129. The notion of equality in the Indian Constitution flows from the ‘Objective Resolution’ moved by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on December 13, 1946. Nehru, in his speech, moving this Resolution wished that the House should consider the Resolution not in a spirit of narrow legal wording, but rather look at the spirit behind that Resolution. He said, ”Words are magic things often enough, but even the magic of words sometimes cannot convey the magic of the human spirit and of a Nation’s passion…….. (The Resolution) seeks very feebly to tell the world of what we have thought or dreamt of so long, and what we now hope to achieve in the near
future.”
130. If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of
‘inclusiveness’. This Court believes that Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations. The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone. Those perceived by the majority as “deviants’ or ‘different’ are not on that score excluded or ostracised.
131. Where society can display inclusiveness and understanding, such persons can be assured of a life of dignity and non- discrimination. This was the ’spirit behind the Resolution’ of which Nehru spoke so passionately. In our view, Indian
Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconceptions of who the
LGBTs are. It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is anti-thesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality
which will foster the dignity of every individual.
132. We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution. The provisions of Section 377 IPC will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors….
Of course, this will not end discrimination against LGBT people or suddenly make life easier for them; we have a habit of passing laws and then doing nothing about implementing them, be it traffic, caste or dowry. But still, decriminalizing homosexuality and getting rid of an old colonial-era law is a big step in the right direction - towards ending harassment by cops, allowing more gay people to seek medical help for HIV/AIDS, and most importantly, towards a more genuine sense of the “inclusiveness” the judgment refers to, in families and the public sphere alike.
Not surprisingly, there is opposition from conservative religious groups, which has generated, pardon the pun, strangebedfellows. Hysteria about “Indian culture in danger” is no doubt about to reach shrill levels. The newsmedia is predictably playing to all kinds of stereotypes, but it is nevertheless heartening to see the vox pops from around the country that support the ruling.
Congratulations to the Naz Foundation and all the civil rights activists who have worked tirelessly for years to make this happen!
And, it is finally raining in Pune - sweet, sweet rain. Here’s hoping it will stick around for a good three more months!
So my sewing class was abruptly suspended because of a massive bug that damn near felled me over the last couple of weeks. I was sick like I have never been, and the pieces of cloth are still waiting, all cut and marked, to be worked over into something wearable. My father swears it’s the sewing machine that did it - it is true, the foot-pedal thingie looks easier than it actually is, especially for a novice - but I think it was something a lot more devious than a rattling piece of metal. I don’t know if it was the delirium from the fever or the fact that the blessed monsoon has STILL not broken over Pune, that made me reach for a long-forgotten lace project. My red sampler from Victorian Lace Today, started, oh, just a year or so ago. It is currently my only project on the needles.
For some reason it’s going a lot faster now than it did when I first started it. I’ve already progressed a couple of inches after twoodays of feverish knitting. Of course, I did stupid things like put the lifeline through the marker instead of around it. I then got lazy about reinserting it, whereupon it naturally began to pucker and pull and make a nuisance of itself. I have to say, it’s a good thng lifelines really *are* lifelines, because inserting them is also a royal PITA. I thread a long needle and then insert it stitch by stitch on the row on the needle, preferably at a simple stockinette row. There isn’t a simpler way to do it, is there?
Of course, taking up a long-dormant project under less-than-ideal conditions of concentration has its pitfalls. I should have chucked the faggoting right in the beginning, I just knew it. I hate faggoting. (For non-knitting readers: it’s not what you think. It’s a lace stitch). The look is not worth the effort, and I always forget if the YO comes before the K2tog or after, and if it’s K2tog or Ptog on the WS. So of course I went and screwed it up for a few rows, and now there’s an unsightly, diagonal ladder in the middle of the cascading knots, like a trap set on the tracks for an unsuspecting train. Can’t you just see it going right off the rails there?
I know. I should fix it. But the lifeline is already above that part, and I feel like it missed its chance to get fixed. It has to stay there as a reminder to me the next time I see faggoting in a pattern and say - it’s only four stitches, I can do it! Luckily I’m not a perfectionist, especially when it comes to lace, and so I’m going to avert my eyes and just ignore it. When it’s an FO, like, another year from now, not one of you is going to remember this post and look for it in the pictures, are you?
