italy – ARUNDHATI BASU

The Epicurean Pleasures of Lucca

In the town of Lucca, a Tuscan secret of sorts, we cooked with a chef in his palazzo (as I already waffled on in my earlier post). It was an intimate gathering of eight. Each one of us different personalities. Strung together by a common thread of curiosity, and if I may add cheekily, a passion for Prosecco. The point of this informal conclave was to figure out the theorem of Italian cooking. How do simple ingredients come together and produce an intense play of flavours? Wherein every morsel creates mini explosions in the taste buds, makes you close your eyes, smack your lips in appreciation, and reach out for more.

The chef, Giuseppe, who was the shepherd of this Prosecco-swigging lot, was born in an olive oil press in a Tuscan valley. He was part of a professional kitchen till he realised that the tension of cooking so far outweighed its pleasures. Giuseppe hit upon the fine idea of organising cooking classes within the comforts of his own home. His wife, who he met through these classes (which leads you to question if life is more than a mere string of coincidences), is a crackerjack at setting up a dining table fit for the queen. You can see how at the very beginning. It would be fair for me to to say for all that we were overcome by this glamorous apartment we found ourselves in, in a grand old palazzo within the medieval city walls of Lucca.

Beneath the blue skies of that hot summer’s day, we went shopping for the ingredients, before we entered the kitchen. As a child, I used to head out everyday for groceries with my father. Naturally, I take great pleasure in this sensory ritual of combing through fresh produce.

There we were, picking up focaccia at a feted bakery in town, culling sweet ancient bread called buccellato from old pasticcerias, examining yellow courgette flowers in grocery shops, tomatoes plump and small, red, green and yellow and sighing over their glossy beauty. More sighs later when we sunk our teeth into their luscious ripeness. The tomatoes burst with liquid beauty in our mouths, along with rounds of fresh mozzarella and basil, rocket leaves drizzled with briskly whisked balsamic and olive oil. We swooned over focaccia, oily and salty, crusty and yet soft inside. Mopped up fresh olive oil with our breads, la scarpetta, after smothering the focaccia with generous lashes of olive oil. Hey, there was no shame there. The most hardened keto advocates would have been driven into unashamed scoffing of bread. I can guarantee you that. Noshing on young and old pecorino cheeses with honey and fig relish.

Then we chopped and cooked, picking up on the chef’s earnest homilies on bread, rice, and olive oil, and left the palazzo, rich with stories, our stomachs lined with enough food, rivers of olive oil and red wine running through our veins — and maybe a scant knowledge of the workings of a Tuscan kitchen.

2019-09-12 01.39.09 1.jpg — At one of the oldest pasticceria in Lucca, Taddeucci, to pick up *Buccellato*. The bakery goes back to the year 1881. Buccellato in Lucca is bought fresh daily from this bakery, because if you have not bought it from here, you are a sad twat.

2019-09-12 01.39.30 2.jpg — Buccellato, the crusty breakfast bread studded with raisins and aniseed.

2019-09-12 01.39.11 2.jpg — Gaping at the longest ream of focaccia at Forno a Vapore Amadeo Giusti in Lucca.

2019-09-12 01.39.13 1.jpg — Chef Giuseppe. This is for you, Caroline.

2019-09-12 01.39.13 3.jpg — Beefsteak tomatoes

2019-09-12 01.39.14 3.jpg — Pepperoncini, the dried version of which we bought greedily.

2019-09-12 01.39.14 1.jpg — San Marzano tomatoes

2019-09-12 01.39.14 2.jpg — Pomodoro Pizza. Tomatoes from *Firenze* (Florence).

2019-09-12 01.39.18 1.jpg — Small red tomatoes on vines and vibrant green tomatoes.

2019-09-12 01.39.13 2.jpg — Courgette blossoms

2019-09-12 01.39.27 4.jpg — Inside the tranquil palazzo

2019-09-12 01.39.21 2.jpg — To the work stations

2019-09-12 11.17.53 3.jpg — But not before we are armed with endlessly flowing Prosecco.

