Christmas candy

The most unusual fragrance of the year, mine, all mine! 

What I spent Xmas day doing, while also reading. Bliss.

All, sometimes, is lost

I spied Sephora in Delhi recently and almost fell to my knees in gratitude. But of course, India being India, (where else do you get no beef at a McDonald's?), it was lacking in the variety which is precisely what Sephora is famous for. Apart from a nod to benefit, Stila had a presence so I bought a token second-choice eyeliner (they didn't have the one I wanted - surprise!) and discovered even OPI had only about 10 colours to choose from. I then sadly tottered towards Starbucks where the appalling decor gave me more of a start than the coffee, and left suddenly after noticing the RiRi Woo poster outside MAC's. Yes, dear Reader, after completing my 100-meter dash there I was told it was out of stock. After which, having lost the will to live, I caught the next flight out.

December 2013, Bangalore

Mr Paul Walker

Flashpoint

Those two dots are the stunned eyes of an owl who has decided to live in the treetops outside the house.

2 Treasures

Bird and coloured onyx ear-rings

Raintree is a boutique in Bangalore housed in a heritage home that has some of the most unusual, creative treasures. Here's two.

Cup-cake quarter-plates

Japan on a Plate

Edamame soup

Salmon art

Sea bass takes a swim

That seaweed swirl

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is there a God? I wouldn't know. I live for the here and now, by which I don't mean I plan for the weekend, but that I can only rely on this moment right here. So when I found myself at Edo, (meaning estuary, also the former name for Tokyo), ITC Gardenia Bangalore for their “Japan Debate on a Plate”, I was well pleased with my philosophy du jour, because the here and now tasted sublime and I came away with the answer to at least one of the above questions, yes, there is a God, a culinary God at least.

At Edo, that would be Resident Chef Fumio Kikuta who got a helping hand from visiting Chef Vikramjit Roy and Raveen Misra, Regional Brand Ambassador, SEA Portfolio Markets and Emerging Asia who served up whisky-based cocktails that went over my philistine head but which, I was told by connoisseurs at the table, “tasted as smooth as butter”.

I was too immersed in my Salmon with confit melon and miso cream cheese, bubuarare and smoked corn mash to pay too much attention to the Green Tea whisky complete with Johnnie Walker and seaweed flourish except to admire the way it looked (yes, Superficial is my middle name), and by the time the Edamame soup, sansho crisp and foie gras foam arrived at the table, I couldn't have told you the name of my lunch companion. Not because I was imbibing freely but because I had never tasted something so delicate and inspiring. Can there be anything worse than tasting a spoonful of what looks like a science experiment and finding it tastes like one, too? The soup looked like an artist had laboured over it in both terms and Mmm, it was good.

The Chilean sea bass with tamari teriyaki and organic vegetables and jalapenos maceration followed by a dessert of Johnnie Walker XR 21 poached pear carpaccio and yuzu probiotic yoghurt ice was tantalising and refreshing. What an ode to the imagination some meals can be.

I don't know about you but to me, Food can often answer all existential queries.

The Indians are coming!

Dot, not feather, and they're everywhere. And I don't mean running away from the Saudi authorities, but on the little screen.

As the old 'Goodness Gracious Me' joke goes: Hannah Simone who plays Cece on 'New Girl'? Indian. Noureen DeWulf who plays Lacey on 'Anger Management'? Indian. Less surprisingly, Sarita Choudhury who plays Mira on 'Homeland'? Indian. And of course Kunal Nayyar on the 'Big Bang', Mindy Kaling for 'The Mindy Project', 'Navi Rawat' in 'Numbers' and Maulik Pancholy in 'Whitney' (who's also Out, thus killing two requirements in one fell swoop; it's been mandatory for years to appease the gay community by representing them as well, you see).

The Indians are not just coming, either, they've been. The frontrunners from Kal Penn ('House') and Naveen Andrews ('Lost') to Rhona Mitra ('Boston Legal') and Indira Verma ('Luther') paved the way for the public acceptance of brown faces on the telly, something Anil Kapoor on '24' must have been most thankful for.

The thing is, though, that when you cast black, brown, Korean and gay because they are black, brown, Korean and gay, it's just as racist and homophobic as Indians looking down their noses at Nigerians or telling your parents you're really Bi. Lady Gaga has been trying to tell us for ages that we are born this way, why haven't we learned the lesson and moved on?

Not that the actors are complaining, and neither am I, and who knows maybe the above have not made inroads in Hollywood because one of Cable's biggest markets is Asia, but it's important to be aware of hidden currents before they pull you under.

When you cast an actor for their fitness in a role, that's when you show an evolution in species. I think it's safe to say we're not quite there yet.

