This piece first appeared as a letter to the editor of The Telegraph on Friday 6 May 2005

What a debut!

Sir ? For some time now, I have been suffering the poor quality of journalism in publications. Quite often, the grammar is incorrect, syntax poor and plurals are used where they are not required. We wince, but hold our peace. But ?Tintin on centre stage, mischief backstage? (April 25), on the fifth day of the Lakme India Fashion Week, was a bit too much. Could someone please tell the reporter (who wrote about ?a dazzling debut by a veteran duo?) that a veteran cannot make a debut, dazzling or otherwise? A debut is, and always will be, the first appearance or public exhibition, and my English dictionary tells me that a veteran is one who has worked in a particular discipline for many many years (such as war veteran or veteran thespian...if you want to use big words). Young writers who are making their debut in journalism need editing and review by the veterans in the organization.

Parting shot

This piece first appeared as a letter to the editor of The Telegraph, Calcutta on Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Parting shot

Sir — More than 40 years ago, I had to make a momentous choice — to change my Bengali surname to a north Indian one. I was loath to surrender the identity I was justifiably proud of. I wanted everyone to know that I belonged to that elite group known as “Bengali”. Today, living in a Bengal that is taking one regressive step after another, I am not sorry for what I did. I no longer wish to be counted among members of a society that creates Frankensteins, such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Trinamul Congress, that manipulate an ignorant electorate for petty political gains.

I am ashamed that we continue to tolerate, support, and even encourage, mindless political exploitation which seems to go on for years; that our educated, talented young men and women have to migrate to other cities — Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai — or go abroad to earn a better living and prosper; that we consider actors, producers and others from the entertainment world to tell us what to think and do; that we define and measure the country’s prosperity and progress by counting the number of shopping malls and restaurants that have come up in our cities: that Shah Rukh Khan comes down from Mumbai to drum up enthusiasm for Durga Puja and “culture conscious ” Bengalis enjoy themselves dancing to popular Hindi songs in the immersion processions of the goddess.

I am sure that my views will unleash a torrent of protests: we are very good at protesting, and so it should be. But it wouldn’t hurt if we indulge in a bit of introspection and ask ourselves what Bengalis in Bengal have come to signify these days.

Yours faithfully,
Iti Misra, Calcutta

What a wonderful world

This appeared as a letter to the editor in The Telegraph, Calcutta on Saturday, 27 June 2009

What a wonderful world

Sir — I wish to thank the ITC and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation for the 500-room hotel coming up on the Bypass (“Hotel to scale new heights”, June 23). Now I don’t care if we don’t have power or water for 3-4 hours a day. I won’t worry that I may fall and break my neck on the broken pavements, which are littered with construction material from nearby building sites. I won’t complain if I die of pollution before this wonderful hotel is completed. At least, Calcuttans will have a “super deluxe property” for which we feel honoured.

