Wines-r-Us

Found myself invited for the Grover Zampa Stomp 2014. Thought it’s time to look back on where I have come with my likings for Wine.

6 years ago, when I was first introduced to wine, I realized how yummy cheese tasted! It gave a whole new flavor and fullness to the cheese and that’s what made me like wine for. I slowly took in the different colours, aromas, grapes, styles, percentage of alcohol, types of glasses, pairing of foods and likings. After staying in Italy, I took an oath to myself to not drink anything but Chianti. This remained unchanged even while I worked in Paris. The Bordeaux and merlot of France and tours to Versailles and French Riviera, having bourgeoisie French colleagues and even staying in a Parisian apartment could not change my mind. Nothing could beat an evening with 20 watt bulb, a DVD of ‘Casablanca’, some cushions with applique covers, Linguine in pesto, and a bottle of Chianti Classico.

And then I came back to Mumbai. Not only did I find Chianti was super expensive. But when I went to the wine stores, they looked back at me and said..”….Keeyanti ??” I can’t take that insult, Simply cant. I could sacrifice on my oath, if that prevents the Classico from being called out like that. I tried at a couple of good bars and restaurants, but they were either too polite in showing me the bar menu that said it can cost up to 5k for a glass or simply forced me to believe that the Sula they have will go as good or better with the food I had ordered !! ..Sula ?? I mean really ? Have you tasted the pasta at Indian weddings ? Is it pasta or paneer makhani…well Sula is something like that. I assume it sells in India because a lot of people don’t understand the art and jazz behind the wine.  And so, my intake of wine was limited to a glass here and there at expensive restaurants.

It was summer of 2010. In the scorching heat of Latur, that I was introduced to Nine Hills and Grover. While Nine hills weren’t as bad as Sula, Grover took all my attention. It tasted like wine. Like real Wine. It was a Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz from their La Reserve. I enjoyed that night. But I was yet to impress my husband with the taste. Wine still did not go well with him.

Then in 2001, in Kolkata, we visited Ameet’s colleague’s house. Although we carried a Chile wine for him, he offered me Cahors. I was relieved the world I stay in isn’t all that bad afterall ! I cherished the entire bottle to myself and let the others wonder what was so special or different from the Sula they were gulping down their throat. The next time we had a party at home, we brought in only Grover’s La reserve which was liked by all. And yet as a present all they had got for us was Sula and Four seasons. So we were stuck with these bottles to finish for sometime. Luckily I manage good pasta and risotto with bad wines – I managed to cook with some. However, note here, I have still not been able to understand how can my husband not feel happy looking at a good wine.

Spring of 2012. We visited Cyprus. And bang ! We found my husband’s tastes for wine! Ofcourse, I was living with a man who understood art beyond its spiritual meaning. Commandaria. One of the oldest wines in the world, one of the highest alcohol contents amongst wine, yet a happy wine, spiritual wine, over ripe, sugary and delicious! Can’t love my husband for anything more! We promptly bought a large bottle. We came back and I got pregnant. I stopped having wines and my husband lovingly joined me.

Must be mid 2013 that I started to drink again. The search for good wine had to be fresh. Found the mumbaikars a lot more knowledgeable this time. We were at one of our regular Italian restaurants when the owner suggested I have Sangiovese with my pasta. Being a Chianti worshipper which has 70% Sangiovese, I was almost not sure. Dint want to be disappointed anymore. Chianti is too close to heart to make me want to compare any taste even closer to it. And yet, try I did and ever since been asking for Sangiovese wherever I go.

Autumn of 2013, we visited Goa and my husband bought some Portuguese port wine to celebrate our Anniversary. Yes, my husband has this knack of making it perfect out of coincidence. First, falling for the commandaria in Cyprus and then the Portugal Port wine in Goa. Over the third glass, he asked, so what’s a port wine? As clueless that I am, I said, well, all I know is that it’s a blended / fortified wine. Has real cheap versions. I’ve had it in tetra packs while touring Sienna and that perhaps being first made in Porto (Portugal) and/ or smuggled from ports for which is called port wine. He did not question further and I dint have more explanations. But we are getting closer to understanding the wines he likes.

