North America – Page 3 – ARUNDHATI BASU

Doozy Times in Seattle

We spent five short days in the Pacific Northwest with my sister-in-law and her lovely family, and even though five as a number is short — it felt short — it was enriching within a tight span of time.

Enrichment came our way through activities. We chatted endlessly, baked and cooked, when we were not tripping over to the city’s iconic marketplace to gather fragrant spices and delicious cheese, sipping on hot apple cider, tasting moreish butter, and buying braids of garlic and chillies that did the singular job of elevating our hearts to our mouths with the amount they cost (oh, but they are beauties). Amongst all of this was the scenic presence Mount Rainier, with its upturned conical tip sheathed in snow, and the Olympic ranges. A band of photogenic siblings.

The sun was shining, and the days were spectacularly cold, but boy, they added sass to the time spent outside.

To mitigate the chill, we slurped on Taiwanese food. Mere broth and garlic, yet divine. Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings for the rest of us) and Sichuan noodles stole the highlight simply because we had never had them before.

Novelty is a cracking thing. You always remember that first trip you ever took, that first time you explored a new place and came across things alien to your culture, met a person who turned out to be a beloved figure in your life,…you never forget those, do you? The Taiwanese meal had left its impression upon us, indelibly.

Now, Seattle for us inevitably means Snohomish. A place the father-in-law chanced upon during a golfing trip and introduced the sister-in-law to. Ever since, she has been a fixture there. It’s her pick-me-up, a no-brainer, according to her. Snohomish has an assortment of shops that deal in antiques, time-worn, quirky objects that make your heart flutter with want. Safe to say, we have never returned empty-handed from there.

The nephew and niece have grown up a fair bit. If the little missy is all for mathematics, reading and baking — she made us delicious mini brownie pizzas — the nephew is a level-headed teenager with none of the angst of one yet. From them, we gained new knowledge. Of the concept of sneakerheads. We had zero idea of this. You can call it a subculture, if you please. Sneakerheads are sneaker collectors who like to accumulate limited edition shoes and even vintage ones. They then swap or sell them for exorbitant prices. There are other little details culled from the mouth of these babes that made my mind tumble and stumble, but they escape me now.

We wrapped it all up with a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner, decorated the Christmas tree, and nibbled into a sticky and lovely Christmas cake, the best I have ever had. It was baked by the sister-in-law’s neighbour. It was shattering and I cannot wait to replicate its goodness.

Now that I am back to reality, it is unsettling, but it is acceptable because Christmas is around the corner. The city has gone the festive route. We got our first batch of snow too yesterday, big chunky flakes that drove through the day, changing directions, and in all of it, through the slush that resulted on the pavements of New York City, I was out to meet a blogger. She turned out to be as humorous as her blog and wonderful company because the hours sped by as we prattled.

That’s the beginning of December for me. I cannot wait to see what else it brings.

I am hoping for more Christmas cake and snow.

Iconic Pike Place signage — The iconic Pike Place signage

Matt's in the Market at Pike Place — Matt’s in the Market at Pike Place

Tiramisu from the Chinese bakery 85°. Astonishingly good.

A chilly break from Black Friday shopping at a shingle beach in Kirkland

Brother-sister act at the gardening-decor store, Molbak’s.

Dec 3, 2019Feb 29, 2020

Arundhati Basu48 Comments

Namaste

I am back after more than a month and why, oh why, do I feel like a truant? Friday evening has arrived with smoky blue skies and a kingdom of clouds, so I am feeling it. The frothy state of mind that accompanies weekends. You know, cracking open a bottle of red to dissipate the chill of autumnal evenings walks, followed up with plenty of cheese, pasta al pomodoro, grilled veggies…

Let’s see what have I been upto during my absence here. Mostly I have been working on my writing, without distractions (phone and social media).

But I am a creature of sensory pleasures, so there have been sessions of baking upside-down cakes incorporating the flavours of the season. I have been scoffing a wedge a day.

Meanwhile, the beauty of autumn has me bewitched. The colours have peaked and faded, the leaves are gathered in huge piles everywhere, and the sun has been flaming out every evening over the bay with precision. It is like being part of nature’s gallery of astonishments. To keep up with my beloved workouts, I am notching miles on a Peloton bike. Paired with my evening walks, these gruelling sessions make me sleep like a log (not that I could ever complain about the lack of it, which goes to say that I am loving the extra hour of sleep everyday).

What are long, dark evenings tailor-made for? Devouring books. I have stumbled upon the delicious writing of Marlena de Blasi. Her artistry with words has woven magic into my evenings.

There has been a splash of travelling too. We took off to Boston for my birthday earlier in the month and traipsed around in freezing climes. Found that it did not match upto the images of it I had conjured up in my mind . Yet what a wonderful time I had with my love, examining its old graveyards, pottering around its posh neighbourhoods with their pretty bakeries and antique shops, tasting bread at a celebrity chef’s restaurant that made me shut my eyes and will myself to remember its divine flavours for a long, long time. Oddly enough, I thought I saw a man butt-naked from the waist down, running along with a troop of people dressed up in costumes. I am glad I did not choke on the calamari I was in the process of gobbling down.

On Monday, we travel to Seattle for Thanksgiving with the sister-in-law’s family. The excitement begins now — I love the countdown to a holiday — and continues into the next week. Here’s to cooking, baking, thanksgiving, and some loving with the family.

Now, it’s your turn to fill my ears with your life events, and fill your senses with a few suggestions of autumn’s resplendence.