Yours faithfully,
Iti Misra, Calcutta

ORANGES AND CRICKET

ORANGES AND CRICKET

FIFTH COLUMN

Iti Misra

The smell of oranges reminds me of cricket. The sharp spray which hits the face as you peel one of the Nagpur beauties takes me back to the wonderful days of cricket as we knew and loved it. Why oranges? Because, like cold days and picnics at the zoo, oranges and cricket were both blessings of the long-awaited winter in the plains. I remember eagerly anticipating winter, when one of the foreign cricket teams would visit India for leisurely but competitive Test cricket. Plans were made and work was rescheduled for that visit to the Mecca of cricket — Eden Gardens. We had to set off early to beat the crowds, with flasks of coffee, bottles of water, and picnic baskets loaded with sandwiches, luchi-alur dum, cakes and, of course, oranges. Oranges were an invaluable ingredient of the day’s enjoyment, used sometimes as guided missiles by miscreants, and sometimes as a good-luck charm by the superstitious. I recall celebrating Neil Harvey’s dismissal as soon as I had peeled my orange, and being asked by my neighbour to repeat the trick with another well-set Aussie batsman. Over five days of close proximity, shared lunches, hopes and despair, a fair amount of bonding took place . If matches were played elsewhere in India, our lives revolved around the Philips radio set. My mother had to synchronize the housework with the morning, the post-lunch and the post-tea sessions. We would arrange ourselves around the radio — mother with her knitting, didi and I with our holiday homework, my brother with the score cards, and father with his snuff box and cigarettes to relieve the stress should India be on the mat yet again! As the velvet baritone of Berry Sarbadhikari cut across the static “welcoming you to the Feroze Shah Kotla grounds, on the first day of the second Test”, we shut our eyes and imagined the scene out there — white flannels, green outfields and the red ball. The pin-drop silence as the bowler completed his run up and the thunderous applause for a well-executed cover drive floated over hundreds of miles to our sitting room. Another world Drink breaks, with expert comments by Lala or Vizzy, were time for our own tea, coffee and milk. Lunch too revolved on the cricket theme. Daal-bhat was forbidden, we had to have ‘dry lunches’ as if we were out there on the grounds. My mother took extreme care to recreate the atmosphere of the lunch break at the grounds. Then, it was time for oranges, peeled lovingly by our mother for each one of us siblings. My brother would break the monotony of a maiden over by squeezing the stinging citrus oil from the orange skins into our eyes. A smart clip behind the ears from father would soon bring him back to his duties as score keeper. I think my love for the game is inexorably linked to the wonderful time we spent near the radio. Friends and family were invited in turn to ‘hear’ the match together. Tea-break menu would then include muri and ghugni made of fresh green peas from the garden, as also natun-gurer sandesh. This party around cricket would last for all of the five days and if India were trailing, father would console himself by snuffing and puffing and we would hang on to Vizzie’s assurances that “Cricket was a game of glorious uncertainties!” Call me an old woman, but how can the sight of spitting cricketers, bikini-clad dancers and a fast-and-furious game of 90 minutes replace what I loved? Cricket, for me, was something that happened rarely; it was to be eagerly anticipated like cool winters, fresh green peas, natun gur and always...oranges. Today, we are on OD2. Yes, I know the lingo. There are endless games on innumerable television channels. If it isn’t one-day internationals, it is Pro 40 or T20, or India A versus South Africa A, or Aussie Eves vs English Twiggies...my head spins like a Kumble delivery. I will just watch EPL.

Rajasthani Cuisine

The moment one thinks of Rajasthan the picture that comes before the eyes is that of an arid, barren land with thorny shrubs and bushes. Nature has been very niggardly in her gifts of fruits and vegetables to Rajasthan. Consequently, Rajasthan has given birth to very hardy people who try to make the best of whatever nature provides them. Like its culture, folklore, and songs, its cuisine also tells the tale of these people’s relentless battle with the omnipotent Nature, to survive and thrive.

Rajasthani cuisine is very simple and basic. In a typical Rajasthani kitchen cereals, legumes and pulses are used in plenty. Besan, or Black Gram flour is an important ingredient in a Rajasthani “thali”, in the form of Karhi, Gatte ka Sabzi, Papad ka Sabzi and even in the making of Rotis.

Due to scarcity of green vegetables in Rajasthan, dried beans and herbs are used in plenty. Sangri, ker and Kasoori Methi being the most well known. The Gatte ka sabzi is a unique creation of spiced Besan. It is made into a dough and cooked in boiling water. The boiled gatte is cooked in a gravy made of onions, ginger, garlic, red chilly powder, coriander powder and yogurt.

Papad ki sabzi
Junglee maas

The most famous Rajasthani dish is the Ker-Sangri ki Sabzi. The Sangri is a variety of thin beans about 3-4 inches long, which grows mostly in winter. These are sun dried and stored to last during the long hot summer months. This sabzi is made with a slight gravy using yogurt and is eaten with rotis. However, sometimes a dry pickle like preparation is also made from Sangri using dried mango powder. This preparation can be stored upto 4 weeks. This dish is a must at all Rajasthani feasts.

Who says they aren't kicked?

Who says they aren't kicked?

If you thought the beautiful game was all about the boys, BO and their beer, think again, urges BAGESHREE S. as she discovers that the women's brigade is also out to have a ball

DOUBLE ACT The football merchandising industry has been doing a fantastic balancing act. While it welcomes women to join the hitherto all-male football fan club, it sells skimpy, extra-feminine clothes and other paraphernalia that keep them uber feminine at another level PHOTO: AFP

The first time the woman in our story saw her stuck-to-the-telly husband scream "Ammmmazing pass!", she looked suspiciously at him and the screen for homo-erotic suggestions. The marriage was preceded by a good three years of courtship, but there are many things you discover only after you begin to live together, right? So it was with horror and amazement that the woman watched her carefully chosen man transform into a perfect stranger in the first Football World Cup season of her marriage — shedding all political correctness to claim complete rights over the remote, staying up odd hours to watch matches, sleepwalking through the rest of the day, speaking endlessly about Davor {Scaron}uker in a tone that made her further suspicious of his proclivities...

