Douro Boys, Douro, & the Wines, Portugal Jan 2012
Douro river flowing through the vineyards
Portugal is a country that, to us has connections with Goa. They made some beautiful churches, and supposedly left behind certain traditions, including one around the Port wine. For a history of Port refer to another blog, or just view it somewhere online, but suffice to say that while Port was a wine destined for transport, the Goan Port is only meant to make one journey: to the deepest darkest abysses of a dustbin! To truly understand this country and its wine, nothing short of a visit will suffice. Sure you could attend some tastings, as so did I, but unless one has seen first-hand the slopes and gauged their steepness while trying to climb or descend one, one can never entirely comprehend the scale of difficulty that is involved in making wines here.
Up Jacob’s Creek with a Paddle
Sydney: Australian for Wow!
I love Australia. I love their accent, their sense of humour, their beautiful country, the lovely wines…in fact, the only thing I feel I am not too particularly fond of is that it is worlds away from where I stay. But, that apart, they are one of the most affable lot around. Sure they can get a bit naughty but hey, it’s only cricket…
Jacob’s Creek St Hugo Vertical Tasting
Fastest customs and immigrations ever!
Coonawarra is a town with a population of 30 people, give or take a few. When we landed there on this remote air strip, we immediately swelled the population by a factor of three! Even with the neighbouring towns, the number of people can’t exceed 5000, (and yet, they had this superb restaurant, Fodder, which I suggest you must try, for the food but also for its very extensive international wine list.) And the defunct railway station is a picture postcard from the last century!
Alight here for red wine
Koh Samui – On the Go
This is God showing off...
Writing about a resort while you are there is a bit rigged: it is bound to be good, even if they spill a whole tray of assorted coloured tidbits on you. Not that this happened; just merely citing for sake of an exaggerated example.
The flowers are there to light up the runway path...aah!
This “rigging” starts at the airport itself which is itself more of a resort. The landing is akin to an
Even planes dream of coming here for a break
autumn leaf gently floating to the ground to find a resting place among the other leaves, in the shade. Think of it as a touchdown into nature – like a Willy Wonka airline with an Eco-quotient. Read more
Bangkok Quicktime
Here is an on-the-go scribble on Bangkok. I have to admit that the city has a way of growing on you. i enjoy it a lot more with each visit. Singapore, one of my favourite haunts, serves up everything exact and precise. You feel safe, almost inoculated. Bangkok, like a well-fed Sardarji,loves to flaunt its underbelly. It thrives on its eclectic mix, the good with the garish, the Egyptian cotton-lined to the remotely dangerous, the lemongrass scented to the Bird’s Eye implanted, the straight with the tut, the ladyboys, the straight cross-dressers, and the much simpler to understand, regular homosexuals. If you wish to enjoy Bangkok, you have to learn to let your sensibilities be a bit more fluid, more accommodating, for Bangkok will push them to the limits, from food to design to orientation, and in the end, it is how you bounce back, more learned or more disgusted, that will shape the experience to come. Read more
Khao Gaggan
With a name like Magan, my parents had set me up to be the punchline of the most ridiculous joke ever to happen to anyone living or braindead: that lame advert about some vegetable oil (this was before the era of Omega-3s et al) where the tagline went… waitaminute! Why am I even bothering. Suffice to say that, the word Magan always evokes Gagan followed by the “joke”. Going to a restaurant called Gaggan (Praise the Lord for the extra ‘n’) would then be too quirky, even for me. Read more
30+1 Learnings
So another year has gone by and I seem to have gotten nowhere in particular. The joy is there but distant, like the revelry of a passing procession in the distance. An odd sense of calm has replaced whatever occupied me earlier. More than any accolade, I now merely want to earn my wrinkles well. Something made me jot down a few observations. For over 10,000 days lived, I feel I haven’t taken enough notes or notice. For what they are worth, here they are. Read more
SOPs – Stupid Obviously, Perhaps…
There was a time when the Earth was a free place. There was a time when we were only restricted by our imaginations. I am talking way before PGA declared that nothing is impossible, or as was proven later, till you get caught. There was a even time when men roamed free and didn’t get bugged by a call to not forget to buy things. Obviously this was the era before mobile phones were invented but more pertinently, this was before the concoction of that institution-which-is-not-even-a-building called marriage.
approach: to look away and think the problem now ceases to exist. Training and delegating may be harder but isn’t that what is better.