Nov 22, 2019

Arundhati Basu47 Comments

On the Trail of Bonny River Towns

Summer has come in with a show of jazz hands. The days are hot, and the nights so lovely and soft, filled with breezes of pure delight and fireflies that twinkle and dim like their very lives depend upon it. The gentle warmth in the air has as if unlocked the ridiculously sweet fragrance of the Sweetgum trees in the park. Every night as I walk through the maze of tall trees, a strong scent cocoons the senses in the quiet of the night. A skunk skulks around in the dark and I look warily at its quivering fan of a tail. Would not do to spoil the peace of the night.

Which reminds me of the other evening when a friend accompanied me on my nightly walks. She shrieked hard at the sight of a skunk. I do not know who was more startled – the skunk or I.

Summer is the time to potter around and we have been doing so on weekends — seeking the solitude of the small towns that flank the mighty Delaware. The river that the Lenape Indians called Lenapewihittuk. It means rapid river of the Lenapes. But I have found it to be a remarkably serene river for the most part. To pick your way slowly along the Delaware is to pave the way for bluish green hills and rolling farmlands (how they make me sick for the British countryside) which land you in the middle of surprisingly photogenic towns nesting along the river. Perhaps you remember Lambertville (there’s a separate photo op on it here) and New Hope. They are of the Delaware river town tribe that set us off on this trail.

Imagine here, towns with historic vibes, all part of the Lenape belt where the Algonquin speaking Native Americans lived. That is till colonisation took place and the settlers came in, hopping around, renaming places and rivers. Delaware, for instance, was named after a British politician, Baron De La Warr. Along with some heritage, throw in generous dollops of old architecture, art galleries, antique centres, decor boutiques, bookshops, and friendly folk — and you know it’s gonna be something special.

It turns out that the Raritan River, which is connected to the Delaware River via a canal, has its share of pretty townships. Like Clinton, a town in Hunterdon County in New Jersey, where we ended up in our quest for placid weekend rambles.

The main protagonist of Clinton is a red mill. The rest of the town is cobbled together with old houses built in ornate architectural styles. Plenty of balusters, gables, pilasters and porches there. During the 1800s, travelling theater companies would make stops in Clinton because of its banging music hall. But all footsteps now lead to a couple of old mills there that straddle the South Branch of the Raritan River. I have a weak spot for barns and mills. The older, the better (but of course).

Under the sufficient glare of a June sun, we trod across the rusted grid of the truss bridge. On one side of it stood two picture-perfect mills, facing each other across the smooth spill of a man-made waterfall. A small flock of geese drifted around the waters and everything around was somnolent in the heat, like a picture playing out in slow motion. On the other side of the bridge, we watched an angler, submerged in knee-deep water, cast a fly rod into the mossy green waters. I wonder if he struck lucky. Meanwhile, people sat on garden chairs of some café that lined the pavement along the river – and I would like to think that they took cooling chugs of heady drinks to stave off the heat shimmering around us.

Now the Red Mill is the kind of place you walk into and get lost for the better part of an hour. The men behind its conservation must have put in enough thought to engage the visitor, for it is mighty easy to induce a snooze fest with so many details. It is when you recreate the lives and stories of people who worked and lived around the mill that it can spark off the imagination. The mind then latches onto the recreation of a lifestyle that was the only one the people of the age knew and lived. Several universes away from this modern world of ours where man has contrived to make life as divested of effort as possible.

A one-house schoolroom with its coal burner, small wooden chairs and slate-boards, the blacksmith’s quarters, the quarries where Irish immigrants must have slaved away to earn their daily bread, corn cribs and herb gardens, … life would have been tough and yet rewarding for the settlers who made a living off their surroundings. Just for those moments when I was peering into the schoolroom, sheds, quarries and log cabins, I was whisked back in time to the Smoky Mountains where the legacies of the settlers are everywhere, even in the mid of dense forests. Come with me into Clinton and have a peek?

2019-06-15 10.06.06 3.jpg — Main Street in Clinton

2019-06-27 12.00.45 2.jpg — Historic properties line the roads of Clinton

2019-06-27 12.02.47 2.jpg — A lane that turned out to be not Dickensian in the least but filled with vintage guitars, bearable Thai food and friendly locals.

2019-06-27 12.00.46 2.jpg — Maine Coons of Clinton on the prowl

2019-06-27 12.00.46 1.jpg — They have great personality, like you can well make out from the visage of this whiskered beauty.

2019-06-15 10.06.02 1.jpg — Candy pink and white ice-cream parlours

2019-06-15 10.06.06 1.jpg — The bootery in town

2019-06-15 10.06.04 1.jpg — Graffiti showcasing the Red Mill and the adjoining quarries

2019-06-27 12.00.40 2.jpg — The old truss bridge

2019-06-27 12.00.36 1.jpg — The stone mill on the South Branch of the Raritan River, known formerly as the Dunham-Parry Mill. Nowadays it goes by the name of the Hunterdon Art Museum. It was a grist mill before it was repurposed to serve as a space for art lovers. Before this particular stone mill came up, on this site stood another mill that is said to have been used by George Washington’s army to grind wheat in the mid-1700s.

20190615_151742-01 — The Red Mill. A Mr. Ralph Hunt owned both the Red Mill and the Dunham-Parry Mill in the 1800s so that the town was naturally called Hunt’s Mills. However, his use of the Red Mill as a wool producing one ran into severe losses and he had to let go of it. The mill changed several hands over the decades. The subsequent merchant owners decided to rename the town from Hunt’s Mills to Clinton, after the New York Governor of the time, DeWitt Clinton.