2019-09-12 11.17.55 1.jpg — Cheese with fresh honey and fig relish

2019-09-12 01.39.19 5.jpg — My delighted love

2019-09-12 01.39.24 1.jpg — The many stages that went into cooking a soul-pleasing lunch.

2019-09-12 11.17.54 1.jpg — All-important task of chopping and slicing tomatoes.

2019-09-12 01.39.23 4.jpg — He bagged the courgette blossoms.

2019-09-12 01.39.24 2.jpg — Spooning out *Gnudi* (which means as it looks, a kind of naked ravioli). This is a Tuscan dumpling dish made of spinach and ricotta, and slipped into homemade tomato sauce.

Processed with VSCO with a6 preset — Feast your eyes on that lusty tomato sauce and tell me you do not want it right away.

2019-09-12 01.39.25 2.jpg — To the beautifully laid out, thin and long wooden table.

2019-09-12 11.17.54 2.jpg — Pumpkin and courgette blossoms, baked and gobbled.

2019-09-12 01.39.27 1.jpg — Gnudi, served with fragrant risotto that is cooked with carnaroli, not arborio. The Tuscans sniff at the mention of arborio like it’s dog food.

2019-09-12 01.39.27 3.jpg — Thick Italian custard and berries, to be soaked up with *buccellato*.

2019-09-12 11.17.55 3.jpg — Nothing says it like plates licked clean and glasses of robust reds held up with cheshire-cat grins at the end of a long-drawn lunch. Limoncello at the very end to make sure that no one went home with a clear head.

Oct 9, 2019

Arundhati Basu49 Comments

To the New Season and the Past

Autumn has stolen in this year even before we could feel the sting of summer here on the East Coast. Sure the heat was blistering for a couple of weeks, but then it rained like the heavens were brimming, and could not, would not indeed, hold it in. The skies would darken and thicken with mushrooming clouds and there was pure drama in the build-up. When it pelted down, it was even more joyous, except if you were caught outside in the perishing rain.

The year has sped by in a string of house guests. Mid-August we travelled for 16 days straight, when we felt the sting of summer in Italy and Croatia alright. Yet what bliss! The mind and body screamed in unison, “We are not going back anywhere”. Eventually, we got back, but the head and heart refuse to leave behind the space they have nested in, in these beautiful lands.

In Tuscan country, we woke up to the sight of dreamy hills and dark cypresses with their ramrod backs, high above a town called Barga. Pastries and croissants for elevenses. After, we seasoned our souls with bread and olive oil so green that you could smell the grass in it. Demolished bowls of aglio e olio and grilled veggies drizzled with more olive oil. Learnt to cook creamy ricotta dumplings called gnudi; discovered that risotto in Tuscany is made with carnaroli, never Arborio, which is considered pedestrian; and used courgette blossoms for baked dishes. All at the palazzo of an Italian chef who was easy on the eye.

At the chef’s magazine-ready interiors, we met people from Glasgow, Sydney and California, became a family for a noon, having cooked together and exchanged stories, all washed down with endless bottles of Prosecco, then Chianti, Brunello and limoncello.

When you travel, the essence of it is formed of these stories culled from strangers. Different people, different stories, bundles of shared laughter, moments of frothy joy. Some things are priceless.

Two were American ex-military officers, one of whom might be in his 60s but has shifted to the Tuscan town of Lucca to start life afresh there. The other was hopped up about growing courgette blossoms and ways of distinguishing a male blossom from a female. Their genuine passion for food and life was endearing. My favourite was Uncle Bill, as we referred to him. He taught me the Italian expression, fare la scarpetta. It is the custom of mopping up your plate (any extra sauce, oil) with bread. I have been indulging in fare la scarpetta ever since. The Australian woman was old and ballsy. She had just arrived in Tuscany after hiking along The Path of the Gods on the Amalfi coast. Next was a possible backpacking adventure with her son. The rest were a family, a couple and their young daughter from Glasgow. The woman bore such an uncanny resemblance to Liz Hurley that I could not help comment upon it. Overhearing this natter, her husband warned in his lovely Scottish burr, “OKAY, no more Prosecco for you.”

