Christmas Day in Mumbai

Christmas Day 2013 has been rather different from previous years.  We've been planning an exciting Christmas Day for a while.  The day was going to start with a run in Joggers Park, followed by a massage session at the Taj Lands End Spa with my Mum (for her Christmas present) and Christmas lunch at the Taj Lands End (Special Christmas Brunch).

Unfortunately, we woke this morning to find that my poor Mum had been struck with Delhi Belly during the night.  Oh dear.  She had stopped being ill by the time I woke up but was clearly not up for either a massage or lunch.  Peter wasn't feeling on top form either, and my Dad had been up during the night helping my Mum.

We had some family time in the morning and opened our presents together.  The most mysterious item was a big box of Quaker Oats, but this will come in very handy even if it is a little unusual.  The top novelty item was a 2014 calendar customised on Vistaprint by my parents with lots of family photos.

Anyway, Christmas goes on, and after spending the morning at home (although Phil did make it for a run to Joggers Park) we made the call that at least some of us should proceed with brunch (i.e.me and Phil).  A whole day in the apartment together might have been a little bit much.  Peter had a second wind and recovered just in time for the departure to the Taj at 1230.

 

 Sunny morning in Joggers Park

Brunch lived up to all expectations and we had an alternative Christmas feast.  It was all excellent, but the puddings were a particular highlight, visually as well as to eat.  We paced ourselves and enjoyed a wide range of delicacies which are usually difficult to find in India.  Peter's Christmas present for us was lunch (thanks Pete!) so we're pleased that he recovered in time to treat us all.

Cold buffet spread fit for a maharaja

 Lobster bisque

First platter of the meal

Food photography photography

 Cheers

 Beef Wellington

 Turkey

Large numbers of delicious fancy chocolates

Phil's dessert platter number 1

The chocolate yule log in the background was particularly awesome

A takeaway for my parents.  Unfortuntaely they melted in my bag and I'm still finding bits stuck to the bottom...

The full spread

 Trifle and yule log

More puds

Pleasing symmetry

 Exquisite chocolate carving

Contented

Paying the bill

Mum recovered enough to meet us at the hotel with Dad and walk to Bandra fort before wandering along the Bandstand to walk off (some of) our lunch.  The highlight for my family was their first ride in an autorickshaw, quite a change from calm car journeys in the UK.

We're now resting in the apartment and preparing to have Skype calls with friends and family later today.  We are travelling to Rajasthan for a six night holiday tomorrow so our top priority is for everyone to get well again before then!

Six month anniversary

Friday 20 December marked the six month anniversary of our arrival in India.  Eek!  It feels like our time in India is passing very quickly but, equally, like we've been away from our previous UK lifestyle for quite some time. 

To celebrate, we went our for lunch on Saturday to Yauatcha, a smart Chinese restaurant in the Bandra Kurla Complex which I had been to previously with work and was confident that Phil would enjoy.  They have especially good and fancy puddings.

Blood orange chocolate cake with blood orange sorbet.

Raspberry and hazelnet chocolate mousse with raspberry ripple icecream.

Following lunch, we made progress with our aim for the New Year, to continue to keep up momentum with going away at weekends and exploring India.  It's easy for this to lapse once you settle at home, but we want to continue to travel and make the most of the opportunity offered by our secondment.

So we got out our diaries and have fixed trips to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Rajasthan (Jaipur, Agra & Taj Mahal, Ranthambhore Tiger safari), Orissa (Puri and Sun Temple), somewhere near Bangalore for a weekend, Sagar's village (!) as well as 10 days in the UK in March.  We'll try to squeeze in a couple of weekends to Goa / Kerala too, plus Phil's got trips to Chandigarh, Lucknow and Israel before the end of April.  

In the short term, we're travelling to Rajasthan for a week on Thursday, so will be back in the swing of travelling again soon.

Preparing for Christmas in India

This year, we will be spending Christmas in India with my parents and brother who arrive in Mumbai on Monday.  It has only recently dawned on me that Christmas is coming for the following reasons:

1)  The temperature (although it is winter here) still approaches 30 degrees with consistent beautiful sunshine.
2)  The last month has not been packed with Christmas parties / drinks / dinners leaving me feeling like I've had more than enough Christmas-related indulgence before 25 December has arrived.
3)  There are no Christmas advertisements on the television!

