with big, honey colored eyes, lips that taste of cardamom and a crimson dot in the middle of her forehead. She is luminous and terrible and hides awful secrets in the millenary, multicolored folds of her sari. She moves slowly, so slow you may think she's not moving at all. Don't tell her what to do. Don't think you can rescue her. She is her own person, immune to your ego, incomprehensible, exasperating. I, for one, do not understand her at all. But I can't help but stare. She doesn't seem to care you think she's broken beyond repair, because she is beautiful.

And this is why I have missed my "post at least once a week" blog goal - I've been traveling in India.

Working in the tech industry in Silicon Valley and having visited India almost 20 years ago, I was convinced I would find a country on the verge of a transformation of epic proportions. I was wrong. This country is every kind of poor. It's crushing, repellent. Just when it feels too much like you’re enduring your vacation, something impossible will trap you. India is also mesmerizing.

It's been an incredible trip: no flights delayed longer than 40 minutes, no rain at all despite knowingly having come here in the middle of monsoon season, no illness or digestive distress, no accidents – and seeing how people drive and the time we've spent on the road, this last point defies all odds.

We've eaten food so good Europeans navigated across oceans to find these spices. We've been blessed by elephants and seen all the Gods, their incarnations, their wives, their chariots and their temples. We took more than one thousand photographs. And we have learned from India what might be one of the most important lessons of all: divine gratitude of the deepest, purest kind. To know what I mean, you'll just have to come here to see for yourself.

My regimen

Sometimes, I don't breathe. This is not necessarily related to stressful events or even being under a body of water. At any given time, I realize, to my surprise, that I'm holding my breath. Which can't be good for me.

Speaking of which, a good friend recently asked me what was my "regimen against anxiety". She sees anxiety as a perpetual presence that we have to work constantly to keep at bay. I see her point. If anxiety can be defined as "an expectation of a diffuse and uncertain danger" there really is no use pretending that's not my natural state.

Maybe if I breathed more, I'd feel better.

I wish I could tell you Yoga was a part of this regimen of mine. It sounds so coherent, spiritual and centered. The truth is, as much as I'd like to like practicing it, I don't. I feel the same way towards meditation. I'm sure it would be good for me, but every time I pretend to meditate I'm really just sitting cross-legged while running a mental inventory of the laundry I need to sort.

Besides making lists, straightening things, counting the number of items in my purse and other absolutely delicious, soothing kinds of admittedly repetitive behaviors, my regimen against anxiety (which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't) is:

- I need time to hang out in my house, alone. If I schedule too many dinners out or work late too many days in a row, I become saturated, overwhelmed, resentful, and, needless to say, grouchy. I’ve decided that if I recognize that my cell phone needs daily recharging, I owe myself the same courtesy.

- Exercise. If I don't do it, after a few days I predictably find myself up at 3:00 a.m. wondering about the viability of building an armored panic room somewhere in my house.

- Talking myself out of the danger my body seems to think it's in. (Such as "it would not make sense for all the people you love to get hurt at the same time. The chances of that happening are not very high, statistically speaking." Or "worrying about something you can't do anything about is pointless". Even something resembling a chant "it's all going to be OK. It's all going to be OK.")

- To my initial point, I've recently added remembering I need to breathe. Not in an overly ambitious attempt to calm myself. Just so I don't pass out.

Tus ocho cosas

Mi amigo Miguel me invito a jugar un juego.

Las reglas: cada participante escribe una lista de ocho cosas que revelen algo de sí mismo y las publica en su blog, después de lo cual selecciona a ocho personas a las que invita a hacer lo mismo.

Ahí van mis ocho “cosas”:

El lunes 17 de Julio del 2006 escribí una lista de precisamente ocho cosas (!) que me irritan de mi. La ofrezco como primera cosa, pero sigo adelante con otras siete porque hay algo de ligeramente deshonesto en reciclar una lista, aunque sea propia.

Segunda cosa: soy agnóstica. Frente a cualquier fenómeno no explicado por la ciencia, mi respuesta es “no sé si creo”. Esto no quiere decir que no creo en nada, sino que creo que cualquier cosa es posible. No saber si creo no es una puerta cerrada – es una puerta abierta; abierta, pero cautelosa.