Processed with VSCO with a6 preset — Fly fishing on somnolent days in the South Branch of the Raritan.

2019-06-27 12.00.39 3.jpg — The Red Mill went into operation around the early 1800s and has had many epithets since. First was Hunt’s Mill, as you well know by now. Then it was dubbed the Black Mill. You see, one of the new owners turned from making grist to graphite. Greasy black dust issued forth from the mill. The same owner decided to switch next to the production of talc. So the next local name for it was the White Mill. And now, as you see, it is the Red Mill.

2019-06-27 12.00.31 1.jpg — Willows and an old pick-up made for good friends

2019-06-27 12.00.34 2.jpg — The look of the mill has changed with each ownership. The mill I saw that day with Adi was the result of centuries of tweaks.

2019-06-26 11.18.18 2.jpg — In the same county as Clinton, roughly 10 miles away, is the town of Alexandria where this one-room schoolhouse called Bunker Hill School House once stood. It was the Old Church School then and began life as a log building in the 1700s that was revised to give way to this 1860-frame. In use till the early 1920s, it was retired and used as a chicken coop and pig house before it was moved in the ’70s to its current location within the compound of the Red Mill.

2019-06-26 11.18.18 3.jpg — Students from the year 1891. They would have studied by the light of kerosene lamps and the sexes would have sat separately in the room. Girls to the left, boys to the right. The ‘good’ students would have been awarded the privilege of stoking the fire in the coal stove that heated the classroom. Students who were poor at studies would have got the dunce cap and high corner stool treatment. Loos were outdoors and these little men and women would have made do with corn cobs and catalogue pages as toilet paper.

2019-06-26 11.18.18 1.jpg — Parsing the school room as it was. Windows came with generous frames as you can see, to allow the room maximum exposure to natural light, there being no electricity at the time. The children had sand tables at the front of the classroom to practise writing and on a shelf at the rear of this room there used to be pails in which the students carried their lunches.

2019-06-26 11.18.14 2.jpg — Old school paraphernalia. No laptops here, mind you.

2019-06-26 11.18.20 2.jpg — The Tenant’s House for quarry workers. It had a parlour and kitchen on the first floor and two bedrooms on the second. The unit was first built by an Eli Bosenbury in the 19th century for the sum of $38. Life was notoriously simple. There was no electricity till the 1940s, so it was lived in the light of kerosene lamps, water had to be lugged to the kitchen in 8-quart buckets from a spigot located outside since there was no plumbing, children slept on the floor on mattresses, and stacked their clothes on the floor, there being no dressers at their disposal.

2019-06-26 11.18.21 1.jpg — One of the quarry workers who lived in the Tenant’s House starting 1860 was Peter Dalrymple. He was a day labourer who paid up $25 annually as rent for this house. He had a large family that included his wife and 8 children. From the expression of their faces on this snippet, they look quite contented to me despite the hardships they must have faced in their daily lives.

2019-06-15 10.08.22 1.jpg — The replica log cabin, modelled on the early 18th-century childhood home of local Revolutionary War General, Daniel Morgan. Here is a typical way the original colonial settlers lived when they occupied this new land.

2019-06-15 10.11.46 1.jpg — The log cabin originally had a sod roof which had to be watered during dry spells. Log cabins usually had these small rooms because trees that were used were seldom more than 30 feet in length. Plus smaller rooms could be heated more efficiently by the open fires on which one cooked as well.

2019-06-15 10.11.46 2.jpg — Windows were small and few to prevent the loss of heat, and more than often they had no glass, but were covered by a loose fabric. Roofs were pitched low and there was normally just enough headroom to allow a sleeping loft for children because it was warmer near the chimney.

2019-07-10 06.35.07 1.jpg — Essentially your kitchen garden

2019-06-26 11.18.12 2.jpg — Corn crib where corn was dried and stored

2019-06-15 10.08.25 1.jpg — The quarry was named the Mulligan Quarry after the Irish Mulligan brothers from Cavan County in Ireland who worked at the quarry and later bought it.

2019-06-15 10.08.20 2.jpg — Clinton was rich in dolomite limestone, a kind of calcite rock. After a great fire in the town in the 1800s, Mulligan stone was used to rebuild the town.

2019-06-27 12.00.32 1.jpg — The Stone Crusher and Screen House stands adjacent to the quarry. Limestone was dynamited and loaded here. Large chunks were pulverised and the screen sorted them out into four sizes that would then be led into chutes to be loaded onto wagons that would wait at the bottom of the building.

2019-06-15 10.11.47 1.jpg — An impressive 19th century carriage shed

2019-06-26 11.18.21 2.jpg — Kayaking on the South Branch of the Raritan

2019-06-27 12.00.39 1.jpg — Because one cannot have enough of such views.

Jul 11, 2019

Arundhati Basu49 Comments

Montauk

Long Island lives up to its name. The peninsula that juts from New York City and takes off for the Atlantic Ocean is freakishly long and narrow, something that leaps at you when you decide to drive to ‘The End’ that is Montauk, at the easternmost tip of the island. The drive appears to spans several eras and that is not a piffling matter if you happen to take a few detours. Such as a Costco with a fuel station in the Long Island town of Amityville. And since your ears perked up at the sound of Amityville, like a dog at the patter of his human’s feet outside the door, you threw in a mile-long diversion to the iconic haunted house in the same town. At the end of it, you found a house that looked awfully different, an alter-ego you had not been prepared for. You left it behind, feeling foolish about this deviation from the original plan especially because it was chased by a flat tire on the highway.