And so, 25^th January 2014, at the Stomp, I look forward to seeing if the Zampa’s Chene beats my current love for Sangiovese and divine loyalty to Chianti. And to see if my husband finally finds a wine that he can call his in the Grover’s Shiraz rose. While that is yet to tell and just another reason to be at the stomp. We look forward to having some family fun with 3 generations shining their feet in wine!

I said, I am an Urban Designer.

I changed my residing city. Looking for a suitable job here. Each time, one does this, one has to re-look at his professional direction. Make sure he or she is on its path to the summit, and not waivering off. I have always been a dreamer. But i dream with open eyes. While outstandish aesthetics and idealism in planning alure me, I showcase my real world habiting traits by creating solutions to make it happen. This is what has given me an edge over my peers. I have strived to be in the system, to change the system. And every now and then, that I have been categorised under a label, my scrutiny begins.

"I said, I am an urban designer" - the new post on my blog, and the statemtent in this phase of life happened at one such crossroads.

Urban designer ? did my degree in Italy or Wales label me into the niche minority ? an expert in the field ? do i seize being an architect ? where do i draw lines ? why isnt a project no longer about people ? why is it more about design and construction ? whats urban design now ? I ask the urban designer within - who am i ?

The labels given to fields of human endeavour change as the issues perceived by society to be important change. Urban design is a label coined at a time, in the English-speaking world at least, when architecture and city planning were developing distinct and clearly separate identities. Whether or not the term ‘urban design’ will endure or soon be replaced by a more precise term or terms remains to be seen. The term will probably continue to be used loosely as it is now. Maybe it will be abandoned for the same reason – because it is imprecise.

All the traditional design fields are undergoing change. City planning has broadened in its scope of concern in an attempt to be comprehensive in its outlook; landscape architecture has considerably extended its domain of interest from a horticulture base to include urban environments, while architecture has many practitioners who focus on different aspects of the built environment. If anything, architecture has contracted its scope of concern spinning off sub-fields as new environmental problems have arisen. Architecture and urban design were once seen as one endeavour everywhere. In some European countries they still are but as architects are being asked to address urban issues with greater thought, urban design may spin away to become an independent (although not exclusive) professional field.

There has been a shift in the intellectual processes involved in urban designing over the past 50 years. Urban design began in an era when Modernist architectural ideas about the design of cities and their precincts held sway. Rationalist and Empiricist design paradigms vied for hegemony. Urban Design emerged as an identifiable professional field in response to the limitations of, particularly, architectural ideas about the nature of the future city as presented in the Athens Charter of Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) . The utility of Empiricist ideas, particularly as represented by the Garden City paradigm, was also strongly questioned.

The world is a complex place. Whether or not it is growing increasingly complex and changing more rapidly than before, as we are wont to believe is open to conjecture. Maybe the observation that it is, is our contemporary conceit. The fundamental concerns of urban design have, however, been with us from the time that human settlements were first consciously designed. How do we deal with group interests in relationship to individual in urban development? How do we define the public interest?

While Modernist site designing ideas, if not architectural, still hold considerable sway in the minds of architects across the world, new paradigms have emerged. Most recently it has been the New Urbanist or Smart Growth movement that has been attracting the most international attention. As a basis for designing the future it possesses strong Empiricist tones as it draws heavily on past urban patterns that have worked well. The world, however, is changing. It would be grossly unfair to claim that the Rationalists amongst urban designers were not centrally concerned with public interest issues, human life and human needs, or motivations. They were. Their concern was, however, based on their own perceptions of what the world should be. These perceptions were based on an analysis of what was wrong with the world rather than observations of what works and what does not. Our understanding of the functions of built form has been considerably broadened in recent years. The definition has been extended from the one that the Modernists used to one that recognizes the purposes served by the symbolic aesthetic qualities of the environment in terms of the self-images of the people who inhabit and use it.

Our understanding of how the world functions and what different patterns of built form afford people will undoubtedly deepen in the future. Maybe the world is no more complex than before but we are being asked to deal with the complexity rather than to develop a simplistic view of how the world works. Too often we redefine the problems of the world in a simpler, manageable way by eliminating many of the variables from our domain of concern. We then design for that simpler world. It is the easiest thing to do. This approach can and has created further problems, many of them in terms of the functioning of the biogenic environment.

