GOA STATE OF MIND

Recently, my friend Nirav declared that Goa is no longer a place to him, its a 'state of mind'. And i knew exactly what he meant.
There is a theory about certain places in the world that have a very strong magnetic pull. Bali, Ibiza, GOA etc. And if you think of the highly unique history of Goa, it actually proves this magnetism over and over again. The Portuguese were the first hippies, discovering this little piece of paradise some 500 years ago. In the chutney that followed (laid-back hindus meet pretty chilled out Christians) in coconut tree paradise= feni, football, sushegad, siesta and vindaloo. Then came the hippies. As a kid, I used to marvel at the fact that my parents were actually eighteen years old in 1968, the most magical year according to me. That a place like Goa has accepted and integrated so many thousands and thousands of amazing freaky people (and i used the term 'freak' in the highest sense possible), that whether you are from Norway or Argentina you can live in this place, make it your home, have a family, is beautiful. But the interesting question here is why do all these people from all over the world choose Goa. There are better beaches, better living conditions, better schools.... so why?
I can only answer this question through my own life and understanding. For me as a kid, Goa began as a place where i could swim naked, follow an awesome pool-sea-hammock-pool routine and eat steak and gherkin sandwiches and crab curry. Even though the sex, drugs & rock n roll hadn't yet taken their toll , I could sense there was something more, something else, something different about this place.
Cut to- Chinu@16, Disco Valley, New Years 2000. My first party. The most beautiful place. The moon shining on the sea. A sea of shiny, happy people. Looking like they had just landed on the moon. At that point I decided, I'm going to live here and be one of these people.
12 years later, I was at disco valley again for New Years. And sure Goa has changed. The party stopped at 4am instead of going on till sunrise and beyond (but there was still some amazing music). There are no parties, the locals are beyond greedy, the cops are the biggest thugs around, the beaches are being eroded, there are malls coming up everywhere. But. I still want to live here. The more i thought about what it was that attracted me and thousands of others, i realized that its a combination of total spontaneity and total relaxation. Even in the most hectic, out of this world situation, you still know you're in Goa and ultimately you will find a beach or a friend or your room.
For me, opening a restaurant in Goa means a next step in my evolution. And this evolution was kicked off in this magic, shamanistic tiny state and will continue here. In a way its my giving back to this place and all the incredible meals and memories I've had here. Pizza at Fellinis, crab masala at Starlight, balsamic steak & clams and goan sausage at Sublime, carpaccio at La Plage, croissants at Sharewood.. the list is endless. And i want to add to it with my own restaurant. My own space under the Goan sun, my own environment of food, peace & love.
But now the life Goa promises is truly at risk. Yesterday I was at Curlies ( the first time my friends and I saw Curlies we thought we had walked into some hippie time machine). I started crying and couldn't stop. The eroded beach ( its now half the size it was) was black. Apparently they are washing oil tankers close by and all the beaches from Arambol to Calangute look the same, slick with oil. And the most ironic, sad sight was this smug, fat family of three from Bombay were actually playing in this oil- building sand castes, taking pictures, swimming- without even realizing that they were sitting in toxic oil. Are we so blind? Is it that, on holiday, we can't be bothered about thinking of what is happening around us?
It is time for all the Goa lovers- long term freaks and short term holiday makers to wake up. Do you know what happens to that mineral water plastic bottle after you drink half and leave it behind? Do you feel the fish choking after your jet-ski ride? Do you feel the beach dying because you are too busy smoking and discussing the next travel plan?
We, the people who love Goa and the life it represents are responsible for it. We can't change government policies and corrupt police, but we can give the locals some good ideas and means to do so. We can think of solutions like septic vermiculture tanks so we stop dumping our shit into the ground and the sea, we can have one big water cooler for people to fill up water instead of a 100 small plastic bottles, we can stop chucking our rubbish across the beach and we can definitely spread the word of whats happening.
Because someone has to.
 I want my kids to play on the beach like how I did. I don't want to worry about wiping toxic oils from their bodies or meeting dead whales while swimming.