Last week a hush fell over the fair city of Pune. Yet another lost trail in the archives, documents ever more illegible; the sun smiling ever so cruelly with not a dark cloud for relief; my knitting blog parched for content, gasping for breath as my hot, clammy hands shuddered at the thought of holding any yarn in them; my travels too rushed to include blog-worthy photography.
And then the last straw: I lost a long-running battle and retired, bruised and hurt. The fifty-seventh tailor in town let me down in my search for some decently-fitting clothes, and left me with two salwar kameezes gone terribly awry. Over the years, I have fought this tribe of tailors with ready-made clothes, diagrams, my own measurements, extra cloth, cheap cloth, expensive cloth, plenty of time, compliments… it all came to naught. Famous ‘Ladies’ Specialists’, old and wizened darzis, genius housewives known only through word of mouth - all cut from the same, ill-fitting cloth. Yet more lovingly bought material came to hang sullenly on my frame like a tent, making a mockery of maths, measurements, and me. As for ready made clothes, I am heartily sick of Fabindia, despite the fact that I love most of what they have. Even if their kurtas do fit well, they either shrink, or fade after three washes, or you see the same fabric on someone’s cushions or curtains.
Inspiration, however, came like a pre-monsoon shower at the end of a hot, humid and overcast day in May. I have long wished to learn sewing, but never really taken steps towards it. The sticker-shock a few years ago at what Delhi tailors charge for a sari blouse nearly propelled me towards a sewing class, but it was the latest fitting disaster that actually got me looking for a teacher. My cousin, another battle-scarred veteran of the tailor-wars, decided to join me. And so, last week we had our first basic Salwar-Kameez class. Armed with sturdy handloom cotton (in photo above - printed for kameez and cream for salwar), bobbin, tailor-scale, chalk and a pair of lethal-looking scissors, I am already in the thick of it! Seven more classes till it’s ready to wear.
(The blue packet to the bottom left is a “French curve” drawing scale that announces its use for “artists and tailors”. Ahem.)
Our teacher is a long-time Marwari resident of Pune who speaks a mixture of Marwari, Hindi and Marathi, not to forget the sprinkling of English terms. It is quite a multilingual sewing vocabulary, but she said the only thing I needed to pay attention to was not mixing up my inches and centimetres. That, I think, I can manage…
When I mentioned the class to my sister, she brought out a relic from the past - her sewing class journal from ye olde days when she was in college. They were not friends, my sister and sewing, and we all recall immense drama and trauma surrounding every project she had to submit. Even she was amazed she had not burnt the damn book with all the pajama pockets turned backwards and botched seams. She has this amazingly detailed diagram for a sari blouse, and I am already dreaming that if I can conquer the salwar kameez, the sari blouse could be the next fortress to storm.
In the meantime, however, I need to find, and learn how to use, a sewing machine. My aunt has one of those gorgeous, old foot-pedal ones, which is totally cool, but heavy to transport. Another one in the extended family is a simpler, hand-lever powered one, but it tends to get stuck from time to time. My options are either to get it repaired, or buy one of those foot-pedal babies for myself. I am already coveting it, despite the fact that it but I think I should get at least one well-fitting suit under my belt before I invest in some heavy iron machinery, no?
Another, unexpected benefit: maybe this blog will actually see some crafting posts, cause by GOD it is hot here, and unless it rains a bit, I don’t think I can even bear to think of knitting, let alone actually do any of it. But given that frogging is not an option in sewing, I guess you can expect a lot more tears and swearing.
Four teenaged nieces + one boisterous nephew + lazy family get-together + two needles + yarn:
Look at them, rapt. None of them had ever knit before. They all took turns, and produced a recognizable garter stitch wristband in two days that was actually wearable. Apart from the number of stitches varying wildly throughout, no major problems. My nephew did approach the process rather like one does arm wrestling, using all his force and determination for each stitch that threatened to get away from him, but that’s where the cotton yarn helped. It survived his enthusiasm, and didn’t snap.
