bayonne – ARUNDHATI BASU

December

I have been gone long. But at the back of my mind has been this constant hum, “don’t be a numpty, get back to the blog already!” So the days have passed while I have been thinking of making a return, but words seem strangely sparse nowadays. Do you know what I mean? I think you do. I might meet you and talk endlessly, as is my wont, but when it comes to blogging, I feel like a dried-up well.

An endless litany of days just merge into the other, though I do not imply that I am discontented. Sure I have my wobbles (like any of us), but I have never looked more inward than now, to keep my soul invigorated. In all of this nature has made the biggest difference. I have found great comfort in watching the machinations of the birds that haunt the bay here. The season has brought about its customary visitors – flocks of Canada geese that honk in the evenings as they fly home, wherever that is, in perfect formations; the ring-billed gulls who perch themselves on the walls unafraid, even as one jogs by; the Snow Goose that looks picture perfect; the male mallards with their glistening green heads and the females with their speckled brown plumage; the cutesy Buffleheads that bob in couples on the waters. I have learnt to tell the young ring-billed gulls from the mature ones, by virtue of their plumage. Maybe because I have poring over Audubon’s wonderfully detailed field guide.

Meanwhile a snow storm in the last two days has coated my world pristine white. It has brought such a spark of joy. So what if I find myself slipping on the ice that has formed in the tracks on the park or sinking deep into the snow as I try to get to the many snowmen that have cropped up around us. Everyone is out there, sledding down the gentle slopes in the park, making the most of the landscape bathed in snow. We all need what we can get to tide us over this odd year, isn’t it?

I have been recharging myself through art. Watercolours and charcoal drawings. I have also started an etsy store: www.etsy.com/shop/Artbybasu?ref=seller-platform-mcnav. I hawk my wares on it. That apart I have been working on going the self-publishing route with my book. It is daunting and involves loads of research, but at least I have some control over the process. One needs control where one can find it, don’t you think? Anyway, I hope to get back to blogging more regularly, now that I have gingerly made my way back here, and catch up with my feed. Needless to say, but I shall put it out nonetheless, I have missed you all.

To you my lovelies, I send the brilliance of snow and oodles of love from Bayonne. Off I go to demolish some quiches and making December count.

Dec 19, 2020Dec 19, 2020

Arundhati Basu25 Comments

Broodings of a Grey Day

Some days the best thing you can do is go for a long run. The mind trots along with you, and well, by the time you have decided to call it a day and arrived home, you feel brand new. Nothing can dull the edge of an endorphin rush.

On other days, you stretch, stretch, stretch. A spot of gentle yoga to make you feel lissome.

And then, there are special days. When you gobble down cookies you have baked and admire your own handiwork. For, there is a time for everything. Isn’t that what they say? Right, so this be the time for oat cookies, and if you are in the business of details, laced with butter, chunks of espresso chocolate, demerara sugar, cranberries and sea salt.

Now, sat with a crime novel, I feel a bit like an elephant. A contented elephant, if I should have to point out. Guilt can come knocking another day.

So yes, instead of being outside and feeling the cold breeze stir up the cells, I am tucked cosily beneath my duvet, distracted by nothing in particular from this gripping novel, staring at the church steeple and the bland grey skies time and again, idly wondering when the park shall be mine again.

You see, the park, my park, as I call it bossily, happens to be a county park. Sometime ago, it was decreed shut by order of the governor of New Jersey. This means it is completely off bounds, for all of us. Yet, some have decided that this is the time they shall sneak into the taped-off stretches to stroll, jog, and walk their dogs. This also means that the copper is on his daily rounds, patrolling the park, bearing down upon this errant lot, his wrath released upon them through loudspeakers.

In the last few days, pounding the pavement alongside the park, staring dreamily at the water that sparkles bewitchingly in the bay across the greens, I have been startled a few times to hear people admonished so. Steely words ringing through the air. “Get off the park immediately. The park has been sealed for a reason.” For some reason, it puts me in mind of Mr. Goon and his spectacular “clear orfs”. You must know who I refer to. I miss Mr. Goon. I am feeling a bit random and meh, if you will.

Anyhow, I have a new haunt now. Forty blocks down from where we live, is a small park by the bay where across a slipway boats are launched into the waters, and where baits cast into the waters, a couple of anglers wait for hours on wooden decks. I have adopted this park for me own. It stays so empty that when I first came across it, I felt it was the town’s well-kept secret. But yesterday, lopping down to it, I was startled. It being a day flooded by stellar sunshine, beautiful and liquid, people had arrived in droves.

Answering the siren call of the sunny evening, couples sat on benches snacking on sandwiches, girls and boys ran enthusiastically around the tracks, and families played all sorts of bat-and-ball games on the massive stretch of green. All in all, one big joyride. And certifiably strange for the first few minutes, you know. Like a preview of what the world was like before a certain virus came calling upon us.