With this bunch of people, and the chef, we shopped for fresh tomatoes and courgette blossoms in a local grocery store where the sight of the variety of pomodoro, plump and juicy, was a feast for the eyes. The produce was so fresh that the dishes we cooked tasted like no other. Then hopping over to an old bakery for some tasty bread, we sighted the longest slab of focaccia we have ever seen, in Lucca. It was 16-feet long. Epicurean explorations do feed the soul besides an ever-ready gut. We gobbled the focaccia later at the palazzo with plenty of extra virgin olive oil. I think I can hold a discourse on just bread now.

Tuscany was a revelation. Its beauty unsurpassed and added to by the warmth of the Italians. For beauty is an aura of goodness and nothing less than that. Like the young biker couple who made a pit-stop like us along a vineyard for photos, plucked plenty of grapes, and insisted we share. The old couple we met near the Maremma region, who shared their bounty of freshly plucked berries with us.

The generous quantities of bread and pasta had to be worked off, unless we intended to come back, two rotund individuals who would not fit into our plane seats. It worked out to our advantage then that we almost always found ourselves trudging to these towns built by the ancient Etruscans upon tuff hills. Towns threatened by erosion, but somehow clinging on for dear life.

If you look at the featured photo, it is of Civita de Bagnoregio, a tufa town two hours away from Rome and still in the Lazio region of Italy. It is a fantastic town shooting for the skies from its perch upon a column of tuff. Locals call it the dying town. A big chunk of it has already collapsed into the Valle dei Callanchi (Valley of the Badlands) that is its dramatic backdrop and only about 8 people live there now. Along with a colony of cats.

2019-09-12 11.17.46 1.jpg — Civita de Bagnoregio

Valle dei Callanchi

2019-09-16 09.42.08 1.jpg — Limestone houses of Civita

2019-09-16 09.42.09 1.jpg — From its centuries old church

That’s my return from the land of silence. See how my mouth shoots off. Naturally, I have got to leave the Balkans for another post. It is time for me to sign off, but not before I point out that this is why I have been missing out on the blogging world and its news. Your news. I will catch up by and by and see how life has been unfurling at your end.

Love and peace for the season of flaming beauty.

Sep 26, 2019

Arundhati Basu24 Comments

Granite and Gallurese

It is but providence that we winded up in the Gallura region. Parul and I had laid our hands upon one of those travel deals that threw in a four-day stay at a resort and the cheapest flight they could source with Ryan Air. The rider to the deal was that this resort was in Olbia, far away from the southern parts which we wanted to see, and Adi was thunderstruck by our impulsiveness at not checking anything before booking our island holiday. My friend and I were both non-drivers, you see. On an island where everything is dependent upon your own mode of conveyance, this was not a happy chance.

We were furiously making calls to Sardinia in the next few days, Parul and I, and overshot our initial budget by far when we had to fall upon the services of a tour guide. The reward was friendship. And a marvellous girly holiday we had not anticipated. It was on the first day in Orgosolo, when for a photo, Enza threw herself upon the rim of a large stone fireplace and decided to show the pudge on her waist to make good the claim that she needed to banish it — that I knew we had found gold. Her candour was refreshing. Her cousin Giampi was equally enthusiastic when it came to posing for photos, so we ended up with enough shots of us too. We needed us in our albums, they said.

The Gallura lives up to the meaning of its name which means stony area. Granite hills tower over you upon roads that twist and turn before find their way to a jagged coastline made up of islets and rock cliffs. Rocks which emerge in shapes that make you think of elephants, bears, witches and mushrooms, rocks which are shaped by the fury of the Mistral that blows throughout the year in Sardinia, but is an exhibitionist during spring and winter. We had caught the best of it.

With the wind in our hair on a miserably cold, foggy morning we set out for the hills. They were shrouded in a blanket of white that day, imparting the landscape with an other-worldly atmosphere. We stopped for croissant and coffee at an artists’ village surrounded by monolithic granite hills (which looked more like gigantic boulders) and emerald green woods.