The greatest shift – in urban design thinking if not practice – during the 1990s has been carried through into the first decade of the twenty-first century. It may well be a major concern of the next generation of urban designers. It is the concern for the natural systems of specific terrestrial locations. The shift has resulted from a much greater understanding of the fragility of the planet Earth and its limited and depleting resources. An interest in the health of the planet by individual city planners goes back a long way (e.g. to Patrick Geddes in the first decades of the twentieth century), but it is only recently that it has become a major issue in discussions of urban design.

Much urban and architectural design has to deal with antisocial behaviour and more recently with terrorism. In an equable world designing to reduce the opportunities for such activities will, one hopes, as Tony Garnier did in his design for the hypothetical Cité Industrielle (1917), not be necessary.

In this blog, i also put forward discussion of the scope of urban design in democratic, capitalist countries that permeates this blog - "I said it" and the endless, but important, debate over individual and communal rights. Few developers and their architects favour any restriction on what they perceive to be their creative rights. Often they are fighting against antiquated or poorly considered building regulations and guidelines but often they simply want to get their own way in the face of community opposition. Those property developers who are strong proponents of urban design see it leading to urban environments of quality that reinforce their own investment decisions. (note : I have nothing against Lavasaa)

Debates over what is important and what is not will continue. Urban design projects of various types, scales and sizes will continue to be built. The conclusion is that the city is indeed and will continue be a collage of parts, some distinctive and others a mélange. So be it. What is important is that cities provide a rich set of behavioural opportunities and aesthetic displays that enrich the lives of all the people who constitute it. Urban design becomes particularly difficult in multi-cultural societies and in those where the interests of groups of the population fall outside the concern of market forces. Few of the projects in India, have focused on the needs of the poor. (remember Ameet ? the conversation we had about neo-Neelachal-ism ! for the poor ?...i offered solutions, u criticism....we argued untill we fell asleep....so do all the urban designers !)

And as i continued to explain my role as a professional to the Kolkat-ian developer and architectural community, I face an ethical and intellectual series of arguments with my own professional decisions. More broadly, about my professional label itseld. Urban designer.

The questions now in front of us designers are: ‘Is urban design becoming a profession and a discipline in its own right?’ and ‘If it is, should it be?’ I, personally, hope that urban design will continue to be a collaborative field of design rather than an independent discipline and profession.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;

Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

And recks not his own rede.

-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

It said it to me.....

The road ahead is like the road behind.

The dreams achieved revise the dreams to come.

Mind shapes world, and new-shaped world shapes mind,

As what you are steps back from what you've done.

The deeper you resides in its own space,

Sheltered like a yolk from wind and tide,

Filled with unimaginable grace

To wander through the paradise inside.

Ambitious girl! Become what dream you will,

And sail across each dark, forbidding sea.

Within, the fawn will graze sweet meadows still,

Untouched by all the phantoms you will be.

....by an anonymous poet

Decide for yourself : I said it.

From ‘Cafe coffee Day’ Chats to dinner table conversations; Ameet (my husband) and I have come a long way. Although, India and its future always seems to remain the core of all our humour and discourses both.

We stand up with muscular pride at the PVR cinemas before each movie, when the National Anthem plays in its slowest rhythm possible.

And we still don’t know how would we really align ourselves with that tune. How would we stop complaining and take charge. I know my husband has began somewhere.
My phone rings – ‘Fauji Padiyar’ when he calls. Yes, thats what i call him. Fauji.
Its him that i learnt from; that, if you want to revolt against an action, you should know to fight its cause – not how to use the weapon or Which weapon to use.

Our weapons are hence different.
Sales and Marketing.
Architecture.

We are on the cusp of an incredible global change. A crossroads where we make decisions which will influence life on Earth well into the future of what we call time. We can fling open the doors of the mental and emotional prisons which have confined the human race for thousands of years. Or we can allow the agents of that control to complete their agenda for the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical enslavement of every man, woman and child on the planet with a world government, army, central bank and currency, underpinned by a microchipped population.