Self-pity being a worthy cultivated art, you would tend to feel sorry for yourself, till you overheard two mustachioed bikers who had parked their superbikes upon the same highway as you. One of them had lost his phone somewhere on the highway.

What are the chances of someone being worse off than you? Misery loves company.

It took us around five hours, including this hairy turn of events, and another diversion to the Long Island airport to exchange the car at the rental agency there.

We had greyed before reaching Montauk.

The day that had started on a liquid sunny, and indeed hot note, suddenly turned upon us. The skies were sullen by the time we chanced upon a quiet beach tucked into a surprisingly unpretentious hamlet called Amangansett. A surprise because the rest of Long Island, for the most part, is sprinkled with these pish-posh towns. Amangansett means ‘the place of good water’, as it was deemed by the Montaukett Indian tribes who founded it. A pair of Dutch brothers and the descendants of English settlers bought the land from the Montauketts in the late 1600s and developed the genteel place that we saw that day.

The ocean breeze was frigid as Adi, his sister, and I, walked past pale teenage boys just returned to their cars with their surfboards. The white sands of Amangansett were pristine and powdery. Sinking my feet into the luxuriously soft sands felt therapeutic as the cold breeze teased the hair into a glorious abandon. Only a handful of people sat around lounging on beach chairs. And a Bernedoodle who sat on his haunches, with his bum to the sea. Rows of low lying houses looked down upon the beach.

The landscape beyond the beach threw up sand dunes, some out-of-place modern estates tucked into wooded quarters, and farmland. We soon left behind this old whaling town where in 1942 four German spies had been dropped off by a submarine to stage a Nazi attack on the US.

We were back on the Old Montauk Highway that is supposed to be a scenic route. Naturally, we expected to cruise along the coast, but that way lay disappointment. Sure we passed through photogenic towns such as Southampton, Bridgehampton and Water Mill but most properties were tucked in behind tall hedgerows and all you got was an eyeful of the buzzing little town centres with their line-up of all the chic bars and restaurants you could be noshing at.

Right at the end of it all was Montauk. Finally. The former home of the Montauketts, and later, the settlers who drove sheep and cattle along the bluffs that crawl into the Atlantic. Then the fishermen. And now, the folks from Manhattan who like to spend their evenings drinking local brews at the intensely alive Gig Shack in town. While the town centre is rife with places to eat, drink, and shop, with some fine boutiques selling quality souvenirs and clothing, the real feel of it was to be had at the tip of the land. An isolated place with its 18th century white and red lighthouse standing guard over the hump of a cliff that sweeps into the ocean – seemingly far from the trample of fashionable people who have adopted the rest of the island for their own.

You could almost find yourself whisked to another time, walking along the edge of that 200-year-old lighthouse, to a Walt Whitman-esque time when according to the native Long Islander, the eastern end of Long Island was a “relief from the trammels of fashion”. It was here at Montauk Point where Whitman had daydreamed and been consumed by the wildness of his surroundings that later spilled into a short poem.

“I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing
but sea and sky)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the
distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps—that
inbound urge and urge of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.”

Here where the crowds were thin even on the eve of summer, for a brief while, my hair hopelessly tangled in the ocean breeze, I thought I was on Walt Whitman’s Long Island.

2019-06-20 04.34.42 1.jpg — The Amityville House on Ocean Avenue

2019-06-20 04.39.08 2.jpg — Aforementioned Bernedoodle at Amangansett

2019-06-20 04.50.32 1.jpg — Montauk Point

2019-06-20 04.50.31 1.jpg — Eastern tip of Long Island

2019-06-20 04.39.09 1.jpg — The oldest lighthouse in NY State

2019-06-27 10.41.11 2.jpg — …and us (P.C.: Anuradha Varma).

Jun 28, 2019

Arundhati Basu39 Comments

The River Town of Hope

An old grist mill caught my eyes. I was standing at the edge of the green truss bridge in Lambertville that spans the gentle Delaware and opens up to a twin town which does not however lie in New Jersey. Cross a line on the bridge and you find out that you have left the state of New Jersey behind; that now, my darling, you have entered the state of Pennsylvania.

With just the crossing of a bridge, we were in another town.

New Hope of the Lenni Lenape Indians; of a thousand acres of land gifted by King Charles II to a certain William Penn; of a succession of men who operated ferries and mills; of an industrial past riddled with working mills and the legacy of a small community that worked hard to produce paper, quarry stones and grind grains. That is till a bohemian lot of artists were attracted to the picturesque quality that this town presented with its farrago of farmhouses, mills and barns, creeks, and the river that slips gently by it.

Towards the end of the 1930s, a group of aesthetes bought the grist mill that you see in the lead picture. They transformed it into a summer theatre. The Bucks County Playhouse, where so many famous actors and actresses honed their trade before they tried their luck on Broadway. That is how artists put New Hope on the map for art aficionados. And then, the rest of us followed on a day drenched with sun, filled with hope about this town that called itself New Hope. Note that the mills had their say in deciding its title for there were the Old Hope Mills which burned down, only to be replaced with mint-fresh mills built as the New Hope Mills.

Right from the main street where the bridge disgorged us, we were hard pressed for which direction to take. But there was no chance of leaving any road unexplored here. There was a roll-call of restaurants and cafes, ice cream shops, hippie shops selling harem pants and Buddhas, decor stores where you could step in and complete wooden jigsaw puzzles only to find some pieces broken, gourmet popcorn shops, food markets promising a tantalising mix of world cuisine…and then there were charming old properties, stone houses and mansions. And a stone bridge below which a somnolent creek crawled past the photogenic grist mill of my fancies before it emptied into the Delaware river.