Apr 29, 2020Apr 29, 2020

Arundhati Basu39 Comments

These Truly Hairy Days

Yesterday, I played the barber. Yesterday, I also arrived at the rapid conclusion that for all my sins, I am not cut out to be one.

For some time now, Adi has been whingeing about the mountain of hair that has been steadily foaming above his head. I have been ignoring it for the most part because hoovering up hair, getting rid of those tiny stubborn bits that stick to the nooks — however fond of cleaning I might be — is not my jam. And really, as much as I do adore the thought of my hair being snipped and whipped into shape at a salon, I cannot bring myself to take on any level of salon activities at home. When I want to get rid of the pesky grey hairs that pop up at the temples, I go to the salon. When I want a fringe, I head to the salon. When I want a hair spa, I make an appointment at the salon. I think by now, you have it figured. The gist of my feelings about what came my way next.

We had spent a lazy Sunday afternoon watching a nice film, concluded with double shots of espresso and slices of raspberry pecan coffee cake, when Adi got up and declared that we were going to tackle his hair. “Wha..?” I wanted to faint, which my husband would not allow. He meant business.

Man on a mission, he set up the bathroom. A chair plonked in the middle of it. Fetched the worst pair of scissors one can use to snip hair. Kitchen scissors. But next to it lay an impressive caboodle of hair clippers.

Now, imagine handing a pair of clippers to an individual who has not given a single hair cut in her whole blooming life. The only time I played with giving myself a fringe was an experiment gone wrong. I can tell you about the drawbacks of a too-short fringe till the cows come home. But I think I shall stick to this particular event.

Armed with the clippers, I started at the nape. First, I raised the bottom hairline. Safe to say, it now rests above his lower ear lobes.

“Way too short!” pronounced the subject in tones that would not and could not hide heavy notes of dismay. After I made an allowance for the customary moaning and frowning, I got back to the task. I had not even begun properly, and I was yet ready to be done with it. Sheared the back of the head. For all the world, I could have been shearing sheep. That thought made me howl with laughter. Convulsions that alarmed the subject so that he could not keep turning his head at the mirror from time to time, to keep a check on this very odd barber. Psst: The best part is, he could not see the back of his head. We do not have one of those big rectangular vanity mirrors they use at the salon to show you the effect of the hairdresser’s artistry on the rear portion of the head. What a fortunate thing.

When you use kitchen scissors that ain’t all that sharp to handle thick hair, you end up with hair flying all over yourself. Which you promptly dump on the subject. Because well, it is his hair. He might as well get the brunt of it. He did try to interject the proceedings with, “I am not your dumping ground”. But did he stand a chance?

I will not bore you further with the nitty-gritties of executing a hair cut, the way the scissors flew, the hacking around with no particular aim, or the hot mess in the bathroom after. But I will leave you with this that there are enough bald spots on the unsuspecting husband’s head, a bizarre semi-buzz cut at the wings, not by design, but all happenstance. Today, during a video call, his dad pronounced it to be a punk cut.

But the good news folks is that I am done with it.

Now, there’s only rest for the wicked.

Mar 30, 2020Apr 12, 2020

Arundhati Basu33 Comments

To Kill Van Kull

There are days when I want to walk so far that the mind is consumed by everything and nothing. Just the pleasures of walking down pavements, noticing life as it has become. A still painting.

Because we live in a post-industrial waterfront town of which we know nothing beyond traipsing around the picturesque park we are used to, one of these days when the skies are thick with swollen clouds, I walk to the other end of town which spills onto the tidal channel of the Kill Van Kull (Dutch for “channel from the pass”). Our waterway link with Staten Island and New York.

The road to Kill Van Kull is long, spanning quite a number of blocks, but the walk is not tedious. The pavements might not be lined with examples of flamboyant architecture, but a medley of styles, so that the mind is constantly engaged in noting the variety of architectural details thrown up along the way.

First, the unexpectedly attractive facade of the high school. Gothic Renaissance. Improved upon by the presence of trees bursting with magnolias.

Then, pretty row houses, community buildings worse for the wear, humdrum box buildings (the infamous Bayonne Boxes built in the wake of WWII — the architects who conceived them must have fallen asleep halfway through, bored by the results of their own efforts), part-brick part-clapboard houses, Victorian facades, skinny houses. Wrought-iron balconies, front porches, fire escapes climbing down big somber houses. Sandwiched in between these is a tall building complex from the ’70s, stacked one upon the other. Little boxes bring little joy to the eye.