Freedom of Speech but seem to have lost our Right to reason for ourselves.The Stupid Official Prose or SOPsThere was a time when the Earth was a free place. There was a time when we were only restricted by our imaginations. I am talking way before PGA declared that nothing is impossible, or as was proven later, till you get caught. There was a even time when men roamed free and didn’t get bugged by a call to not forget to buy things. Obviously this was the era before mobile phones were invented but more pertinently, this was before the concoction of that institution-which-is-not-even-a-building called marriage.But none of us really minded having all freedoms curtailed. In fact, today we accept bondage like we accept in-laws, which are two words for the same worry really. Life today is a caged version of its truly rampant raving self. One look at the houses of Bombay with their surrounding juxtaposed grills would make you wonder whether it’s an abode for really large birds or else if S&M is really an accepted weekend family pastime as many openly claim.And yet, all these grotesque visions fade, pale like a lemon that has just seen a lemon-squeezer, when you think of the one freedom that has truly and ever-so-softly been curtailed that you wouldn’t even realise till you read on.I am talking about the freedom to converse, like grown-ups, in complete sentences. Take a second to allow it to sink in; if it takes any longer, than you already have been methodologically maimed.I too was living, numb to this crime, till the other day I happened to be seated on the exit row. With enough fellows to annoy ahead of and behind me, I had a Doppler Effect of an experience of the hostess serving beverages. She said the exact same words each time to every guest. “Would you 
like some tea/coffee”. The affirmative were told to “Please place your cup on the tray”, followed by “Sugar and Creamer please” before the whole thing was repeated with the next desirous.Never once did she let fall forth from her lips any other possible permutation of words that could convey the same meaning with a matched level of respect and obeisance. There was just no “How about some coffee” or just simply, “Coffee?” It was as if in her mind was a printed algorithm that she was following and sticking to like the last leaf in an autumn gale. She didn’t miss one word ever and each time the intonation was perfectly blandly similar to the previous time. Kind of monotonous you’d think. Just the thing that makes the whole idea of joining a self-torturing clan sound way more invigorating. How could anyone, I wondered, manage to say the same thing each time, on every flight each and every day and not feel the happy-noose tightening? I would be the first in such case to pull the emergency latch and bungee out of the plane minus the cord!But these girls seemed quite at ease. They could have done this in any language and had the same amount of measured emotion, much akin to the industry of industrious sex on film. So much for making me feel ‘at home’.SOPs are an institutional way of dealing with discrepancies. I disagree. SOPs are only good when doing things technical. Machines need instructions like that. Humans are smarter. Or so I feel, or felt and thought till now. Sure all of us may not be as adept as grammar but SOPs are a convenient way of succumbing to our shortcomings. It is the classic Ostrich approach: to look away and think the problem now ceases to exist. Training and delegating may be harder but isn’t that what is better.And by then the world had changed, at least to me, or for me. Now I was noticing the ‘matrix’ so to say. Phone rang. “May I speak to Magandeep Singh?” “You Are speaking to him”, I replied. “So, are you Magandeep Singh?”, came the counter-question, leaving me fabulously flummoxed. Another similar one wanted to confirm if I was the man whose first and second name I claimed to go by. Short of a DNA test, I realised, I had no way of proving my, or whoever-I-was-perhaps-allegedly-posing-as’s, identity. The best bit, I was soon able to decipher that they were staring at some piece of (legal) paper that probably had a list of responses as to be exactly recorded so as to anoint them against any ensuing damage if they were liable for prosecution. Little do they know that the only damage that I and millions of others who feel similar ire would cause them would be with the business end of a very nasty gun that fires more rounds per minute than your average midwife. The whole conversation would and could only proceed if I said the magic words. They made me work through a series of ridiculous affirmatives and negatives without once guessing just how my mind was showering them with expletives.And more followed. Another wanted to know the last transaction on my debit card when I had called to ask for one I the first place. Without knowing my Telephone PIN a chap couldn’t proceed to help me apply for a new one. Similarly, I found, entire industries had been wiped clean of any sense of personality or creativity by replacing them with standardised phrases. This was Red Tape but only oral. From ordering food to a taxi, from paying utility bills to luxury hospitality products – all had been structured and set so that nobody would ever need to think again. Habit would soon take over and the person would be as efficient asleep as awake.
