BENGALURU : Good morning, fellow voyagers!
These last two weeks have been loaded with epiphanies. I have firmly believed that the Universe opens doors, showing us an alternative way of being, but being brainless homo-sapiens, we firmly kick it shut. Guilty as charged! I realised that slowly and steadily I have been kicking many of these doors shut and completely justifying it in my mind that the vision offered was not for me. Societal pressure, wanting to ‘look good’ pressures, adhering to set norms pressures… Bah! (As uncle Scrooge would say).
Slowly and surely, I lost my fire, my spunk and my ability to speak up for what I believed in. OMG! I had lost my mojo! I’d become just as boring, inconsequential and cowardly as the rest of the people I swore never to become.
A party favourite, amusing and popular, my lips getting redder with more garish lip colours and my heels getting more uncomfortable with each new shoe! When did I metamorphose into this creature even I don’t recognise? It’s like the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ as my son says. I have spent so much time with my ‘captors’ that I started becoming one of them. Sheesh!
My biggest epiphany came when my son started his vlog, Loud Gay Brown Totally honest. His honesty and courage in dealing with longstanding myths and discriminations in the LGBTQ community were admirable and funny. This is when it hit me the hardest. What have I become? After all, I am the ‘mothership’, who taught him to be who is without fear, then why have I started caring about what ‘the people who never ever mattered’ would say or do? Ever since the lockdown has eased I have been a big crusader about wearing masks.
Not as chin guards or thongs that barely cover one’s mouth or nose, but as a service to yourself and people around you. All of us have been emotionally and financially hurt by Cardi-V in one way or another. Why can’t we behave responsibly and obey rules that even our government has deemed mandatory? Suddenly, I have become a ‘persona non grata’ for calling out some boors of big star properties for not wearing masks! They are sulking! And like I care! This is just as bad as witnessing harassment or discrimination and turning a blind eye because they may not invite you again. The ‘usual suspects’ (I love that term!) may quaver in their high-priced shoes, but not this ‘woke’ or ‘lit’ babe!
My fortnight was spent eating, drinking and generally being merry (in places where wearing masks is mandatory except while eating or drinking). I had a fabulous dinner at good friends Irfan and Sabina Vazirali’s home where we gorged on marvellous biryani and kebabs. I was also a guest of Dr. Marjorie Vanbaelinghem, consul general of France, for a Bon-Diwali Zoom party with industry bigwigs like Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Biren Ghosh. With a 2011 bottle of Bordeaux, Ponet-Canet for company, it was truly a ‘bon’ evening.
The assisted Sunday brunch at the Lantern at The Ritz-Carlton, headed by Cantonese chef Chow Chee Meng and executive chef Sandeep Kalra, is a winner for sure. The chef’s adherence to tradition was admirable but still, the meal was contemporary and fresh. The Peking duck cooked and served faultlessly. The Hainanese chicken rice which is a national dish of Singapore but honestly, I preferred it at the Lantern. The Char Siu pork with Jasmine rice and the silken homemade bean curd in oyster sauce, the baos, the dim-sums… and the list of offerings seem endless. After a long time, my family and I enjoyed an afternoon of culinary excellence, sitting in the dappled sunlight with all safety measures in place Now that’s not asking for much, is it?