So what did we do? We ambled around as much as one could; had strange conversations with mothers holding onto occupied loos for their sons; scoffed delicious ice creams; bought popcorn; realised that a credit card had gone missing and which therefore an irate husband rushed to retrieve with remarkable scowls and mutterings; and perched ourselves at a quiet bar humming with couples, by the creek.

Weeping willows hanging shyly in veils of green around us, the waters of the creek sliding by in smooth emerald sheets while all along catching the reflection of leafy trees lining its banks and the dappled sunlight, and flights of sparkling wine. We were caught in the moment.

2019-06-06 09.01.54 1.jpg — A man-made waterfall at the former 19th century grist mill. Credit: Adi.

2019-06-06 09.01.55 1.jpg — Besotted by this old mill, so naturally you shall be treated to every possible angle of it. Credit: Adi.

2019-06-06 08.52.45 3.jpg — Baroque Victorian catches the eye on the main street. A man called Charles Crook had the mansion built for his wife who was a fan of scrollwork. Thus its elaborate stage-like front. Additionally, it was the first house in Bucks County to boast of running water. Mansion Inn is an 18th century property, and though the inn itself did not exist then, it is the site where George Washington and his men dined before heading for a battle of the American Revolution. Credit: Adi.

2019-06-06 09.01.53 1.jpg — A town of settlers, New Hope has these rows of picket-fenced historic brick and stone properties sheathed in ivy, that make the heart skip a beat. Historic plaques often tell of a house’s former owner and their importance in the scheme of things. Credit: Adi.

2019-06-06 09.10.43 1.jpg — The Town Hall once served as New Hope’s town hall, school and jail. Credit: Anuradha Varma.

2019-06-06 09.01.51 1.jpg — One of the oldest houses in New Hope is this, Carriage House. You can catch a night’s stay or more here because it is a bolthole for the keen, with exposed wooden beams and hardwood floors. Credit: Adi.

2019-06-05 09.02.45 1.jpg — A capture of my sister-in-law at the bar along the Aquetong Creek. Credit: Anuradha Varma.

2019-06-06 09.10.31 1.jpg — Sparkling wines and green creeks. Credit: Anuradha Varma.

2019-06-06 09.10.17 1.jpg — Crisp pita and divine avocado dips to cool scowls away. Credit: Anuradha Varma.

Before falling upon that plate of grilled octopus with frenzy. Credit: Anuradha Varma.

2019-06-06 09.01.50 1.jpg — The bar by the creek. Credit: Adi.

2019-06-06 09.01.52 3.jpg — Picture perfect. However, that man on the bottom left hand side is not a dummy. For a moment I wondered if he was. Credit: Adi.

Old grist mills can be grist for your fancy. Credit: Anuradha Varma

Jun 14, 2019

Arundhati Basu22 Comments

The Lambertville Photo Roster

An idyllic town filled with artists and antiques by the Delaware river, Lambertville carries promises of halcyon days beneath the bowers of trees that line its streets. The photographs you shall see soon have all been culled from Adi, but I do feel rather dissatisfied that I do not have enough to do justice to the air of Victoriana that hangs about the town’s able shoulders. A church spire glinting beneath the harsh glare of the noon sun, paint peeling off the red door on the street, carefully renovated old house fronts with period features still in place, transom windows, quaint lampshades lighting up interiors of cafes housed within aged properties, historic brick and stone facades, an old railroad and sprawling antique stores brimming with vintage finds. I hope you will be a little carried away by the workings of this 18th century town that was the stopping point of choice for stagecoaches travelling the New York-Philadelphia route along the old York Road.

2019-06-05 07.06.22 2.jpg — The former residents of this town, the Lamberts and the Coryells, rest in the graveyard of the First Presbyterian Church of Lambertville. The church building dates back to 1854.

2019-06-05 07.06.25 1.jpg — The Marshall House is the legacy of James Wilson Marshall, the man from Lambertville who directed the world’s attention to California with his discovery of gold flakes along the American River. The irony is that Marshall received no recognition or gold and lived a hand-to-mouth existence till the day he died.

2019-06-05 09.02.43 2.jpg — Adi and sister-in-law give into a photo at the stairs of The Marshall House that was built using ‘Lambertville Pancake brick’, a locally dug and fired clay.

2019-06-05 07.06.24 1.jpg — ‘Gram worthy streets and coffee shops of Lambertville

2019-06-06 08.52.39 1.jpg — Artists busy at work on the pavements of the 18th century town.

2019-06-06 08.52.42 2.jpg — The Victorian property within which sits Caffe Galleria, spelt with a double f as a tribute to its owner’s Italian roots.

2019-06-06 08.52.42 1.jpg — Inside the cafe, you still see a dated fireplace, beautiful wood panelling, and a period bathtub swathed in dust in its quaint loo.

2019-06-05 07.06.24 2.jpg — A church for the Catholics on Bridge Street

2019-06-06 08.52.41 2.jpg — A peep inside St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church

2019-06-05 07.06.21 1.jpg — Oomphy doors of Lambertville

2019-06-06 08.52.44 3.jpg — Antiquing pleasures

2019-06-06 08.52.43 1.jpg — Antique farm tools. A hand crank seeder.