I know that sounds fantastic, but if the human race lifted its eyes from the latest soap opera or game show for long enough to engage its brain, it would see that these events are not just going to happen - they are happening.

The momentum for the centralised control of global politics, business, banking, military and media is gathering pace by the hour. The microchipping of people is already being suggested and, in many cases, underway. Whenever a hidden agenda is about to be implemented there is always the period when the hidden has to break the surface for the final push into physical reality.

This is what we are seeing now in the explosion of mergers between global banking and business empires, and the speed at which political and economic control is being centralised through the European Union, the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, and the stream of other globalising bodies like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the G-7/G-8 summits.

I was part of one such global peach SAARC summit; representing Indian youth in 2005. Even there, i spoke about architecture as my tool-kit. About what i can do , want to do, will do. There was a big round of applause. Mr. Swaraaj Chauhan seemed impressed. Tagged me ‘Hans-Dhwani’ – hoisting the white flag for future. I basked in its glory for a few days. Bookmarked that article when the summit was published on the internet. And pretty much lost the manual to using my tool-kit.

I represent many such idiots, who swear to themselves for record breaking achievements when they enter professional courses. And very quickly fall prey to the blaming game.

People have no idea of the abyss we are staring into or the nature of the world we are leaving for our children to endure and most people don’t seem to care. They would much rather ignore the obvious and go into denial of a truth that’s splatting them between the eyes.

I feel like the cow who runs into the field screaming: “Hey, you know that truck that takes some of our friends away every month? Well they don’t take them to another field like we thought. They shoot them in the head, bleed them dry, cut them up, and put the pieces into packets. Then those humans buy them and eat them!” Imagine what the reaction of the rest of the herd would be: “You’re crazy man. They’d never do that. Anyway, I’ve got shares in that trucking company and I get a good return. Shut up, you’re making rumours.”

The Agenda I am exposing has been unfolding over thousands of years to its current point close to completion, because humanity has given away its mind and its responsibility. Humanity would rather do what it thinks is right for itself in the moment than consider the wider consequences of its behaviour for human existence.

Ignorance is bliss, we say, and that’s true - but only for a while. It may be bliss not to know a tornado is coming because you have no need to worry or take action. But while your head is in the sand your bum is in the air, the tornado is still coming. If you looked up and faced it, disaster could be
avoided, but ignorance and denial always ensure that you will get the full force and the most extreme consequences, because it strikes when least expected and you are least prepared. Like I say, ignorance is bliss - but only for so long.

We create our own reality by our thoughts and actions. For every action or non-action there is a consequence. When we give our minds and our responsibility away, we give our lives away. If enough of us do it, we give the world away and that is precisely what we have been doing throughout known human history. This is why the few have always controlled the masses. The only difference today is that the few are now manipulating the entire planet because of the globalisation of business, banking and communications. The foundation of that control has always been the same: keep the
people in ignorance, fear and at war with themselves. Divide, rule and conquer while
keeping the most important knowledge to yourself.

The global fascist state is upon us.
And yet, it doesn’t have to be like this. The real power is with the many, not the few. Indeed infinite power is within every individual. The reason we are so controlled is not that we don’t have the power to decide our own destiny, it is that we give that power away every minute of our lives.

When something happens that we don’t like, we look for someone else to blame. When there is a problem in the world, we say “What are they going to do about it”. At which point they, who have secretly created the problem in the first place, respond to this demand by introducing a ‘solution’ – more centralisation of power and erosion of freedom. If you want to give more powers to the police, security agencies and military, and you want the public to demand you do it, then ensure there is more crime, violence and terrorism, and then it’s a cinch to achieve your aims. Once the people are in fear of being burgled, mugged or bombed, they will demand that you take their freedom away to protect them from what they have been manipulated to fear.

I call this technique problem-reaction-solution. Create the problem, encourage the reaction “something must be done”, and then offer the solution. It is summed up by the Freemason motto ‘Ordo Ab Chao’ - order out of chaos. Create the chaos and then offer the way to restore order. Your order.