One of my nieces got it real bad, and knit through meals, car rides and conversations the entire trip. She has already called once to confirm the address of knittinghelp.com. The craft has a new devotee:
My sister’s dance school had a show for all the students the other day, and it reminded me of a blog post I had drafted months ago, but set aside because I couldn’t get youtube to work for some reason. I had accompanied her to a dance recital that featured four different forms of classical Indian dance - Odissi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam and Bharata Natyam. It was an exciting set of performances, part of a tribute to Sucheta Chapekar, a Pune-based Bharata Natyam (BN) dancer and researcher who has done much to popularize the study and patronage of classical dance in the city. Leading performers also spoke at a seminar about contemporary issues facing their particular dance forms, aesthetics, audiences, etc. As I sat there, rapt, it made me think about how, in always celebrating Pune’s love for classical music, its burgeoning dance community doesn’t really get the critical attention it deserves. Thanks to my sister who dances, choreographs and teaches BN here, I have been lucky to attend quite a few shows, big and small, and think a little bit (as a complete outsider to the art form) about the way in which different forms of haute dance impact ideas of national art and culture, language and tradition, and how contemporary moves shape and reshape these practices, in a madly expanding city whose social face is itself undergoing a rapid transformation.
Given that its aesthetics are so deeply enmeshed with Hindustani music, you would perhaps expect Kathak, the northern Indian courtly dance to dominate in Pune. Above is a superb Kathak piece by the legendary Saswati Sen, in the Satyajit Ray film Shatranj ke Khilari (Chessplayers). Kathak is indeed popular, but it is Bharata Natyam (BN), the southern form originating in Tamil Nadu that has captured the middle-class imagination in Pune. Classes have mushroomed in the city over the last decade or so, some ambitious academies, and others small neighbourhood courses for young school-going girls. Many of these complete the required six-year margam, after which they graduate with their first public performance, the arangetram. Hardly a week passes in December-January or May without an announcement in the newspaper about an arangetram in the city.
These arangetrams are expensive to organize, with the students’ parents footing the bill of the theatre, costumes, musicians, jewellery, etc. Although they can sometimes resemble a debutante ball for one individual dancer, rising costs have compelled several middling families of graduating students to mount a joint effort nowadays. This, in turn, has compelled novel approaches to choreography, in a form that has traditionally revolved around the solitary performer. Many leading BN dancers perform solo; aside from the intensely personal nature of the emotions expressed in the dance, performing solo on stage for several hours also relates to the technical virtuosity of the dancer. Here is a well known BN exponent, Malavika Sarukkai:
But in the new multiple-performer format, there is a lot of innovation in terms of stage configurations and the kinds of items performed. For instance, a lot more emphasis on geometric patterns, symmetric variations, contrapuntal actions in the more physical and technical nritta pieces, rather than on solo stamina. In the abhinaya or expressive, emotive pieces, there seem to be a lot more ensemble dance-drama compositions that build on conversations, narratives and social situations. Below is a fine example of this kind of group choreography:
Another interesting innovation is in language - BN is a dance form steeped in Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit, but now popular in a city whose language is Marathi (and increasingly Hindi). Traditional 18th & 19th c pieces continue to form the mainstay of the performances - even though the Marathi dancers in Pune have little direct exposure to the words of these poems. The language of mudra (hand gestures), is of course a primary translator, as is the emotion of the music. But of late, many younger dancers are choreographing pieces from their own languages as well. BN flourished in the Gujarati city of Baroda over the 20th century, at the famous Maharaja Sayajirao University for the Arts, far away from the Tamil heartland, and there is now a sizeable repertoire of pieces in Gujarati. My sister draws on a large corpus of Marathi and Kannada devotional and erotic poetry to compose fresh items, and nearly every arangetram I have attended in Pune has included a couple of Marathi items, even as many of the traditional Tamil pieces have also become more familiar to audiences here.
Of course, the spectre of authenticity looms large over all these experiments. Although it is now often hailed as the pre-eminent form of Indian classical dance, BN is also viewed as part of a particular Tamil heritage and there is no doubt that Chennai and other Tamil sites remain the heart of the art form. Some view these linguistic and musical innovations (with Hindustani ragas, tunes and beats) as inappropriate, doing violence to the core of BN’s aesthetics. And yet, this popularity outside its heartland has certainly contributed to its elevation into classical, national heritage. I admit I am torn. I have never been a big fan of the Ravi Shankar style fusion music that throws strange twangs and twings together (I cannot stand the phrase “world music” and most of what is peddled in its name), and yet (perhaps because I speak Marathi?) I really like and appreciate the experiments that combine Marathi compositions with BN mudra and abhinaya. Part of it is a question of time; all experiments, over time, become tradition, and in the next few decades, perhaps this linguistic variety may well become part of BN’s core aesthetics?