Given that less than 5% of India's population is Christian, Christmas is not nearly as an important a festival in India as in the UK.  Saying that, India's Christian population is concentrated on the west coast (Goa, Kerala) and we live in Bandra, the base for Mumbai's Catholic residents, which has several big churches and Christian schools.  On top of that, Mumbai is strongly influenced by Western culture so many people are more than happy to enjoy Christmas festivities, irrespective of the underlying meaning of the festival.

So here is how we have prepared for Christmas.

1)  Christmas tree

When leaving the UK in June, we didn't pack our artificial tree as (i) we initially thought we would go back to the UK in Year 1; and (ii) we didn't know how much space we would have in India, so packing a Christmas tree and a big box of decorations seemed a bit gratuitous.

Last weekend, when Phil was still away in the UK, I set it as my challenge to find a real tree in Mumbai.  I'd spoken to others who have managed this, so thought that this task would be straightforward, but Sagar and I unfortunately failed to find any of the garden centres that they'd described to me (not on the map...).  We trawled around for ages, including visiting several artificial tree shops (Sagar was keen, me less so) before finishing the day at a little plant shop close to our apartment.  I was completely fed up by this point but the enthusiastic shop owner pointed to a bunch of ferny-looking branches which he claimed was a Christmas tree, so I went with it.

Admittedly, now the tree is at home and insitu, it is clear that it is more of a plant than a tree.  In fact, it is definitely not a tree.  Nevertheless, we have festooned it with lights, baubles and tinsel and it does the job.  I'm not sure that I'm ever going to be allowed to take charge of Christmas tree purchase again though!

Our Indian Christmas plant

2)  Decorations

Phil brought back a bag of decorations from the UK (kindly donated by Phil's parents) and we found some cheap tinsel in one of the many tacky Christmas decoration stalls nearby.  The highlight for me though is a set of six decorations that I found in my new favourite shop (Good Earth) which are metal Indian style flat baubles in the shape of lions, elephants and peacocks. They are lovely.

Lion

Elephant

Good Earth has beautiful products but at western prices.  I will try to treat myself sparingly.

3)  Presents and cards

This has been extremely calm and lacking in stress this year.  We bought presents for Phil's family early so that we could take these to the UK in October, and Phil completed the shopping and wrapping whilst in the UK last week.  My family are easy.  I've booked to take my mum for a fancy massage (completely with sauna, steam room etc) on Christmas Day morning (she knows about this) and my brother is getting a six day holiday to Rajasthan, starting on Boxing Day.

We have decided not to send cards (except where Phil could deliver these in person in December) as my trust in the reliability of the postal system is not high, so we will be keeping our communication electronic for Christmas 2013.

All is all, being in India helps to keep Christmas in perspective and it is refreshing to be away from the present-buying and Christmas preparation marathon this year.

4)  Christmas Lunch

We will be having our first ever Christmas lunch away from home, as my brother's Christmas present to us all will be Christmas Brunch at the Taj hotel in Bandra.  Super!  But will Christmas feel the same without many hours of cooking build up and temperatures rising in the kitchen?!  We will find out on Wednesday...

We have though stocked up on a few Christmas essentials...a big stilton, chocolates, port etc.  There are some things that really should be around at Christmas, wherever you are in the world.

5)  Spreading Christmas cheer

My team at work is still relatively small (seven people) so we took the opportunity to invite everyone round for Christmas dinner last week whilst our team is still small enough to fit round our dining table!  We should have grown to over 15 people by this time next year, so that will be more tricky to organise.

Cooking a full Christmas dinner can be challenging in itself but we had the additional considerations of (i) vegetarians; (ii) no alcohol for some people; (iii) lots of traditional meal components being tricky to source in India; and (iv) we don't have an oven.  The last point on this list was definitely the most challenging!

Anyway, we adapted and creatively assembled something close to a traditional Christmas lunch.  Turkey was replaced with chicken (from the excellent local butchers, a good find); Christmas pudding, cranberry sauce, stuffing mix and good coffee were imported by Phil; and I searched most shops in Bandra to find red cabbage (mission accomplished!).

After quite a bit of prep (having a maid is excellent in both the vegetable preparation and washing-up stages of the meal), we had a lovely evening and introduced several of our guests to new foods.  The bread sauce and stuffing went down particularly well.  We served smoked salmon and cream cheese nibbles, pumpkin and ginger soup, slowed cooked chicken in red wine with mountains of vegetables and trimmings (mushroom risotto for vegetarians), Christmas pud and Jamie's Oliver icecream / dried fruit / cake bombe, and mince pies (provided by my manager Melanie).