It is an old, old adage that if you want someone to do something, get them to believe it is their idea.’ Humanity is mind controlled and only slightly more conscious than your average zombie. Far fetched?
No, no.1 define mind control as the manipulation of someone’s mind so that they think,
and therefore act, the way you want them to. Under this definition, the question is not how many people are mind controlled, but how few are not. Everyone is to a larger or lesser extent. When you are persuaded by advertising or hype to buy something you don’t really need or want, you are being mind controlled. (One of those many ethical topics Ameet and I talk about.) When you read or hear a slanted news story and allow it to affect your perception of a person or event, you are
being mind controlled.(Dare any hotel give LNA – name changed – newspaper in the morning while we are holidaying !!)

The list of mind manipulating techniques is endless. They want your mind because when they have that, they have you. The answer lies in taking our minds back, thinking for ourselves and allowing others to do the same without fear of ridicule or condemnation for the crime of being different. If we don’t do that, the Agenda I am going to outline will be implemented. But if we do regain control of our minds and achieve mental sovereignty, the Agenda cannot happen because the foundation of its existence will have been taken away.

When Chinmay gifted us Fountainhead book by Ayn Rand on our wedding, (I treat the book like bible which he did not know) – what was he thinking ?
Well, it just makes me smile there are more people like Ameet and me out there, who think weddings are for similar thoughts to come together.

And while Ameet is on his journey to ‘let the masses decide’; I too have started my battle against copy pasted architecture, which i shall talk about at length in my next post.

If we evolved from monkeys and apes, why are the monkeys and apes still there?

I asked the question to the monkeys first – and they said “It’s the drive to go on manufacturing more and more beauty that keeps us going. We are the almighty’s guinea pigs to invent more beauty !”

I asked the same question to humans next- and they said “Beauty stands beautiful, only in comparison with the ugly. We need them to assure us of our beauty !”

In times of unpredictable economies, In times of unstable finances, times when inventions are only meant for problem solving, and when beauty is only the mask of industrial needs;

We the artists, we the responsible beauty potters, haven’t given up. We hold on to the hope of retaining, art of preserving, drive for manufacturing, intellect of redefining, faith in evolving, and dream of triumph over ugly – in presence of ugly. Beauty is our vindication against terrorism. Our proof of life itself. Go on…life is long…life is beautiful. Live life to its fullest, and Beauty to its brawniest !

Hope of retaining beauty : armor against the big bad
If the turtle dosent have its shell on, is it homeless, is it naked, or both ?. I laugh when you ask that and look at me in bewilderment.. If a turtle dosent have its shell, its not a turtle anymore. Its beauty lies in its shell. And it survives due to this beauty. Its beauty is its home, its beauty is its defense against the big bad world. And so is the beauty for us.

Art of Preserving beauty : Bricks give away, home dosent.
If you spin an Oriental woman twice clockwise and twice anti-clockwise, does she get dis-Oriented ? Funny eh ? But she cant part with her Oriental beauty. Must be a reason why they say – Beauty lies within !. To preserve it is an art. It takes belief in the fact that its beautiful in the first place. Its this faith, this belief, that ties people, religions and countries. When the beauty goes away, all is not lost, beauty self-reproduces from the left over memories. But when the belief in beauty is lost, relations are lost, religions are lost and national values are lost.

Drive for manufacturing beauty : The process is important.
If you try to fail, and you succeed, what have you done ? – It isn’t a mind twister. It’s a beauty twister. Even when you try to not make things purposefully beautiful, your sheer toil and enthusiasm makes it beautiful. What would you call it then – beautiful or fluke ? Neither. It was the procedure which was beautiful. Neither start, nor destination is life really. It’s the journey that’s called life. Life sure is beautiful.

Intellect of redefining beauty : Extravagance of renaissance & Minimalism of flat wallet-age.
Do Infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery ? .. Its all in using the right words, with right definitions !
Jokes apart, Beauty is the health vitamin for utilitarian society. But one dies with an overdose of vitamin – or more than what the body can take. Beauty does and should strike hard, only at the naughty edges where the human society starts to lose its focus and trail towards depression of ugly. Anything more and anything less can develop into a social disease.