Although steeped in Hindu devotionalism of various (often contradictory) kinds, if my sister’s students are any indication, students in Pune are from all religious backgrounds, and I wonder how this shift from a particular regional and social set of performers and audiences to a much more diverse pan-Indian middle-class is going to shape its repertoire. An important question raised at the symposium was about the ability of these art/dance forms to address changing needs and ideas of family, feminism and individualism - can the love of Radha and Krishna continue to speak, however flexibly and timelessly, to changing notions of sexuality, gender, devotion or romance? Or, like language, music and choreography, how will BN’s core aesthetics (or Kathak’s or Odissi’s, for that matter) engage afresh with the ever-changing social? In this regard, whither their classicism?
Of course, classicism and tradition are themselves modern ideas about the past and seek to fix what is actually a continuously changing process. Scholars have analyzed this “classicization” of BN during the nationalist movement, and even before the nation, the great Serfoji composed some beautiful Marathi pieces for BN as a ruler of a princely state in Tamil country. But it remains to be seen how the resurgent categories of nation and national culture on the one hand, and the pressures of globalized entertainment, fusion dance, reality dance competitions that prize innovation and agility above all else on the other, will influence what young dancers in neighbourhood schools of classical dance like my sister’s aspire to as their career, as their aesthetic outlet, and as their passion.
Part of the Chapekar anniversary celebrations was an evening’s performance by the leading dancers from these different classical schools. One doesn’t usually see these juxtaposed so closely together; while the more geometrical movements of BN slide gracefully into the sensuous and fluid shapes of Odissi or Mohini Attam (the video right above this paragraph) from the neighbouring region of Orissa and Kerala, Manipuri from further northeast is dramatically different. But they had an interesting common thread - nearly all of them performed pieces from the legendary Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, a medieval literary, musical and erotic masterpiece on Krishna’s life. It was a revealing exercise in the sheer potential of choreography and imagination to see the familiar ashtapadis from Gita Govinda figure one after the other in such diverse visual, physical and musical avatars. (That link also has a lot of examples from different dance forms of various Gita Govinda poems)
The piece right above is an Odissi rendition of a popular piece from this text, hariiriha mugdha vadhuu. My sister regularly performs the BN variant of this poem as a slow, langourous and erotic invocation of Radha’s longing for her lover Krishna. That day, the Manipuri dancers presented it in such an upbeat, innocent and decidedly playful interpretation in the Manipuri dance that it took me a while to recognize it through the words! Here is another Manipuri piece, also from Gita Govinda:
Unity in diversity is an extremely tired and cliched, not to say exploitative and delusional, mantra of the modern Indian national imagination, but I am tempted to argue that it is in these unexpected moments, in grasping the beauty of these creative expressions, their commonalities as well as their distinct possibilities, that the phrase gains any meaning at all. I left the concert wishing they had included a Kathak performance in it as well - but here is another famous Gita Govinda poem, yaahii maadhava, where the dancer is upset with Krishna’s infidelity - also performed by Saswati Sen. Set to raga Bhairavi, this is so much more plaintive and weepy than the rather more furious and sarcastic BN interpretation I have seen.
In the end, I gotta say -
1) Some of these videos are short and not of great quality, but I love youtube.
2) Madhavi mami is a bit surprised, but thrilled to bits that her wire baskets have got such a positive response. Let me see if I can get some detailed instructions and post them here. Thanks so much for the feedback!
Yes, those two words do conjure up my near neurotic devotion to the HBO series, but this is not about my turning into a basket-case over the Wire. It’s about a craft that involves making shopping baskets out of plastic wires, something my aunt Madhavi mami has been doing for decades.