The team

Jamie's Christmas icecream bombe (thanks to Mary Earis for the recipe)

Unfortunately, we massively over-catered, but this meant that Veronica (our maid) and her family all had Christmas lunch too as we packed it up for her to take home the next day.  She was delighted.

6)  Keeping in touch

Christmas is the time when you can feel most distant from family and friends, so we're very happy that my family will be joining us in India, and that Phil spent time with his parents when in York earlier in December.  We will be doing lots of Skype-ing on Christmas Day, and distracting ourselves afterwards with a six-day holiday to Rajasthan (Jodhpur and Jaisalmer) including taking my family on Indian trains and a camel safari!  We'll be back in the UK for Christmas 2014, but intend to make the most of this alternative Christmas experience this year.

Children's parties...but not as I know them

As Phil is away for two and a half weeks in the US and UK (only one week to go now!), I have spent my weekends pootling around in Mumbai.  The weekend before last was relatively cultural, including a Bollywood film and tour ("photo trail") of one of Mumbai's original fishing villages with Phil's work colleagues who were visiting for a few days.  Unfortunately, my camera refused to save any pictures, rendering blogging about a photo trail rather pointless without any actual photos, but I will write about that once I've sourced some photos from elsewhere.

This weekend was more western in style, including a couple of long swims (I'm getting quite into my swimming now), meeting up with friends for breakfast, inviting another friend round for dinner, and going to the cinema to see the new Hunger Games film.  I'm not usually into big blockbuster action flicks, but the HG series is well done and has got a bit more to it (IMHO).  Plus I was craving a couple of hours in a normal, air-conditioned, western environment, and a trip to the cinema to see an English language film seemed like it would do the trick.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film but the cinema trip was an experience in itself.  I'd chosen to go to a big multiplex which looked much smarter than the previous cinemas I'd visited in India (the ticket price was a whopping £2.20) and, as expected, the entrance was gleeming and American-style, with the obligatory security gates and bag search to get in.  Anyway, it turns out that the 1330 showing of the Hunger Games in a wealthy area of Mumbai on a Saturday afternoon is a magnet for rich Indian teenagers who are incredibly noisy and have very little if any concern for anyone else trying to watch the film.  It was amazing.  Whole groups of wild youths were having openly loud conversations and there seemed to some kind of verbal mating ritual going on between groups of boys and girls at opposite ends of the cinema.  Some of the adults were even better behaved, standing up and turning round to shout to the teenagers to "shut the f*** up" regularly throughout the film!  It was bizarre, but also quite fun, and any on-screen kisses or attractive top-less men (watch the film, you'll know who I mean...) met with cheers, wolf-whistles and enthusiastic rounds of applause from the audience.  There is some irony that the higher the class of cinema, the less well-behaved the audience...

Getting to the point, in the first half of the film (there is always an interval, when the film cuts off mid-sentence in non-Indian films!) I noticed a lot of noise from a couple of rows behind me.  As soon as the lights came on at the interval, it transpired that there were at least 40 pre-teenagers there to attend the same birthday party.  In military style, several cinema employees marched out into the theatre carrying trays piled high with burgers, chips, popcorn and sugary drinks.  It wasn't even lunchtime!  The party attendees piled in indiscriminately, seemingly trying to grab as much food as possible.  It was carnage-like and manners were non-existent.  A few stray chips landed on my head throughout this feeding frenzy.  A quick look around showed that these children were covered in designer brands and, to be blunt, most of them could have done with eating fewer chips rather than stuffing themselves.  Given how many people struggle to have enough money to buy food in India, these children were starkly at the opposite end of the spectrum.  The aftermath of this feast seemed to be an awful lot of half-eaten and wasted food lying around. I had a nice chat with a Chinese tourist in the next seat who seemed just as bemused as me.  I used to have birthday trips to the cinema as a children, but I'm sure that this used to involve five to six friends maximum, sharing a box of wine gums and a Happy Meal afterwards if we were well behaved.

My second birthday party experience of the weekend was, unexpectedly, at 5 o'clock on Sunday when I went for my late afternoon swim.  Sunday afternoon is a great time to go as the pool is invariably empty.  Yesterday afternoon was no exception, but with a little more poolside activity than normal. 

The club staff (around ten people) were decorating the pool-wide area for a princess party, but this was like no princess party that I've ever seen.  Pink and white balloons were strung everywhere, across the roof, up the walls, and in arches making a walkway round the pool.  In my 45 minute swim, I did an audit of the number of balloons and counted between 700 and 800 on the ceiling and walls alone, with many more in the arches.  I really really wish that I'd had my camera but unfortunately a camera is not part of my typical swimming kit.