But isn't it fascinating to think of ('Burn Notice') Gabrielle Anwar's father being Tariq Anwar, and so on? Putting borders on the world and on people is just the silliest thing.

Feeling grave, anyway

Sometimes I think I need to book myself a "Crazy, Table for One". Everyone was waxing eloquent about Sandra Bullock and George Clooney's new movie "Gravity". The only stunning planetary body you will find there is Sandra's; she's worked hard and each golden, toned muscle thanks her for it. I love space movies, from "Alien" to "Mission to Mars", but I just couldn't understand why the otherwise-terrific Alfonzo Cuaron didn't figure out that for people like us we need to see, um, space. You know, the vastness of it, the silence of it, the terror of it, the nothingness of it. For the whole movie, Sandra is within touching distance of The Blue Marble. How are we supposed to feel what being untethered to anything must be like?
While "Gravity" is not boring, it simply doesn't realize its potential. Like for instance, at the end when touchdown is achieved, we want to see the heroic, immediate American response to disaster and rescue. And this is where Cuaron decides to show nothingness.
Clooney, like Pitt, meanwhile are now simply appearing in movies playing themselves it seems; you can't see a trace of effort in what they do anymore.
I wish "Breaking Bad" was still playing. That at least made terrific, crazy, wonderful sense, yo.

Ulysses goes home

He was like an avenging angel. He answered all our prayers by punishing the guilty and uncaging the deserving. And when he left the world he was happy to go. He had shed his sins, paid his dues and was free. This was Walter White, no longer Breaking Bad.

The series finale was, in a word, uplifting. I don't know what's in Vince Gilligan's brain but it should be patented. It's as though he knew what we wanted. We wanted Jesse to survive, we wanted the amoral gang who had him like a hamster strapped to a wheel decimated, we wanted Todd to die painfully by Jesse's hand, we wanted Hank's body found, we wanted part of the money to go to Walt's family (he had suffered so much for it), we wanted, at long last, the truth to fall from Walt's lips.

We wanted Walt to pay, yes, but we felt his pain, too. How do you reconcile those two things? Gilligan did it by keeping to the tenor of what went before for five years. In the final shots of Jesse screaming in relief and an at-peace Walter White who can now fold his black-and-white wings, Gilligan stayed true to the Breaking Bad motif of madmen, retribution and redemption.

Walt was dying in a cabin in the woods, so lonely as he's plugged into his chemo that he begs The Disappearer to stay for a while. Any alternate scenario would be welcome to this. So he begins his last journey, dons his final avataar. He terrorizes the couple who shafted him on Gray Matter Technologies; they are so loathsome that we, too, enjoyed the mathematical precision of Walt's revenge. Jesse's cohorts make another appearance, as does Hank in a flashback which was a lovely touch; we liked the former and admired the latter and we wanted to bid them a fare-thee-well.

When Walt rigs the machinegun and mows down Todd's uncle's band of unlovelies I, for one, was screaming Yes! They deserved their bloody end, as did Lydia in a ricin denouement that was part of Walt's wonderful orchestra of Judgement Day.

When he tells Skyler that his whole odyssey was not just about family, “I did it for me..I liked it..I was good at it...I was alive”, well, that was it, wasn't it. A man whom destiny led astray twice finally took it in his hands. He could have been rich and accomplished via Gray Matter but he was nobody both at work and at home. So when he had nothing to lose, he became a legend, a man whose brain and talent was nothing short of masterful.

In the final shot where he lay on the ground and the cops moved in, the look of satisfaction on his face and the way the camera angle panned his body surrounded by the law, you immediately thought this was a night they would speak about in whispers in drawing-rooms when they spoke of Walter White, the great Heisenberg. You can't help but feel to your bones for a man like that.

I feel to my bones for Bryan Cranston, bringing Walt to life with a look in the eyes, a swelling of the chest, a pursing of the mouth. And precision. Always precision.

I feel to my bones for Vince Gilligan whose own Gray Matter is a thing of terrifying proportions.

What a trip it's been.

10 Things.....

...a girl can't do without:

1. Black nail-polish. 2. Red lipstick. 3. J Brand jeans. 4. White button-down. 5. Black jacket.  6. Mulberry bag. 7. SK II. 8. Blahnik pumps. 9. Moleskine notebook. 10. Fictional character to fall in love with. (Mine's Stacia Kane's 'Terrible' from the Downside Ghosts series.)

Yes, please

Ate at this table in a Goa home recently and I have to say, it's exactly what I want in my own dining-room. Just whispers taste, doesn't it? And yes, to accompany the rolled napkins, a butler served. Sigh.