Robots could then be wheeled in and these catatonic cadavers be ejected from their slumped seats and we consumers would never know the difference. The corporate would because it is cheaper to oil a robot than it is to feed a family of four, or account for cigarette breaks.So many such self-negating illogical cyclic redundancies have seeped their way into our lives that we don’t even realise just how devoid of logic the world we live in is. Sad that we need someone to tell us what is correct or appropriate. Sad that of all the stupidities we could have trusted ourselves to commit, we went and outsourced everyday wisdom.Abroad this problem isn’t as ugly. Sure they have a few common identifying queries – foolproof ways to ensure that the right data is conveyed to the right person – but even then there is space for sentence construction and word-order that needn’t be the same every time. They are not scared to crack a joke, or say something that may be a little less corporate. They have the guts to attempt something a tad personally influenced. Sure they run the risk of offending someone, but don’t we all in our daily interactions. Whatever happened to intuition? Waitaminute, that’s a level detached, whatever happened to common sense!?We rhymed reasonably in Sonnets and held forth in Haiku. Prose aside, we even put a man in space. And then we found out, much to our collective shame of the species that we were only using a mere 10% of our brains all along. But with these SOPs we have unleashed a further reduction of the workload on the already limited usage of our brains thereby risking making us as useless as the 999,999 who couldn’t swim as fast. And sadly we are growing into a country of over a billion and a half with almost linear personalities. This here is my appeal to bring back the human element in service. Let’s resurrect common sense and personal intuition before it is too late. For now, it seems that we may have won our Freedom of Speech but seem to have lost our Right to reason for ourselves.
Indian Food and Wine: London Case Files
When Indians settled down in the UK in the late 50s, they unknowingly ended up planting something in their adopted land that was far stronger than their rich culture – a taste for richer spices. For a long time Indian food in the UK was synonymous with pub grub and after-dinner binge eating with chilli-slapped food that could burn a hole through space-age metal. Today, a lot has changed. Indian chefs who migrated Westwards, tired of the dichotomy that existed here between Indian and foreign cuisines served here in India have now come into their own and Read more
On Marriages Arranged
There is a reason behind the whole process of life and birth. Darwinism aside, it was basically designed with one main idea in mind: we should never be able to choose our parents. This is mostly so that you may hate them, even complain about them but you can’t change them. Law may provide complacent solace in some forms but like toothpaste out of a tube, there is no reversing the flow.
Marriage on the other hand provides no such comfortable convenience of pre-ordained decisions. If you believe in stupidities like “marriages are made in heaven” then I don’t really want to be the one to break it to you – just ask Santa in the next letter you send to the North Pole! Read more
Disclaimer: The CYA Clause
The new corporate conglomerate is a very scared body. So traumatised are they by the very people that they try to 
serve and save that they don’t know anymore how to get up in the morning and breathe without pissing off some activist, a minority community, or an endangered species of a rare marsupial. What started as America’s favourite past time – suing someone over something they did or didn’t do, suing someone else who thought that this idea was silly to begin with and then going and suing the entire legal system just to keep things animated – has now definitely blown out of proportions. Read more
How to do business in North & South India
Doing business is easy, but not in India. On the degree of being a difficult thing to do, business in India ranks right behind removing your own appendix without enough anaesthetic. Sure there may be government subsidies but that means dealing with government officials in the first place. Save having in-laws over for your honeymoon, nothing can be more unpleasant.
But fear not. I am experienced in the ways of at least this world. I have tackled numerous slimy officials, bribed many a clerk, sweet-talked an equal number of ‘babus’ and bought the wedding decorations for a few ministerial secretaries, and all that only before my morning tea today.
Read on then to your own fortunes. Here are things they don’t teach you at night school.
Toddy: God’s Own Brew
Sweet Sweet Yummy Yummy Toddy!
A clear light white drink; harvested early morning by slashing the bark of palm trees and collecting the sap overnight. The aromas are intriguing yet inviting. Soft and a bit reminiscent of fermenting coconut water (maybe because it isn’t too far from it). A little meaty too with lots of green bark character.
The taste is distinct and perhaps not the most given although it does grow on you and a couple of glasses later, you would be forgiven for thinking of it as weird cider. It is mostly semi-sweet at this point, with a hint of prickle on the tongue, somewhat nutty (although i don’t know if Date Palm Toddy would too exhibit this note; what i am trying is Coconut Palm Toddy.) and shows some nice lactic creaminess. The finish is definitely cider-like but minus all or any finesse whatsoever.
An Austrian Adventure
You know you have become a wine sissy when you refer to a series of tastings as an adventure. You then sadly realise that you will never be able to brave the outback alone or accompanied and a vineyard will be all the wilderness your faint heart can manage.