2019-06-06 08.52.45 1.jpg — Attacked by antiques

Jun 11, 2019

Arundhati Basu27 Comments

Whoop Whoop, These Summer Days of Bobbsey Twins and Vintage Gold Glasses

I woke up feeling chipper today. Was it because I was in a state of almost intoxicated sleep where I drifted in and out thinking, here I am getting out of bed now, but there I was, still in that beatific place? Or, was it because my husband appeared suddenly to lift me straight out of bed and deposit me in the bath? I could not tell, but the latter is rare commodity nowadays with Adi wading incessantly through a bottomless pit of work (on his part, the impetus would have been decidedly his morning dose of blended cold coffee).

Strangely enough, it is also one of those mornings when my body feels unaccountably light and frothy, ready to whiz up the intimidating Kanchenjunga (I told you, some kind of foolish and manic goodness this), or even brave the mugginess inside a cheese factory to churn cheese. If you have been inside of one of those, you know it is a feat. If you have not, imagine a steam room where you would not last more than 10 minutes. Or actually, you could just imagine plodding through the streets of Calcutta/Chennai in summer. Strange because it is the time of the month when my hormones do their crazy dance, and I feel far from dancing, more like curling up with a book into a ball of misery.

To not drive my male readers into the farthest corners of the universe, let me get on with the pleasant discoveries of this season. My sister-in-law was visiting us, sans family. She had heard from a friend about the antique towns of New Jersey. Imagine our chagrin. We have been here two years, and yet, we had no blooming idea about their existence.

It is thus that we found ourselves an hour away from home in a town called Lambertville.

Lambertville. When my sister-in-law read its name out loud as an antiquing town upon the Delaware river, my mind started twirling. Intimate cafés, leafy streets, sprawling antique stores, people ambling through a riverside town…We drove into this town that I had conjured in my mind. As delightful as Cirencester in its antiquing prospects. With as large antique stores that made the heart flutter with the anticipation of experiencing past pleasures.

The Lenni Lenape Indians lived in Lambertville before it was colonised. After the land was bought off them, the first resident of the town was a gentleman called John Holcombe. This was sometime in the early 1700s. Why is it not called Holcombeville then? Well, in came a family next. The Coryells. They developed a portion of the town and even started a ferry here, which was subsequently used by George Washington and his men, when they were quartered here during the Revolutionary War. But was it called Coryellville, or even Georgetown, as the Coryells wanted, after one of their sons who served in the New Jersey forces? No sir, no. The honour went to the Lambert family who swished into town a century later, in the early 1800s. The Coryells seethed, but that is all they could have done anyway, stewed in righteous indignation, because John Lambert was a New Jersey governor. And as we know, politicians are politicians for a reason.

The sky was chirping blue that morning, and the sun, it shone with no cares or clouds to mar its radiance. It was the kind of day when the Delaware glistened like a sheet of gently rippling mossy green, in no particular rush to be anywhere else.

People of the ‘Gram, be warned. In Lambertville, you lose your mind. Historic mansions and brick row houses straddle its tree-lined streets. The architecture is Victorian and Federal in style, at once so classic and lovely that you want to walk in and declare one of them to be yours from this day on. The small churches with their aged visage and stained glass windows evoke awe and even the cafés are housed in period properties along quiet bylanes.

I went batty inside the antique shops. At one, I lay my hands on a pair of gold, wire glass frames. They were delicate, prompting me to picture their former wearer as a twittering old lady with powdery, white hair. Then there were some tatty Bobbsey Twins numbers I grabbed greedily. The chatty woman at the till informed me that they were from an old estate she had been to. She also told the elderly man she was conversing with, “Like this young lady, this generation loves everything old. All these things I buy at auctions, especially books, they are snapped up.” At this point I butted in: “Umm, I am not really as young as you make me out to be.” The man nodded wisely here and said, “Best not to go there.”

We continued to flit from store to store in a leisurely manner, by the end of which Adi flopped down at a bench outside a cheese boutique selling farm-fresh cheeses — and declared that he was Done. Oh, but were we? After nibbling on some sharp cheeses, we found a Turkish man selling Azerbaijanian, Kazakh and Turkish carpets and bags, and my sister-in-law was stoked by her finds. It was the perfect day for rummaging through interesting wares and cracking good bargains, and may I add, forgetting credit cards behind at aforementioned Turkish shops. Which meant a thunderous husband, and later, Turkish sweets from the man who returned the card to Adi. Here I have to slip in surreptitiously that I also forgot my phone at home. The suffering was all mine. All those photographs waiting to be clicked. Sob. Naturally I have to borrow them from Adi, but he is on a constant stream of calls, so I shall have to leave the beauty of the artist town of Lambertville to the workings of your pretty mind.

But before I leave, it would be amiss of me not to mention the old canal that runs alongside Lambertville’s old railway station. The canal that was laid out by thousands of Irish immigrants in the 19th century till a wave of cholera swept through town. Most of those poor labourers lie buried alongside this canal where people stroll or bike today on long, summery days. Odd to think of these stories that stay concealed behind the most serene facades.

I wish that this was all. For Adi was knackered. But why be satisfied with one bohemian town when there may be the promise of another lurking around the corner? In our case, right across the Delaware and the bridge sitting astride it, was the town of New Hope. Naturally, we were thrilled to bits. Two artist villages for the price of one. We had struck gold.