However, as I near my destination, the houses begin to transform in character. These are surprisingly pleasing to the eye. Sprawling Mock Tudor houses, big clapboard houses that look like they must have been built when Bayonne started to get its first clutch of residents, elegant redstone houses with manicured lawns, wrought-iron garden chairs and tables, one of the houses with decorated carving and a small signage above the entryway stating that it was built in 1887… did anyone even live here in 1887, I think to myself.

Turns out the first person to set eyes upon the shores of Bayonne was a Florentine named Jean de Verrazzano, as early as the 1500s. An explorer in the service of Francis I, King of France, Verrazzano had sailed into New York harbour at the time. They named the bridge connecting Staten Island with Brooklyn after the worthy Italian.

A journal entry from Henry Hudson, sometime in 1609, describes shores he came upon during his sailings upon the Hudson. He wrote about the shores, that they were “pleasant with Grasse, and Flowers, and goodly Trees”. “Sweet smells came from them.” He was referring to Kill Van Kull, which I am bound for. It is also where his party was attacked by a group of Native Americans.

A network of roads wind above me, part of the highway that leads to New York City, and as I continue walking, the scene starts veering towards industrial. A 19th century brass foundry, which once supplied brass parts to the U.S. Navy during WWI, now converted to house a dollar store. A stretch of railroad tracks, probably disused. Geese droppings on the tracks. Old factories and warehouses in tatters. Large white tanks. And an atmosphere of haunting desolation typical to industrial quarters.

The wind has turned sharp as I sight the behemoth arch of the Bayonne Bridge spanning the Kill Van Kull and dominating the skyline. These very paths I roam was once covered in dense forests. Wild animals had the run of the place. Bears and panthers, wild cats and wolves, beavers, red deer, rattlesnakes, squirrels, and foxes. The only human presence here would have been of the Sanrikan Indians, of the Delaware tribe. When there would have been no bridge, no park, no houses, but just a small village. What would the Native Americans have thought of this transformation of their place? Who knows. They have long gone and what remains is this land. With a whole lot of houses stretching along the blocks, a couple of them formerly home to author George R.R. Martin. Them, a strip of a park, the bridge, Staten Island across the waters. And a gaggle of wild geese roaming about the greens, clucking and complaining. You are in the way.

Mar 27, 2020

Arundhati Basu32 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

This Spring of Contrasts

I had my first sighting of the leaves. Tiny green leaves are sprouting on the smaller plants in fits and starts all over the park. But the older trees, they are stubborn. They are holding onto status quo. This is a spring when we have had snatches of days that could not have been more at odds with each other. If there have been days of liquid sunshine with skies to match, snow has coated the boughs on days, and then there was that day when the fog was thick and heavy, it sat upon my eyelashes as I went out for a run. And the sunsets, let me not even get started about their exquisite beauty as they flame out into the skies.

The squirrels have started showing in greater numbers. They look suitably plump after their hibernation with possibly a decent reserve of nuts. Oh, and there are robins too! Now I have heard that it is a misnomer that robins appear during spring, but oh they do. There are whole bunches of them hopping up and down the slopes of the park, pecking and looking delightful with their breasts of red. As I felt this spirit of joy quickening in their sudden presence, I remembered my mother’s obsession with the cuckoo who lives somewhere in the coconut trees in our backyard in Calcutta. She gets great pleasure from telling me in detail about its odd timings for calling out, till I start zoning out, and the other day, I realised (with a tinge of horror and amusement) that this apple has fallen not too far from its tree.

Apr 10, 2018

Arundhati Basu58 Comments

The Return of the Squirrel

I can feel the march of spring. Could be a flash in the pan though. Smoky blue days making way for sunny ones replete with the network of bare branches and portly natives returning to scrounge nuts. But then there are hardly any, so with bushy tails fanning above their backs they scamper right up to you and rear upon their minuscule hind legs just like the comical meerkats you cooed over in Dartmoor.

Feb 21, 2018

Arundhati Basu54 Comments

Twilight

The sunset’s fiery kiss to the Hudson today on the second day of December stopped me short in my tracks. These spectacularly beautiful days are altogether unmissable. I want to trap them in my fists, shut ’em tight and hold time in my hands. How does one let go of these evenings of flaming oranges and lavenders, rose gold and smoky blues?

The Christmas lights are up. It seems that Bayonne with its worn-out air can also go ballistic with decorations. Less is clearly not more here.

Dec 3, 2017

Arundhati Basu49 Comments

The Day I Got Life Itself

That was yesterday. I was born 37 years ago to a woman who had accompanied her husband to the Middle-Eastern kingdom of Oman. In another culture which was alien to her, where the people sat for meals around gigantic metal trays and pulled chicken off bones — all in that one plate — to show that they care. Omanis inculcate intimacy through their meals. My mother told me that she found it a bit odd and often shrank from the prospect of eating from one plate with people she hardly knew. But I find the idea a bit nice. That the Omanis can and want to eat off one plate. Maybe it is the fact that something tugs at my heart when I think of my birthplace.