At least 15 six-foot high 2D cut-outs of Disney princesses (Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White etc.) were fixed to the wall round the edge of the pool, but the crowning glory was suspended over one end of the water.  I joke not, someone had made a castle facade, including turretts, a entrance way, windows and a balcony and suspended this over the pool.  This six metre wide, two metre high monstrosity was strewn with fresh flowers, fairy lights and more balloons.  What's more, to swim my usual lengths, I had to effectively swim up the drawbridge, through the moat and into the entrance way, hoping that boiling oil wasn't part of the set-up.  Knowing how Indian health and safety is non-existent, I was a little nervous about the possibility of a castle-collapse to begin with, but I'd come for my swim and I was going to have my swim, and that was that.  At least the swim helped to build up my appetite, partly from the exercise and partly from the piles of food being brought out to a groaning table awaiting the guests.

On the way out of the club, children were beginning to arrive, to run the gauntlet of three separate photographers with massive cameras positioned between the front door and the party pool.  For me, a young child's birthday party involved a vigorous game of musical bumps, pass the parcel and stuffing yourself on ice-gems and cheese and pineapple on sticks until you felt a bit queasy.  I'm sure that parties like this must happen in the UK but I personally haven't seen anything on this scale.

I may sound like a grouch ("In MY day.....etc") and I don't mean to be, I'm up for people having a great day out with friends on their birthdays, but there is something about everything I've seen this weekend which jars against the backdrop of the lives of so many other Indians.  From what I've seen, if you are rich, then more is more.  If you've got it, then flaunt it, with flash clothes, jewellery, car and, apparently, children.  Expat parents I've spoken to tell me that parties are a statement symbol - everyone in the class is invited, no expense is spared and there is a culture of giving the other children a "gift" to take away, which can be pretty valuable (iphone speaker, for example).  What happened to penny sweets and party bags?!  I don't know if it's to do be with being British or something else in my values, but sometimes less is most definitely more in my view, and I'm not coping too well with the splash-the-cash-on-frivolous-things mentality.

Saying that, would I turn down an invitation to a fancy bash?  Probably not.  It's up to others what they spend their money on, but if I ever construct a moat for a birthday party then somebody please bring me to my senses.

Lost in translation

Yesterday, I invited a friend round for dinner and decided to bake a cake for dessert. Sourcing basic cake ingredients in India is non-trivial; I'd sent our driver Sagar to find plain flour and caster sugar earlier in the week and found some local butter in a nearby shop on Sunday morning. You can buy imported brands including President and Lurpak here, but I can't quite bring myself to pay £4 for a small block of it...Eggs though are two a penny (almost) and I picked up a pineapple to complete my tropical cake theme.

I'd found a recipe for fresh pineapple cake online and everything was going swimmingly; I was even feeling a little bit smug for adding an exotic twist of vanilla and cardamom when poaching the diced pineapple.

Unfortunately, at the key moment, I could not find the flour anywhere. Our maid, Veronica, has a very tidy but often complex and ever-changing filing system in the kitchen, but she was stumped by the location of the flour when I phoned her to check after searching high and low. Defeated, and short of time, we had flambeed pineapple with ice cream for pudding instead.

This morning, Sagar insisted that he'd bought the flour last week and Veronica swore that she'd never seen it. Puzzled, but not wishing to make a big issue out of a such small matter, I simply added flour to this morning's shopping list to make sure that we had some in for future use.

Sagar completed his shopping tasks this morning, phoning me to confirm that he'd bought everything on my slightly eclectic list (mouthwash, melon, flour, new battery for kitchen scales) without difficulty. After a long and busy day at work, I returned home to open the fridge and contemplate how to transform its contents into a tasty meal for one (Phil's still away in the UK).

I took a double take owing to the large white bowl filled with chopped cauliflower in the middle of the fridge. Exactly the same thing had happened last week; I hadn't asked for cauliflower and yet it had been mysteriously added to the shopping tally. Last week, there was such a lot of cauliflower that I was eating cauliflower biriyani for three days and still have more in the freezer! I only managed to polish off the last of it in a stir fry this evening.

After a baffled moment, the penny dropped.  Flour....cauliflower...ah! Suddenly it all became clear.

A lot of cauli-flour

Problem solved, now all I need to do is buy some actual flour and find a decent recipe for cauliflower cake!