GENES, KARMA & WILL

You know you're grown up when friends around you start sprouting big bellies and thinking of baby names and back gardens.. but more than the highly incredulous thought that people my age are actually ready to give birth and all that follows, i was intrigued by the cross-pollination happening among races, genes and what was the karma & personal will involved with this next step in evolution. Lets start with the genes first- a good parsee from Bombay (who's genes had travelled by boat from Persia to Gujarat and then settled whole-heartedly in Bombay) marries Russian trance artist from Moscow who loves Tamil Nadu and says "shouchalaya" and "shubh ratri". So dhansak meets vodka, caviar meet Duke's raspberry lemonade (which you can only find at parsee weddings and Britania). On the other hand, there is the tiny Roman Catholic Goan who marries giant Swiss boy from the Alpes, who i think is more scared of the size of the baby growing in her than anything else. Sorpotel-fondue anyone? It might seem a little OCD-ish of me to only think of food combinations but i feel this is the true significance of genetic interaction, kind of like when you move to a cosmopolitan city and can eat mexican one day and lebanese the next, only thing the city is your own DNA. The other other implications could also be coconut meets snow, natural born swimmers meet natural born snow-boarders and voila- evolution, super heroes, indigo children ready for 2012!!!
Take my own gene pool for examples, nowhere as exotic as these new babies in the oven, but mixed enough for that generation. Both my grandparents had "love marriages", shocking enough at the time when caste, horoscopes, family affiliations and unfortunately dowry=  arranged marriage. In the highly charged setting of the freedom movement (it almost sounds like 1942- a love story, in fact i think that is the year they met) my Maharashtrian (liberal, articulate) grandfather falls in love with my Punjabi grandmother from Lahore (undivided India), they meet through their freedom fighter fathers, get married and produce a new generation of punju-ghatis, who love vada pau and rajma chawal (punjabi or not, my grandmother was also unfortunately a brahmin and a pure vegetarian, denying us homemade butter chicken, a fact that I rue till this day). The other side of grand-parents were even more risque, they challenged the great Indian caste system and thank God for that, as this was the great moment that sea-food was introduced to our grass eating family. In spite of the fact that her mother-in-law would make her cook in a separate kitchen (that a brahmin woman in those days ever agreed to letting her son marry a fish-eating CKP was in itself a wonder), my maternal grandmother, with her genes carrying her across the seas of doubt, changed our future genes forever.
Then there is the little case of Karma. Like all mystic indian words it can be understood and interpreted in many ways. Shit carried over from your past life/ actions in the present/ no, not just actions but even words and thoughts / a barter system that can be balanced by chanting nam myo ho renge kyo / as you sow, so shall you reap/ an arbitrary system that you simply accept/ meta-physical answers for the eternal "why me" question.. whatever. The fact is, whether you are an atheist or a non-beliver in re-incarnation etc, you are at a particular place, at a particular moment, meeting a particular person for a particular reason. Whether it was meant to be or not depends on your choices, which introduces finally a feeling of control in this cosmic circus, that there is something that YOU CAN CHOOSE. My friends were supposed to meet the future father's of their babies. Their karma led these people leading such different lives in such different places to come together and create a new life.
And finally Will. The act of choosing, forging ahead, letting go and yet going ahead without too many thoughts of consequences. When you forget about the language barriers, the difference in upbringing, the   "where will we live" questions and just flow into an ancient knowledge that this is where you are meant to be and that your genes, karma & will are the three pillars that support you, you can finally be open to the exciting parts- maybe sorpotel-fondue will actually taste awesome!