Madhavi mami has made hundreds of these, and gifted one to nearly everyone in our extended family on my mum’s side on some occasion or other; my parents have brought the veggies home from the market in the one she gave us, for twenty-three years. It was getting rather frayed at the handles of late, so she gave them another one. While I was visiting her some time back, she was making yet another, so I decided to capture the process in a photo-essay.
Kits for these baskets are available, in solid or multi-coloured packs, in that great mecca of crafts in Pune, Tulshibaug. I haven’t been able to trace how the wires themselves are made, or from what kind of plastic. The wires are flat, slightly curved, and are in long spools of 20-odd metres per colour. You start off by cutting off strips of equal length (there is some odd maths involved here about the ratio of the primary to secondary colour, one being slightly shorter than the other to ensure the rectangular shape of the basket).
Then you make the first knot of two tightly interlocked Zs, folding one wire into a Z, and then threading the other sideways into it. Once they are locked in the vice like grip, you have the basic unit of the basket.
This is not as easy as it seems, and the main problem is sorting out which wire goes where, and keeping the knots tight. It takes not so much physical strength as deft wristwork to get the knots to sit snugly, and takes a bit of practice. I tried a few after a very long time - my aunt taught me this basket making when I was a kid, and the bits I helped her make were very easy to spot in the finished basket: loose, half-hearted patches in the middle of the tight, determined weave. They weren’t much tighter this time round either, but I was certainly determined!
You then add knots in all four directions of this initial knot, making the central spine of the flat bottom of the basket. Once you have the length and breadth you want, you “turn” the knots upwards into a rectangular tube, and keep weaving till you have a basket deep enough. When done, you weave the wire ends inwards into the basket, leaving it with a sturdy edge.
Then you braid a nifty handle for it.
These bags were probably the height of fashion a long long time ago, and when I was in college it was simply not cool for a certain set, especially the urban elite in Pune and Bombay, to be seen grocery shopping in them. They are, I guess, the shopping basket equivalent of crocheted granny squares, and over the last couple of decades, it’s breathtaking how almost everyone has taken to the flimsier, disposable “carry-bags” as not only more convenient, but a consumer’s free right. In this utterly warped sensibility that views plastic bags as modernity and progress over cloth and straw, clogging our drains and brains alike, these baskets are quaintly unfashionable, stubbornly utilitarian, and odd: they too are plastic, but reusable and heavily durable. Does anybody who has seen these in Pune or elsewhere know whether they are, or can be made of some kind of recyclable plastic?
bas ishq mohabbat pyaar…. So goes the song from the film, Delhi-6, that I mentioned in my last post. This is Delhi, my friend, nothing but love, it croons…..
I miss Delhi. Over the last two months, I had many a moment to mull over my sentiments about this mad city. It is a cliche to say that people have a love-hate relationship with Delhi, but alas, this is true and I am no different. It’s not just the fact that most of my friends in India live there, or that it’s the nerve-centre of the history academy, or that I have bittersweet memories of past lives. It’s also its many quirks and vices that are difficult to categorize. So here are some random likes and dislikes.
L) I love the months of Feb-March in the city when the dry winter gives way to a hesitant short spring. You can go from woollen vests to thin cotton tops in a span of ten days around Holi. Gardens all over are in riotous bloom, especially the roses at the President’s residence, but I especially love the bougainvillea that pours out on to footpaths like pink paint from a can knocked over, and the silk-cotton flowers strewn all over the ground.
D) For all its greenery, I detest the wasteland that is the central, planned city of “Lutyens” New Delhi. Everyone seems to ooh and aah about its lush elegance, its colonial bungalows, landscaped rotaries and tree-lined avenues, but the area is an effing nightmare for pedestrians. The lack of proper traffic lights turns the mildest of drivers into raving lunatics, while it takes pedestrians an eternity to cross a road or rotary. To say nothing about the fact that this suburban, made-for-cars layout in the middle of the city, with no shops or people to keep it alive after sundown, makes it very unsafe for women to walk around by themselves right in the heart of town.
L) But I gotta say, in the late winter afternoon sun, walking a kilometre or two down these avenues for lunch from the archives to one of the State houses for various regional cuisines, gossiping and laughing with friends, or alone, spotting birds in the trees is wonderful. This is also the time when Delhi comes alive with concerts - classical dance, play competitions in different languages, free music concerts in the parks, food and film and handicraft festivals… it’s hard to decide what to go to and what to miss. In general, I favoured food over film, but I managed a good dose of the rest as well!