Faith in evolving : Yesterday’s monkey is today’s man
Is evolving beautiful or the evolved ? One has aspiration and other satisfaction. And the question arises, is aspiration beautiful or satisfaction. It’s the ambition for satisfaction and the fulfillment of aspiration which is really beautiful. To understand that it isn’t a cycle, but a linear progress. That life just gets better with each day. More beautiful than yesterday and aspires to be even more for tomorrow. To keep faith in this beauty , is to allow evolving. Because stagnancy means death – and death sure isn’t beautiful !

How else would one explain - If we evolved from monkeys and apes, why are the monkeys and apes still there?

I said: Dharavi

If the newly manufactured heritage tourism and the exhibitions of new antiques weren’t enough, Mumbaikars have yet another brainwave to cash on! The slum tourism....

And Honest that i have vowed to be, I have attempted to be that voracious modernizer too who almost crossed the line of wannabe urban doctrine. My friend Gabriel Venot from the all-so-fashionable France was in India for a 12 weeks long India Darshan.

He’s been a great help and moral support during my sojourn in Paris; and I definitely owed him a good hospitality the Indian way. While my mum made all the colourful Indian dishes for his bland and delicate palate, along with her lessons in Indian yoga; I toiled with map of Mumbai to set the best route for his sightseeing, so as to be able to excite his tourist senses more than what his tattered lonely planet could do.

I skilfully managed the Mumbai tour and took pride at end of the day for having shown him the Mumbai unscripted !

The filmi Mumbai, the poor Mumbai, the Mumbai on streets, the streets of Mumbai. The garbage scattered all over, and the landfills of garbage. The sophisticated bribing, the skilful lobbying.
The political Bombay, the queens necklace over Mumbai, the chowpatty, the balloon man. The rickshaw race and pedestrian traffic. Overloaded trains and unutilised subways. The phool gali, the khaaoo gali. The kebabs, the bhels, the vada pavs, and cutting chais.

I felt like a contemporary artist, making collages of film posters for him as I sat in the Cafe Sarovar of Jehangir art gallery. It makes one symbolically the erudite , sipping chai with a gora at sarovar. Its then, that as if by the air of being the contemporary urban : I popped the final destination on route.

I said : The Dharavi. I took pride in introducing this well-negotiated, enclave within Mumbai. I poured out all the scholarly articles, all the ghastly yet beautiful images that i have seen in the exhibitions. I discussed all the controversies and debates I have been participative in at the sip-the-machine coffee conversations that ive been in with the self proclaimed designer elite groups. At some point, I even started to throw in my personal opinions. But I was still behaving programmed.

Most Mumbaikars are. Dharavi still stays a myth for most Mumbaikars even after the slumdog success. We speak both ways and we even opine both ways. “slums should be eradicated” ....hey but...then, we also do say ... “Slums are a part of our fabric !”.

The fact is, no one really knows what to do with them. I know of people being invited from Italy to Israel to solve the “PROBLEM”. Designers like the HOK , Urban researchers and even Phd students from all over the world....have all come and gone. Made money on the proposal presentations, later dinners at the chic olive in Bandra, discussed how the root of all problems lie in Indian politics, and washed their asses off (incidently toilet rolls manufacturing is one of the commercial activities in Dharavi).

It isn’t really Dharavi thats the problem. The problem lies in the fact that its identity remains undefined. And while the landuse is being termed the SLUMS.
Adding with all our pride : THE LARGEST SLUMS. We know what to do the best. Put in on the tourism map !...Like I did.

Its a shameful act that i did. But then Mumbai lives by its Intestines that constantly need something to digest, absorb and later throw as a waste. Dharavi as a slum tourism is the new food for thought.

Untill now, it only saw the architecture students, “Expert panels”, journalists, nose covered “Social WORKERS”, Phoreners, and photographers. But it is now also seeing tourist groups, school trips, exotic travel companies, corporate training trips, small scale industry HR initiative tours, and ofcourse slumdog millionaire site seeing tours !

This is for all those who may have been on these tours. Please mail in your experiences.
Every PROBLEM has a solution THEY say. But then its the same THEY who call it a PROBLEM in the first place !!!