EUROPEANS & THE ART OF SOCIAL ALCOHOLISM

My boyfriend Christophe and I are currently in the midst of our private food trials (to cut down the 400 items i want to put on the menu of our Goa restaurant). Yesterday was maguru tuna tartare, steak with Roger's sauce aux morrilles (the most amazing morel mushroom and cognac recipe that was Christophe's dad's speciality), potato gratin and glazed carrots. Now i could start talking about the amazing "gucchis" from Himachal (the Himachalis people eat the mushrooms as medicine rather than a delicacy) or the over-fishing of sushi grade tuna (even though i continue to use it in my sushi). But what has left me truly mystified is how much & what varieties of alcohol we managed to ingest, with the excuse of a "dinner".
I'm slowly beginning to accept that the European view of beer and the Indian view is radically different. For Indians, its what your parents used to drink on sunday or while watching cricket & tennis on tv, drunken afternoons on the beach in Goa and for those (mostly north-indian) connoisseurs who go for the "strong" beer- instant coma. Whereas for Europeans, beer is just beer- something that can be drunk without being labeled an alcoholic at ANY time of the day or night.
So we started off the cooking process with a couple of Leffe's (ridiculously over-priced but absolutely yummy wheat beer) and some old-school Renaud. As the evening progressed and our friends (swiss and indian) arrived it was time for the perfectly acceptable "aperitif"- in other words ABSINTHE! Undoubtedly potent and refreshing in this crazy heat, it went down very easily. Steadily chugging on the beers and absinthe, it was then time for the first course. Of course we had to open a bottle of wine, it is the only polite drink at the table. By the time we were ready with the steak, a second bottle had been opened (in spite of the fact that there was one pregnant non-drinker among us). Et voila, it was time for the after- dinner "digestive"- some Abricotine (that had arrived fresh from Leysin) and some strong black coffee.
So here's the recap in case you didn't get it- beer, more beer, absinthe, red wine, apricot liquor.
And then it struck me, it was damn good fun! No wonder they take 3 hours to prepare meals and 3 more hours to eat them. Leaving aside my judgmental, 'my boyfriend is an alcoholic' attitude, I actually managed to have a great time!
Now unfortunately, we are dealing with the after effects- a screwdriver piercing through my third eye and feeling as if i'm walking on a boat. Pass the alka seltzer s'il vous plait :(

ZEN & THE ART OF SUSHI MAKING

Being a chef means that you pick up many seemingly useless cooking techniques along the culinary path, which then suddenly transform into lucrative enterprises when you least expect it. Sushi is one such skill that I have recently turned into a tidy little take-away business to keep boredom & broke-dom at bay.

And making sushi every single day has resulted in some insights into the Zen state of being in the moment.

It starts with the prep work. My Ipod  is spouting appropriately ambient music with waves splashing and gongs gonging (although sometimes it’s hard-core psy trance, which I justify with Osho’s theory of catharsis- the benefit of having many spiritual philosophies & meditations crammed into your brain is that you can pick one that seems the most convenient to your life at a completely random and ad hoc basis.) Everything is painstakingly cut into exactly the same size juliennes, the asparagus & prawns are blanched, the avocado has to be just right otherwise it dissolves into mush, the tuna & salmon lovingly handled so as to not bruise the delicate (and bloody expensive) produce. While doing this endlessly repetitive work, one’s attention is slowly taken to your posture, your breathing and the fact that if your attention wanders even for a second (eg: “why hasn’t he called me yet?” Or “I wonder if they’ll deliver ice-cream at 10 am”), it results in a massacre of the produce & your good intentions.

The Sushi rolling technique calls for an especially no-mind state. The things that can go wrong are infinite, unless you apply a Zen attitude of just being there with your sushi roll. Its no wonder there are urban legends of Sushi chefs in Japan who aren’t even allowed to touch the sacred sushi knife for years until they have mastered their own monkey mind.

And then there is the master-like patience while explaining to your maids, who are eyeing this whole raw fish business extremely suspiciously, where Japan is.

Random sample of our conversation (translated from Marathi)

Maid 1- people eat it kaccha?? (shocked & incredulous)

Me- Yes, its Japanese

Maid 2 - Silently disapproving & unconvinced.

Me- Do you know where Japan is?

Maid 1 & 2- Blank bored expressions

Me- You know those chinky people? Well most of them are Chinese… but some of them are Japanese. They live in Japan… its an island above China.

Maid 1- some kind of snort like response

Me- Do you know what an island is? You know those places surrounded by water?

At this point, I give up & climb back into the warm zen cocoon where everyone knows what islands are and loves unagi.

Now if this doesn’t lead to the infinite patience of the Buddha, nothing will!