Jun 5, 2019

Arundhati Basu73 Comments

The Sublime Winds of May

The winds are in a hurry to get somewhere today. Their whooshing sounds permeate the insulation of these glass windows and there is this suggestion that they are feeling rather spunky. That’s all there is to it. Just the suggestion. No nannies and tots floating around. But there is this romantic feeling that sets in upon the senses when the wind whistles outside and the skies are smothered with clouds.

Now, the last time I last wrote here, I was in Calcutta, on a spontaneous visit to my parents. My father had just had an angioplasty then and I thought it was imperative to have a look in on them, if not for anything else, for the mind to stop concocting grim scenarios.

On the way to Calcutta, I flew Cathay Pacific for the first time. I was won over on two counts. The service was simply splendid and the food so healthy and flavourful that by the time I reached Hong Kong airport for a few hours’ layover, even after a 15-hour long flight, I was brimming with contentment.

I headed to The Wing, Cathay Pacific’s flagship lounge in Hong Kong, where I bathed in the shower suites. Minimalistic and neat inside, each suite was sheathed in beautiful dark stone and the fixtures carved from bamboo wood. Kitted up as it was with the fresh-smelling lux cleansers and shampoos, I came out feeling spiffy and ready to take on the world which as it turned out was not too tough. It was but a pillowy world of fluffy baos, you know, those big Chinese buns filled with vegetables and meat. The Chinese woman at the counter barely smiled and she understood no English, something that is rather common in the city of Hong Kong if you saunter into its flea markets and street food stalls, but all that mattered was that she doled out a platter of baos. Now these were proper bad boys. You could fashion them into pillows and sink into them, really. Except that the teeth would rather sink into them and make quick work of the matter at hand. This took place in the Noodle Bar which was one of the three sections in the lounge.

There was the Long Bar too where you could sit and catch a drink apart from making a beeline for the buffet, but this was kind of boring, it being early morning in Hong Kong, so I wandered into the third section, a Coffee Loft. Ooh now there was the real deal following a heartwarming breakfast. Shots of espresso and traditional pastries. My pick was the Chinese Wife Winter Melon Cake. Names get me. Just like books with smashing covers and titles. Who says I am not superficial? To get to the heart of the pastry, it was flaky, and if I were a bard, there would be sonnets on Chinese melon cakes. This beauty was rich (you cannot go wrong with pork lard shortening) and it dissolved in the mouth in a beautiful symphony of melon and spices. As usual, there are enough stories behind the name, but I will tell you of two of them.

One goes back to a man’s love for his wife who sold herself as a slave to get money for her father-in-law’s treatment. The man conjured up the idea of this cake as a street snack. His plan was to get his wife back once he had enough money. The other is about a Guangzhou chef who worked at a teahouse. He initially took some round pastries home as a treat for his wife. Her feedback: They made it better in her hometown, with winter melon paste. The chef reworked the pastry with melon paste and gave it a flat shape.

Dear men, it is thus easy to draw the conclusion that good things come to those who listen to their women.

When I landed in Calcutta late at night, the wind was knocked out of me. It was sultry. The real feel was often 49°C during the day and I was dissolved in the heat every morning I headed out for a run. Summer had blustered its way into the city. But in a few days swept in Kalbaisakhi. The season of thunderstorms when the skies grow dark, so suddenly that you do not have the time to even cuss. Smoky blue clouds mushroom in armies and hang ominously above your head, like dark devils with a mission. They then proceed to let loose upon you with all their might. These are accompanied by dust storms, which are not kind on you if you happen to be walking on the roads like a daft creature out to court trouble. Naturally, I had the thrill of being caught in one. I had forgotten how it all was since in the last few years I have been going back to Calcutta during winters when the weather turns all mellow and lovely.

After two weeks, I returned home to Bayonne, having spent time in Calcutta schooling and scolding my dad — also feeling relieved that all was fine with my folks for now. When I got back, I found to my delight tiny leaves upon the trees and cherry blossoms about to bloom. It was still nippy and the days were starting to warm up. On days, when it rains, it all looks like a beautiful painting. And with the change of seasons, there are children now in the park, yellow dandelions matting the grass in the parks, waiting to turn into those airy fairy balls of seeds, flowers everywhere you look. It is so happy and joyous that I can feel my heart bloom along with them. So that it is also time for me to stop prattling, leave you with some random photographs, and pop out for a wind-in-my-hair-and-a-song-in-my-heart kinda walk.

1970-01-01 06.30.00 1.jpg — I had forgotten how scenic the landing is in Hong Kong.

1970-01-01 06.00.00 2.jpg — Bamboo wooden vibes of the Noodle Bar at The Wing, coupled with suspicious lady.

1970-01-01 08.00.00 1.jpg — Baos stuffed with pork and cabbage, sweet lotus, and the third was a plain mantou, a bao made from wheat dough. Teamed with the scallions and chilli and peanut sauce, these were the formidable three.

1970-01-01 08.00.00 3.jpg — Above-mentioned, Chinese Wife Winter Melon Cake.

1970-01-01 08.00.00 2.jpg — Flaky pastry to swoon over

Moonlit night in Calcutta on our terrace

Back in Bayonne, the green is so fresh and young, as the trees shrug back into their clothes. Nature’s fashion is effortless.

Well hello, long time! What, no peanuts? Must have been waiting for a little booty since people here insist on feeding them.

Cherry blossoms with their brief and intense spell of beauty

And, that’s a wrap for today from Bayonne.