Our story's heroine fits the much-talked-about "World Cup widow" image — a woman grossly neglected by the man (or men) in her life as they begin to eat, drink, sleep, talk etc. etc. football once every four years. But shed the blinkers put in place by the stereotype and you see enough and more women who are as infected by the football fever as any man.

`Real' fans

And mind you, they won't stand any snide remarks about how women know nothing about the "real" game and watch it only to admire the sinewy legs on the field. Writes a livid female football fan in a discussion forum on the Net: "There was something on the local radio station where they asked a load of girls if they were looking forward to football. I don't know where they found them, but they were all obviously blonde and had the IQ of an ant because they all said: `Ohh, I'm looking forward to seeing David Beckham in his shorts, he's lush!' He is?! This is what gives female footie fans a bad name. Why couldn't they have asked some proper female fans? Arghhh! Not all women hate football and the ones that like it don't only like it because you get to see 22 men running around in shorts."

Twenty-year-old Maithri, a student of architecture, feels quite the same way. Her college schedule does not allow her to stay up and watch all the matches, but she does follow the results closely and manages to watch when big teams are playing. "But it's quite amusing how my male friends instinctively leave me out of football discussion even though I know as much as they do. They won't admit it, but somewhere deep down they still think girls are good only for doll games and shopping." In fact, there has been a great deal of debate around the politics of exclusion at play every football season. Melanie Reid in an article in The Herald talks about how religious bans and cultural manoeuvring are constantly at work to keep women out of football. "In Britain, newspapers and magazines publish special supplements telling women how to manipulate their partners during the World Cup by requesting £500 Mulberry handbags during a penalty shoot-out. While in Iran, women have been banned from entering football stadiums because it is decreed un-Islamic to look at the naked legs and arms of male strangers... So there it is in black and white: handbags or hijabs; a metaphor for gruesome decadence on one hand and repression on the other... Women are patronised and face barriers — both real and cultural — to stop them entering a male preserve."

"The tendency is for men to say: `You do girlie things, while we get together, drink beer and watch football.' It clearly defines roles and leaves women out," says Iti Mishra, a spirited 65-year-old, former manager of the Royal Caribbean Cruises. "I love football because it's such a complete team sport, I would say unlike selfish games like cricket or tennis where you can play for yourself." Iti is flying out to London to watch the matches with a herd of nephews and grandnephews and root for Argentina. "I would have gone to Germany if I had company!" says Iti, who can match the most ardent male football fan in both her incisive analysis of the game and her glint-eyed love for it.

Reading football as a metaphor for power, Reid questions the entire business of keeping women out of "a glut of beauty, athleticism, pride, control and money." She talks at length about how women are "caricatured as pretty footballers' wives — high-maintenance, vacuous, vulgar — or as bored parasites, manipulating their dim football-fan partners into giving them mindless luxuries."

But is there an even larger power play at work here when we consider that women never make big news when they get on to the field? Why hasn't women's football been as big a deal as men's football? So, even as we are saying women love football, are we forgetting to ask why they don't play it, play it enough or not noticed when they do?

These are questions that bother Evelin Hust, the Director of the Max Mueller Bhavan in Bangalore, who grew up playing football with her neighbour's garage door as the goalpost ("much to his consternation"). "A few years ago, the women's football team in Germany beat the United States and won the World Cup. While there is so much hype about the World Cup being played back home in Germany, there wasn't this kind of publicity and celebration when the girls brought home the cup."

These questions become particularly relevant at a time when football merchandising is big business. The industry, interestingly, has been doing a fantastic balancing act — when it welcomes women to join the hitherto all-male football fan club, it does so by selling skimpy, extra-feminine clothes and other paraphernalia that keep them uber feminine at another level. Let's admit that while Iranian women rooting for their country on the field ("Iran's not-so-secret bombs," as they were called) make big news, the picture of the same country's feisty women kicking the ball all the way up to sky wearing hijabs is less attractive. So there are, perhaps, even larger questions about spectatorship and participation that are waiting to be raised.

Rites of passage

But these questions are as yet beyond the woman we began our story with, considering how recent her initiation into this world has been. She is right now in the third World Cup season of her marriage, with several action-packed (some off screen over remote rights and so on) league matches in between. And things have changed considerably since the introductory season. Through a process of education she could not avoid (since husband was unavoidable), she can now tell a free kick from a penalty shootout and knows that Zinedine Zidane is not the name of a pharmaceutical product and Kaka has nothing to do with the neighbourhood chai shop. She occasionally even manages to say "amazing pass" at the right moments. Husband, the typical "male" that he turns into every four years, has even dared ask her if it's Lionel Messi's muscular legs or the ball he is kicking that has her charmed. Perhaps both, we suspect.