It was also a place where the men kiss and hug newborns without inhibitions — which put my mother off and she attributes the fact that I contracted some infection within a few days of being born to that propensity of my visitors. She had given up on me. ‘I asked my youngest brother (who used to work in Oman too) to take care of you while I slept for days with tiredness and depression.’ I carry the marks of it on my inner ankles. A star-shaped mark on each. Reminders of beating mortality early on when the doctors had to make two slits in them to insert saline drips. I think of them as birth marks because I do not think I have any other.

As I turned 37, I did not mind that this was a birthday where I went with my usual routine but the difference was the shower of love I was the recipient of. From friends and family through calls and messages all day long. Our niece who had celebrated her 9th birthday a day before cut a strawberry cake for the both of us in Seattle and sent me a cutesy video along with her brother.

Cheila’s Saramago postcard arrived just in time, a night before, like a wonderful precursor. Adi had already gifted me a cache of dresses. Then came two huge boxes of boots he had asked me to choose – a tan slouched pair with stilettos, which make my senses sigh with pure pleasure, and a dark taupe over-the-knee pair that also do the job pretty well.

I am not that fussed about gifts but these added a sparkle to the day as did the skeins of wool and crochet needles I gave myself along with a pile of old and new books. You should always gift yourself something or the other from time to time — and on your birthday, why not, right? From me to me. I have so many books that say that, it is a tad embarrassing. Someday when I leave this life and those books are possibly in some charity shop and picked up by a stranger, he/she would possibly think, ‘what a nut job!’. And oh yes, I want to start learning to crochet. My mother would bawl here with laughter. How she tried to teach me knitting when I was a teen — but really, I had more important things to do than knit then. This is when I know I am 37.

Adi was working from home. From time to time he got up and hugged me with ‘Budday Gurl’ chirpings. He was feeling guilty but he has been burdened with work for some time now. Americans like to work hard. It is an admirable trait in this country even though it can cause you to burn out early.

In the evening, I went for a long, long run because it was crisp and cold, the park cleaners were out blowing leaves in big piles of gold and russet, and the squirrels had turned even more tubby than you would think it possible. I promise you this that they can hardly scamper with their earlier agility of summer. I have detected one of them whose tail has got left somewhere so that it is a sad little stub. I wonder what’s the story behind it. It is not everyday that you see tail-less squirrels after all.

During the course of the run, I stopped for a breath and a chat with a gruff old fisherman by the Hudson. He had just caught a sizeable striped bass from the Hudson. One of those beret wearing men, chewing on tobacco, and possibly thinking to himself, ‘Oh no, Chatty Cathy!’ But I am nothing if not persistent in the face of gruffness so he did give in and gifted me with a sentence. In the evening while Adi and I squabbled over Monopoly after a lovingly-rustled up dinner of cauliflower & leek soup and baked chicken steaks, the boy next door turned up with a birthday card and hugs. I was thrilled to bits. I had made coffee-flavoured dark chocolate with pumpkin seeds & pecans for his partner and him because the birthday cake I had made earlier on with blackberries and blueberries was scrumptious, but when I slipped it into the refrigerator to chill, the tall tower of mini cakes had toppled right over. Talk about whimpers.

Oh, and I met a 3-month-old Boxer pup in my building called Luka, twice over on my birthday, and he refused to leave me each time till his master had to pick him up and leave. That was also a delightful gift.

That’s the long and short of it, my birthday, as it was this year.

Nov 10, 2017

Arundhati Basu106 Comments

Riding With the Storm Clouds

There is such beauty in transition. For example an exceedingly dreary day of rain and colourless skies can make way for a pretty sunset as it did today. The sun set in a flaming ball of fire way faster than I could pound across the pavement to get to it. This is the second time it has happened that it has given me the slip, within a week. I guess I have to time these runs better. But within the matter of a half hour, the skies had changed tune again. This time they graduated to a dirty grey pink that made way for a smoky blue.

The waters that had lapped gently against the mossy breakwaters in a rippling of sheet silver as if adapted to the change of tenor to a blackish-blue tinge. Usually I would have made my way home because it had turned stormy, oh but the hypnotic pull of the waters, the many twinkling lights of the port glittering like jewels against the inky backdrop and the thin strip of vibrant orange as if separating the river from the sky… The leaves of autumn that had arrived late in my part of the world started wafting towards me in fistfuls, glinting golden under the halogen of the street lights, twirling and pirouetting like fluid ballerinas. I was sold. I could not stop running under the stormy skies and the park was all mine apart from the tubby squirrels and a couple of dogs and their masters – the bearded terrier checking out the tiny pooch with perked-up ears and the stance of a tiny brave warrior.

Nov 7, 2017

Arundhati Basu62 Comments