May 9, 2019

Arundhati Basu62 Comments

Winds of January

When I woke up this morning, the temperatures outside (the real feel of it that is) read -25°C. I could hear the wind howling outside as I went about my workout in the rooftop gym, watching bony trees toss their heads around. Yet it looks so charming outside. The soft sun lighting up the park, touching upon grey wrinkled barks and casting long shadows into the afternoon, the shimmering blue waters of the Hudson that are clearly visible every winter… it could almost lull you into thinking of it as a beautiful spring day. Almost. Till you look down and notice the man at the bus stop cowering in his jacket and balaclava, battered by rushes of winds. Then you wonder, should you head out for a long walk by the river? The winds are exceptionally strong after all. Yesterday evening on my walk past the river, on the way to the grocery store, they shoved me all along till I reached home.

It has been some time now that a new year has arrived, yet it is a struggle to slip into the routine of January. There are degrees of reluctance at my end. I hate letting go of the year that has been quite so easily. I do wonder about the kind of ends and beginnings you all have had. Has it been a mix of the good, the middling and the not so good? The arrival of another year does tend to make one reflective.

I have a fistful to reflect about, having arrived home from our travels in the second week of this month. There have been some new experiences and repeats of others in the meanwhile. Paris, Strasbourg, Colmar, Delhi, Calcutta…along with a first-time experience of flying the Etihad Apartment. I will go about them all at my usual unhurried pace, but before starting with my travel posts, I wanted to drop in and say, hello my lovelies.

Jan 21, 2019

Arundhati Basu54 Comments

Fantasies of the Season

I wanted to traipse around the city today. For another gander at the holiday windows along Fifth Avenue. But a run and high-intensity workout followed by a session of packing suitcases (we leave for France tomorrow) has done me in. I have been daydreaming while writing this post because oh travel brings with it sweet anticipation (even though my family did make some pother about it because we head to Paris and Strasbourg), so it took some time to get about putting up these vignettes of NYC’s famed holiday windows from last season and this.

The champion of all the narratives was that of Saks Fifth Avenue. They come up with concoctions in their windows that capture the fizzy-frothy spirit of Christmas alright. I never cease to be astonished by the lengths to which they go to make your jaws drop. So what if Macy’s started the game in NYC in the 1880s when they introduced New Yorkers to a novel spectacle. Lest you are not over a century old (write to me, if you are), on a fine December in 1883, outside Macy’s, people were greeted by the sight of Santa Claus on a mechanical sleigh, chauffeured by his team of reindeer, on a circular track that moved around the windows. Santa on parade. Imagine the conversations then. Another Christmas, Macy’s had a tin facade which was labelled ‘A Fantasy of Christmas’ and it did look the part. I shall include a photo that is sourced from the Internet because I was not around to take it in 1959 as you would imagine. Unless I am 76 and passing myself off as half the age on this blog. You never know.

Today the windows have been taken a few notches up from the simple displays of yore when the message was overwhelmingly of sentimentality and nostalgia. After all nostalgia connects us to a past that we know about. It is familiar — and we all ache for the familiar. Something to give us roots. The future can wait even as it hovers around the corner. Yet how these windows continue to evoke this feeling of joy and wonder when you lay eyes on them every season. Like an affirmation of the state of mind that Christmas is. And alongside, the Christmas tree pop-up shops on the pavements of NYC selling Fraser firs and the scent of pine, the scent of Christmas.

Macy’s old-fashioned look for the Christmas of 1959 (sourced from the Internet).

Last Year This Time

2017-12-11 04.30.47 1.jpg — Last year, it snowed when we noshed at the Bryant Park market

2017-12-11 04.30.44 1.jpg — Chicken and waffles soused in maple syrup. My favourite American dish. (whispers: It is awfully good).

2017-12-11 04.30.43 1.jpg — Treasures of NYC

2017-12-11 04.30.48 1.jpg — Carousel at Bryant Park

Processed with VSCO with a5 preset — The Christmas tree of Rockefeller Center

Processed with VSCO with c2 preset — Street sights

2017-12-11 04.08.45 2.jpg — Santa loiters in an Irish pub

2017-12-11 04.23.30 1.jpg — It shuts shop this year

2017-12-11 04.23.33 1.jpg — Cartier, tied up in a sparkly red bow

Saks Fifth Avenue, Last Year

2017-12-11 04.28.48 1.jpg — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

2017-12-11 04.28.56 1.jpg — And then, Once Upon a Holiday, designers put forth their takes on fairytale looks for Snow White.

2017-12-11 04.28.43 1.jpg — Alberta Ferreti

2017-12-11 04.28.41 1.jpg — Oscar de la Renta

2017-12-11 04.30.31 1.jpg — Ooh, Snow White as Bent Neck Lady

Saks Fifth Avenue, This Year

2018-11-24 11.10.31 1.jpg — The Theater of Dreams. The stage is a grand thing and this is the store’s paean to it.

2018-11-24 11.09.02 1.jpg — Bent Neck Lady is a favourite with Saks Fifth Avenue, you reckon?

2018-11-24 11.10.02 2.jpg — ‘Put on a dazzling face’

2018-11-24 11.10.05 1.jpg — My fella’s dazzling face

2018-11-24 11.09.04 1.jpg — ‘Some like it luxe’

2018-11-24 11.10.01 2.jpg — ‘Puttin’ on the glitz’

And maybe because I like an anti-climax better than you, because ‘We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men /Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw’, because I love spewing nonsense, here’s concluding this holiday post on a few random notes.

2018-11-22 05.36.52 2.jpg — Macy’s Sunny the astronaut who travels with her friends through space to help Santa Claus fix his sleigh for Christmas.

Dec 15, 2018

Arundhati Basu86 Comments