San Pantaleo is a fetching village built around a piazzetta, surrounded by a church and a few oleander trees. It started life in the late 1800s. By the 1960s, artists had started making inroads into it, living in traditional low stone cottages lovingly restored. They set up galleries and they worked with folk traditions that centered around ceramics, woodwork and wrought iron. It is the kind of place where you expect locals to sell homemade batches of honey, cheese and jams and indulge in lengthy conversations because there lifestyle is laidback and elegant. Even though it is not too far away from the flashy haunt of the rich and famous, the Costa Smeralda.

Near this village is a nuragic archaeological site. Since I have been banging on about the presence of mysterious nuraghi around the island, I thought I should put in a few words about the Tomba dei Giganti (Tomb of the Giants). If you want to dip your feet into mystery and antiquity, it is an interesting visit. It made me reflect upon the very impermanence of everything, how we humans never stop to think about it in our arrogant assumption that things should not decay or change, that they should not make way for another civilisation.

Later, we did a short hike above the camping village of Capo d’Orso, climbing slimy rocks and gaping at the way the wind had carved and chiselled granite, like a master sculptor if you will, and the way the granite rocks punctured the incredibly green landscape, while jagged rocks spread their talons along the coastline. It was a peaceful moment that, rendered romantic by Enza pressing kisses upon her partner’s face and murmuring words of endearment into his ears. I can still hear them, those two words of affection, amore mio, uttered over and over with the wonderful cadence of an Italian.

It goes with the mood of today. It is the birthday of a being who once lit up my life with love and happiness, Tuktuk.

20150323_061308~2.jpg — Dawn when we left the Olbia Geovillage in the medieval town of Olbia

20150323_061254~2.jpg — Olbia Geovillage, a resort populated by plenty of old tourists who were there for breakfasts, R&R and games of tennis.

20150323_061421~2.jpg — The sprawling grounds of the resort

20150322_084742~2.jpg — The shrouded hills of Sardinia in that spring of 2015

20150322_085758~2~2.jpg — Granite hills and San Pantaleo

20150322_085830~2.jpg — Restored cottages in San Pantaleo

20150322_090803~2.jpg — San Pantaleo café

20150322_090944~2.jpg — Never one to ignore croissants

20150322_091002~2.jpg — A Native American with his elaborate headdress stands guard inside the café in San Pantaleo

Stuffed wild boar and unlabelled wine bottles make for strange partners

20150322_092634~2.jpg — Mushroom-shaped rocks protrude from hills of granite

20150322_103042~2.jpg — The Tomb of the Giants was not built for the giants eh. Just saying. It goes back to as far as 2000 BC. The 100-foot tall carved rock marks the entrance to the burial chamber.

20150322_103141~2.jpg — The Nuraghe people clearly believed in another realm. They had a passageway for the spirits through that low doorway.

20150322_113029~2.jpg — The truncated cone of a stone fortress of sorts that is the Nuraghe, in and around which in huts the tribes must have lived.

Current inhabitants of Nuraghe la Prisgiona

20150322_122936~2.jpg — The hike above Capo D’orso

Blurred us, on the hike that was of moderate intensity

20150322_124015~2.jpg — Giampi, Enza, Enza’s fiance Claudio and Parul

20150322_123814~2.jpg — Palau and the coastline

Mar 30, 2018

Arundhati Basu38 Comments

Sardinia’s Wild Heart Beats in Barbagia

The isolated mien of the island of Sardinia is compounded by its insistence on keeping to itself and shying away from mainland Italy. The Sardinians do not repose faith in Rome. Their grouse is that they have been sidelined, rather monstrously. A politician who doubles up as a tour guide, the vivacious Enza, told us about the political climate of her country as she drove us in her trusty old car through the winding mountainous roads of Barbagia. I was enamoured of that dramatic landscape. Villages with their bevy of granite houses and terracotta roofs sat comfortably in valleys that seemed to have been scooped out of limestone mountains. Swathes of green pastures were dotted by ponies and prehistoric stone towers, herds of cows ambled along the roads as if they were out for a stroll, and often rows of wine and myrtle orchards showed up, standing upon modest patches of land. Myrtle, the aromatic berry that stains your fingers a deep purple if you squish it, and which the Sardinians use to make a fine liqueur called Mirto.