D)But the whole place also has a kind of sarkari stench hanging over it. Compared to the crass malls of Gurgaon and the shining lights of privatization all over the country, this Nehruvian-elite govt-servant scene in the capital seems positively benign to many, but it sets my teeth on edge. It’s not just the “lal-batti” culture of politicians with commando security and blinking cars holding traffic ransom at will. Everything from the clipped accents to the ethnic-chic elegance and the hush and rustle of well-heeled power that self-deprecatingly and disingenuously masks itself as middle-class is at once very familiar and quite repellent.
L) Delhi-ites reading this will snort in disbelief when they read this, but I actually enjoyed public transportation this time round. I’m not just talking about the Metro, which is fucking amazing. I travelled by DTC and chartered buses every day to work and back, and experienced some of the camaraderie of daily commuters that I hadn’t before. In the green government buses, the conductor sits at the back, making everyone go to him to get their ticket. In the rush hour pickle, this is not really possible. So people sitting on his side of the bus pass money back and forth to passengers throughout the bus. “1 seven,” “2 three,” “1 five,” they chant, telling him how many tickets of what denomination. They also pass back the tickets and change along the same chain, with a dispute occasionally breaking out and some accountant gamely rising to the occasion to solve it. The conductor robotically just dispenses tickets and passes them on. I had to do that once and very quickly lost my patience, but am amazed at how long others’ good humour (given that this is Delhi, after all) lasted.
D)The private Blueline bus-walas are barbarians for the most part, and regularly mow down people on the streets. Their conductors can dramatically improve your swear-word vocabulary in two days. Their status as a haven for molesters is also legendary, and this is easily one of the most hateful things about Delhi, bus commuting having scarred generations of women’s relationships with public space in the city. But I was surprised that I felt safer in them than I remember, with so many more women in all kinds of clothes in the buses, toting phones, backpacks, briefcases… I wonder whether mine was really a rose-tinted one-off experience, or if I’m just older (as a friend suggested, try asking younger women!), or whether Delhi’s male bus passengers are - gasp! - a tad improved on their humanity index?
L) But if the Blueline buses are a tribute to the Wild west, the Metro is positively brimming with civilization. It’s a shining symbol of the new India, but it retains a good dose of old Nehruvian societal improvement through homilies and maxims. Advice on dos and don’ts from watching out for unclaimed baggage, to moving to the centre of the carriage, to not spitting, to minding the gap, is fitted in neatly between station announcements. These regularly made me laugh, because they are so typical of the many faces of Delhi. A male baritone in a sardonic voice straight from a poetry session across in the old walled city, dressed in a sherwani and the grease of many a kabab, does the Hindi ones. “Aglaa station…” it says thoughtfully, taking a pause, as if to repeat the first phrase of the couplet, “Chandni chowk hai. Yahaan“.. (another thoughtful pause)… “Bharatiya Rail ke Dilli station ke liye badleiN.” (pause before the poem’s punchline..) “Saavdhaaniise utreiN.” Just as you are pondering the meaning of the poem, a school-marmy English female voice follows, in a clipped convent-educated-elite voice: “The next station is Chandni Chowk,” it spits out, with all the native elite’s contempt for native words. “Change here for the Delhi station of the Indian Railways Network. Mind the Gap.” You can almost feel the cane stinging your palm as you leave the train, your ears smarting with the punishment she has just doled out, and the sound of r’s correctly rolled.
So many random observations, so little space! All in all, it’s difficult to arrive at a balance sheet with the city. There is so much that I love and despise there, I wish I could keep going back on a regular basis just to keep the debate going in my head. Those reading this who have a similar love-hate relationship with Delhi, what are your pet raves and rants?
(A bunch of people asked why the blog has been so silent, and after digging deep for angsty reasons, I realised a practical one was a mental block against posts with pictures. Well, so here I am, trying to break it, with a post without pictures, totally covering up for not taking interesting pictures of the city while I was there.)
Has anyone seen this new release? The film was quite interesting, nothing really great, but the songs are quite catchy. And, um, Abhishek Bachchan is looking more fetching, somehow.