Tercera: creo que la vida es sencilla, y sus secretos están a simple vista.

Cuarta: No dejan de fascinarme los efectos del paso del tiempo.

Quinta: Creo que en la lucha del bien contra el mal, gana siempre el bien.

Sexta: Sé donde está el centro de la Tierra. No es un lugar fijo: se mueve, como el océano y platos teutónicos; y se encuentra debajo de las plantas de los pies de mi marido.

Séptima: Hace casi diez años que dejé México, y desde entonces no he podido encontrar nada que me quite el antojo cotidiano de una paleta helada de tamarindo con Miguelito.

Octava: Creo que Miguel y yo tenemos algo pendiente, que tal vez esté contenido en esta lista, o en una o varias de sus ocho personas.

Ya veremos.

Me dice Miguel que puedo invitar a este juego a las ocho personas que yo quiera.

Para honrar la naturaleza viral de este ejercicio, invito a dos personas nuevas: A Luca, quien hará una lista de ocho cosas en no menos de ocho semanas; y a Isabel, quien espero que escriba un poema de ocho estrofas, o que por lo menos, si se rehúsa al ejercicio, piense en mi ocho veces.

Para honrar a la bella geometría circular de la naturaleza, re-invito a las siguientes personas, aunque no las conozco.

Queridos Monsieur David, Viviana, Ben, Paxton y Tessitore Di Sogno: A partir de este momento las reglas del juego han cambiado ligeramente. Están ustedes por convertirse, gracias a estas ocho cosas, en íntimos extraños (les suena?). No les pido una lista adicional de ocho cosas – les pido algún comentario de por lo menos ocho palabras sobre esta página.

Miguel - la octava persona es cierto Alias Cane que nos debe otra lista de ocho cosas en su blog.

I know what I'm doing this summer

All the shows I have admitted to watching on TV have long since reached their seasonal conclusion.

Alas, I am televisionless.

No matter. I have a lot to do (besides really miss Tim Sale’s incredible canvases and sketches seen when Isaac paints the future in the show Heroes):

- Take advantage of the fact that it gets dark late by going for a hike every evening after dinner.
- Read. I’m behind on my reading, and have a long list of books I want to get to, so I intend to catch up.
- Sometimes, I’ll grill dinner instead of cooking it inside. (Who am I kidding? I’ve never grilled.) Sometimes, I’ll persuade Luca to grill dinner. (That’s better.)
- I’ll stay on top of the magazines I still subscribe to.
- I’ll catch up on my sleep (which lately I seem to really need.)

I’ll report back on the success or failure of these activities and welcome any really good book, movie, grilling or napping suggestions. Just send them over before September.

Be specific

My in laws, whom I love, came to visit us from Italy and stayed at our house for a month. On the rushed, logistically complex, bittersweet morning of their departure, they piled their suitcases and their selves into the car and I walked out, closing the door behind me. In a sudden frantic flash, we realized that we did not have the keys, not to the car, not to the house. There we were, with barely enough time to get to the airport, and we were locked out.

If “locked out” doesn’t have a ring of finality to it, a ring of fatality to it, let me try again: Locked. Out.

After a minute of full-fledged panic we happened to find a spare car key and Luca dashed them to the airport while I remained behind trying to determine the best way to deal with the tragicomic (well, tragic now, comical some day far, far into the future) situation I found myself in (or rather, out.)

I won’t provide brain-numbing detail. I’ll just say that while I waited for a locksmith, I remained outside for almost four hours, with no means of transport, no cell phone or blackberry coverage, no food, no heat, no coat, no water and no bathroom.

In my frustrated desperation and fury I thought about the irony of feeling so trapped - trapped outdoors rather than within an enclosed space. I thought about how so very badly I had yearned to have the house back all to myself and now, in the first hours of having this privilege finally arrive, have it revoked so cruelly, mine, and yet remaining just beyond my grasp.

We should be very specific when we wish for something.