In this primitive part of the country that derives its name from Cicero — the Roman orator had dubbed it the ‘land of barbarians’ because the Romans had tough luck here — the mountain people cleave to the Sardinian language even while it is slowly being replaced by Italian elsewhere on the island. Here where they make their living from the land, where milk and sheep’s cheese are staple diet, where gnarled olive trees add character to the craggy surroundings, where bandits still rule strong in villages like Orgosolo, and where shepherds chant songs around fires, it is not unnatural that carnivals exist and that they are a window into times past when pagan rituals were a way of life.

Shepherded by Enza and her cousin Giampaola to a museum in the town of Nuoro, we were introduced to the traditional black ensemble of men and women. The Museum of Sardinian Life and Popular Traditions turned out to be a small affair but packed with details that transported us to another world. I was repulsed, and at the same time, strangely drawn in by the theatrics of the carnival costumes. People in older times surely knew how to work their imagination.

Men dressed in sheepskins, cow bells and ominous-looking masks, enacting the eternal battle between good and evil. In the agrarian culture of Barbagia, it made sense that the carnivals had their roots in Greek rites dedicated to Dionysus, the god of vegetation. They signified the end of winter, and invoked the gods to bless the land with fertility. People indulged in sacrifices and orgies. They dressed like animals and danced wildly after drinking plenty of wine.

Emerging from the confines of an old world recreated within the museum, we found the town of Nuoro to be quietly photogenic. It sat at the foot of Mount Ortobene. Atop it stood a statue of Christ the Redeemer, as if keeping a careful watch upon the life of the few thousand inhabitants of Nuoro who live around its narrow streets in traditional stone houses. Because it was furiously cold that March, the usual windy conditions on the island exacerbated by the northwest wind called the Mistral that blows in from France, we winded up in a small café in Nuoro. I look back upon that moment and smile at one of those apparently trivial memories. Nothing earth shattering. Just four girls chattering over a cup of coffee each and the beginnings of a lovely friendship.

Nuraghe, ancient towers belonging to the mysterious Nuragic civilisation

20150320_125724~2.jpg — Orchards around Barbagia

Processed with VSCO with c2 preset — The Museum of Sardinian Life and Popular Traditions

2018-03-26 10.58.51 1.jpg — Fragrant rosemary shrubs

Processed with VSCO with a5 preset — Traditional costumes of women in the villages of Sardinia

2018-03-26 10.58.55 3.jpg — Dolls in traditional gear

2018-03-26 10.58.54 3.jpg — A child’s garb

2018-03-26 10.58.50 3.jpg — *Mamuthones* (men in black) and *Issohadore* (fellow in red) from the village of Mamoiada. The origins of these masked figures are unknown. The *Mamuthones,* in their vests of dark sheep fur and copper bells and grotesque wooden masks with giant hooks for noses, command a spooky presence. It is almost as if they are checked by the presence of the *Issohadores* in their red tunic, embroidered shawl and black bandolier. They walk together in processions that end at bonfires in the village that has had the Mamuthones and Issohadores for as long as it can remember.

2018-03-26 10.58.50 2.jpg — *Boes* and *Merdules* from a carnival in the town of Ottana. The men in their white sheepskins, accessorised with plenty of cowbells, wear two kinds of masks. The *Boes* wear ox-like masks and the *Merdules* those of old, deformed men. These were part of rituals, meant to protect man against evil spirits. The *Merdule* served as reminders to man – to overcome his baser instincts and retain his human identity.

Processed with VSCO with f2 preset — The Mamuthone in profile

2018-03-26 10.58.46 2.jpg — Streets of Nuoro

Mar 28, 2018

Arundhati Basu59 Comments

The Classical Bandits of Sardinia

They live in Orgosolo, they say. But in the same breath they maintain that vendettas and violence have long vanished from the inland villages of Sardinia.