(Chandni Chowk as seen from atop the Fatehpuri Mosque):
In the last two weeks, I went twice to “Delhi-6″ which, I learnt from the movie of all things, is the local shorthand for the Chandni Chowk area of the old, walled, historic city of Shahjahanabad-Delhi. No, I didn’t go because I saw the movie, I went to eat and shop; this is a good time of year to enjoy a lot of seasonal sweets in the city, and the weather is just right to wander out all day in the sun. Flanked by the Red Fort at one end and the Fatehpuri mosque on the other, the long street leads off into many small lanes of culinary, sartorial and historic delights, ranging from 17th century markets to 18th century bankers’ havelis to 19th century poet’s houses to 20th century madness and beyond. We visited the house of arguably the greatest Urdu poet of all time, Mirza Ghalib (the archway to the left below).
After the snazzy new metro was built, it’s now a piece of barfi to get from central New Delhi to Chandni Chowk - max 12-15 minutes, and it seems to be quite the yuppie Delhi-ite thing to do now, to go and eat at all the old and historic street eateries in the crowded old neighbourhood. I went with a couple of friends, big SLRs in tow, playing local-cuisine-connoisseur-cum-shameless-yuppie-tourist to the hilt. I have a few ponderous posts in the pipeline about living and commuting in Delhi, but since this post is mostly about food, the old philosophy of maximum visual, minimum commentary will now apply. A couple of the photos in this post are courtesy Ami and his wonderful Nikon:
Daulat ki Chaat, a sinful, frothy, light-as-air whipped cream thingy: Regular Chaat Samosa: Samosa innards after the first, hot bite:
Narcissistic potatoes: Nankhatai baked in pure ghee: Possibly the world’s best gajar ka halwa, also in pure ghee:
Fresh, piping hot jalebis, also fried in pure ghee:
Rabri, for those who like thick, gooey cream:
One of the most delicious things about Chandni Chowk, however, is the old silver market lane, Dariba kalan. Remember my silver earring splurge last semester? Well, I.went.a.bit.nuts.this.time. I was too ashamed to photograph all the gorgeous pieces I bought, but really, the stuff there is exquisite: even the mirrors in one of the shops just lured me in. I cannot believe I didn’t spend all my money there in my previous lives in Delhi. Needless to say, I will be making up for all time lost…
In the nearby Delhi University area, we ate the best ever Chhole Bhature in the whole wide world, at Chacha di Hatti: (I think this might technically be the pin code Delhi-7, but whatever):
Gujarati snack shop in nearby Kamla Nagar, also the Delhi University area:
Ack - it’s a whole MONTH since I blogged! Somebody up there took my new year’s post about “arduous travels to meet friends ok” a bit literally, and flung me into this mad caper that went from Pune to Delhi to Berkeley to New York to DC to Denver to Hong Kong and back to Delhi last month. Boy was it fun, but fuck, it was exhausting! And if that weren’t bad enough, I have been living in Delhi without continuous internet access. Oh, quel horreur! It’s been quite a revelation, actually - figuring out how much time I suddenly seem to have to read, walk around and, yeah, work! Somehow, the new year also decided to ring out a long-lasting burnout and ring in a much-needed dose of enthusiasm about doing some academic research. So I’ve been slaving away in the archives, excited about scribes and scripts and old, dusty files. Who knows, I might actually write a paper again!
All that time offline also allowed me to finish the BPT sweater:
Truth be told, I finished this nearly three weeks ago. But apart from all the work and stress of setting up a temporary flat, I also got a major case of zipper phobia. I bought a perfectly matching zipper, read all theexcellenttutorials out there, and was determined to hand-sew the damn thing in. But every time I sat down to do it, I froze, because I am terrified of the whole process, traumatised by ugly bulges and puckers and loose stitches and needles refusing to pierce the nylon in previous zipper encounters. A tiny voice suggested a button band, or even a set of invisible hooks. I even bought the latter. But a friend with strong opinions insisted I put in the zipper because it would suit the pattern best, and I took a deep breath and sewed it in while watching one of my favourite films of all time, Padosan. Even though I refuse to show you the inside of the sewed up zipper, I think said friend was right after all:
Truth be told again, it’s a very very comfortable sweater. It’s quite chilly in my flat, and it’s perfect to sit around and have chai in and read the paper. But, since truth we are telling, it’s also not very well-fitting. There’s much to fret about, actually. The sleeves are too baggy at the arms and weirdly tapered at the wrist, the neck (which I was quite thrilled with when it was done) has turned out to be a bit loose on the right, the edges roll up a lot sometimes, the yarn is already looking a bit worn, and worst of all, I chose a non-separating zipper!!!!! So I can’t fully separate the cardigan fronts; it’s literally a pullover refusing to let go! But, I like how the pockets turned out, and the yarn mercifully softened up a lot. It was a bitch to knit with, though - like coconut fibre - and it’s so comfortable I am not frogging anything to fix it.