Pity, but on the flipside, you get to taste some fantastic wines. Here is a rant oops I mean list of some things I recently got to nose and tongue. Wherever there are breaks the grape variety or wine style may be changing. The key is:
PB – Pinot Blanc, SB – Sauvignon Blanc, PG – Pinot Grigio, WB – WeissBurgunder aka PB, GB – GraueBurgunder aka PG, RS – Residual Sugar
One more thing; an asterisk (*) denotes a personal favourite. Honestly, few wines were bad and turn-away-able. The brands mentioned here pretty much epitomise the highest echelons of winemaking in the (Southern) Styrian region or Austria. Read more
Wine Retail in India
L'Essential in Saint-Emilion
It is very deplorable the way our liquor vends are so ineffectively called “wine shops”. You would sooner call my hair style an afro rather than refer to these caged holes-in-the-wall establishments, wine shops. Walk into any one across the country (barring a few cities) and chances are you will find that wine occupies the least amount of shelf space and still manages to collect the maximum amount of dust!
The reasons for drinking wines are many, and as good as any – social consciousness, health concerns, curiosity – whatever the excuse, the fact remains that the market is growing at a stunning and stable 30% per annum. Read more
A Wild ‘Wild’ Rosé
Blauer Wildbacher (BW) (blo-er wield-baa-kher) is a very peculiar grape that is found only in the southern part of Austria called Styria. This happens to be the smallest wine region of Austria with 550Ha of vines. That is even lesser than the 700Ha vine region around the capital of Vienna, which incidentally, is the only capital in the world with an established (and successful, if I may add) wine business.
Back to Styria, of their 550Ha, almost 400+ Ha are planted with the BW. It gives a black grape but little red is made from it. When the wine is called BW on a list it is usually red; Schilcher (Shil-kher) refers to the pale rosé version.
Shiclcher, for the uninitiated can be quite a revolution of tastes. As I say, it is the rose with balls! Read more
10 Things NOT to do in Singapore
I had heard a lot about this marvellous clinically clean city around the
continental corner and, as a good traveller looking for value-for-his-and-his-neighbours’-money, I logged on to a million sites to gather all I could about thing to do while there. I found a lot of information, much of which was put out as lists which mostly stated “10 things to do in Singapore”. I read so many ratings that it almost felt competitive to decide what to visit and what to leave out. Singapore is very impressive, don’t get me wrong but I was very confuddled how to put forth this plethora of information without creating further confusion in your already-softened minds. Hope this helps… Read more
Sipping Somethings Spanish – Fenavin 2009
Spain was a beautiful visit…so much to learn, more to unlearn, and so much forgotten already! I would love to put the blame on that lovely ham, that ode of culinary class – the famed Pata Negra (black footed or more correctly, hoofed).
I was in the region of Castilla LaMancha followed by a few days in Madrid and I can see why it would be considered the precursor to Ibiza but that is not what this post is about. (Mail me for more dope on that!) Meanwhile, here are a few things I tasted and am sharing. Read more
Are You a Man or a Matador?
I have just come back from Spain, perhaps the most homophobic country in the world. Either that or they are all closet homosexuals with a deep-rooted insecurity and some sort of need to “fit in”.
Sounds rude right? Well it was all fine till I went for a bull fight, or, as they like to glamorously call it, a Corrida de Toro. I always knew the correlation between big cars and the penises of men who own them but this public drama of complex egos, this mayhem of the morons, this fiesta of fragile fools is something that could keep even Freud up and perplexed for a very long time. No other society in the world I can think of 
feels so desperate a need to prove their virility and power in a manner more degrading, self-degenerating, uncivilised and illogical. And all this under the blinding garb of tradition, honour and other such words that bullfighting enthusiasts obviously love to cite but have no clue to their meanings.
The term “Bull Fight” is only half true: that there is a bull involved. Outside of that, it isn’t much of a fight. Taking candy from a kid might be considered a stiffer challenge with higher betting odds, especially given how kids are nowadays, with cable TV and wrestling and what not. Bull-fighting, in comparison, is like driving with the seat belt not off but just a tad loose in a Styrofoam car. I think a mechanical bull ride could be more dangerous. This made even American football appear gruesome, forget ice hockey or rugby or worse yet, Aussie rules football. Read more
That Telephone Call…
Like a mild rash in the nether regions, we have all got it at one point or another. At all odd hours, odd situations – “Hello, Good evening sir/ma’am, would you like a credit card/loan/phone connection…they are like spam in your mailbox except that unlike spam they arrive at the most inauspicious of occasions.
I remember reading somewhere that the telephone was invented about three decades or so after the bath tub (don’t ask me where I find such stuff). I sure as hell doubt its authenticity but the point made was very relevant. It said that for about thirty years you could step into a warm comfortable bath without the telephone going off! Read more