Project Specs:
Pattern: BPT, from Knitty Yarn: New England Highland Worsted in a lovely brick shade, I think I used just under six skeins Needles: Size 6 throughout Gauge: 5 spi
Mods:
1) Made a stiff neck instead of a hood. Mainly because I got tired of knitting with the rough yarn. I picked up stitches all around, knit for ten rounds, knit one garter ridge at the edge to make it easier for it to roll down, and then knit 8 more rounds, and then sewed the live stitches down to the pick-up edge. I had a lot of fun doing this, but am not sure if it contributed to the slight looseness of the neck edge.
2) Made pockets. Picked up stitches and knit straight for a couple of inches, then began the cable at one end, decreasing every knit row along the inner edge of the cable, until I had a pocket size I liked. Then I sewed down the top and sides. Amazingly, the pockets matched, and lined up nicely at the top sewn edge. The pockets really add to the sweater’s loungey feel.
If I knit this one again, I’d watch the sleeve measurements more closely and fudge the numbers, to make it fit me better. But other than that, it’s a clean, neat and simple pattern; results in a very pleasing sweater, despite all my grumbling about the things that went awry.
It’s already warming up in Delhi, but I can still wear this in the late evenings and early mornings for a couple weeks more, I think. Perfect end to the cold weather!
(I found a cafe that offers free wireless broadband here, so hopefully I’ll be able to blog more regularly… fingers crossed.)
*Before anyone raps me for flaming the designer and her chosen title for the pattern, rest assured this elaboration of the abbreviation BPT is merely a description of my version, and not intended at the original…
This BPT sweater should be going quickly, given that it’s mostly stockinette, and I’m on a decreasing spiral, which means there’s less and less every round. I really should get cracking on this, given that I am travelling a lot this month and have tons of airplane, bus and train time, especially mindless movies to go with the long airplane journeys. But it’s taken me nearly two weeks to finish one sleeve, and am very bored with the second.
Why is this? Part of it, I suspect, has to do with the yarn, which is rather rough and annoying to work with, and I can’t seem to do more than a few rounds at a time. But part of it is, I realised, the awkwardness of working sleeves in the round on a seamless raglan. You have to move around the whole bloody sweater every round or two, and because of the small (and decreasing!) circumference, it gets very heavy and cumbersome. I don’t like carrying a nearly-done sweater around everywhere, but that’s the only way this thing is going to get done soon. Anyone else have that problem? Next time I do a seamless raglan, after I divide for the armholes I’m doing the sleeves first and then the body. Somehow it seems like two sleeves flapping merrily around will be marginally easier than the whole body pirouetting madly under the tube of a sleeve hanging by dpns.
At least it fits alright. Am not so happy with the sleeves above the armholes. I think there should have been fewer stitches to cinch them in a bit, but now the only way I can fix that is to undo the whole sweater - um, I think I can live with the tiny bulge at the raglans. It’s a clever pattern, though. I keep wishing I was knitting it in Cascade 220 instead. It’s also no-to-ri-ous-ly difficult to photograph clearly - I assure you it’s not felted, even though the photos make it seem like it is! It isn’t even fuzzy, really. I wonder why the fabric looks so matted, despite tons of focusing and adjusting in all kinds of light and angles. Ah well. Am soon going to have to wonder about two things - 1) hood or collar? and 2) pockets or not? I’m thinking hood and pocket just to go with the overall slouchy look, with mirrored cables along the diagonal pocket openings. Opinions?