In the spring of 2015, around this time, a girl friend and I took a flight into Alghero. To land upon the island that sits in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, surrounded by the Balearic islands, the Italian peninsula and Corsica, and yet is a world unto its own. A rugged land where the air is ripe with possibilities. Here there are no high-street chains for clothing and coffee stores, no concrete jungles to feel lost in, and certainly none of the big city lights. Pre-historic Nuraghi which are cylindrical stone towers dating back to the 1500 BC — preceding the Etruscan civilisation — show up instead upon miles and miles of green countryside framed by the limestone and bluish-green mountains of the Supramonte.

English novelist DH Lawrence described it as “belonging to nowhere, never having belonged to anywhere”. In this ancient part of the country, Barbagia, where the people lead rustic lives and shepherds make their living from tending to livestock in the wild interiors, the concept fits in with the precision and smoothness of say slipping your hands into the softest sheepskin gloves, that bandits should double up as heroes for the people in the villages. That the Codice Barbaricino, which is the Code of Barbagia, should be the mark of a life well lived, with honour. For, the right and the duty to preserve honour is everything here.

From Enza, who was in charge of shepherding us around the island, I heard about Graziano Mesina, a regular Robinhood kind of a figure in this part of the world. Mesina had decided to drop his former profession in favour of the tour-guide business. A bandit turned tour guide, heavens!

The next few words that issued from my mouth alarmed Enza and she decided that enough was enough. She would not have a pesky person broach difficult subjects. She said: “The people of Orgosolo eye all newcomers with askance. They do not talk about such matters at all. You see, they are protected by the bandits, and they in turn, protect them from curious eyes.” That screwed tight the lid upon the curiosity that welled up in this journalist old heart of mine. It takes a lifetime to wean yourself away from the only profession you have known all your adult life. And I was just starting to learn to keep my nose out of other people’s business.

In that village wrapped up in stories of bandits and vendettas — a local poet was shot in public as lately as 2007 as part of a vendetta — we sat in a large hall for a shepherd’s lunch. It was a rustic affair and one that was long–drawn, for whatever you do, do not under-estimate the appetite of the Italians. On rustic wooden boards, we were presented with fluffy rounds of pane, which is bread. We tore into the bread, pairing it with creamy ricotta cheese, pink slices of ham and pungent porcheddu (suckling pig roasted upon a spit). And sips of grappa, potent enough to make the nerves tingle and warm the insides with searing intensity.

I thought that was enough, till more appeared. Rosemary-flavoured sheep’s meat cooked with potatoes and pecorino cheese paired with pane carasau that was but a simple parchment of bread. Followed by refills of the local red wine. Our senses sufficiently doused in wine and grappa, we were treated to pretty desserts. They were fit for fairies to nibble on.

Suddenly the shepherds, four of them proceeded to a corner, huddling together with their backs to us. I was wondering about this strange sight when they broke into a song. The air rang with the resounding bass in their voices. The canto a tenore, a traditional shepherds’ song. The group of Germans behind us got up and danced in a while. The grappa and wine had done their job alright.

Now Orgosolo has more going for it than just its fame as home to the outlaws. Its hilly cobbled lanes are lined with old, dilapidated houses in pastel hues, their facades painted with political and Cubist-style frescoes. In the ‘70s, a Sienese school teacher and his students had sparked off a trend of painting political murals in remembrance of the Italian Resistance and Liberation from Nazism and Fascism. Now you can see these murales, telling stories in diverse styles. And if you have the time, why they will have a conversation with you.

Thus was I introduced to Sardinia. Through this small village that was once occupied by the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantines and the Spanish. The village that has hospitality carved into its anti-authoritarian veins, where the bandits are shy despite their notoriety, where the men huddle together to sing songs that have been sung through the ages and where blood feuds are a cultural backdrop because this is where the people live and die, my darling, by an ancient code of honour.

2018-03-23 11.50.43 1.jpg — The road that winds past the Supramonte

2018-03-23 11.50.41 2.jpg — Villages in Barbagia

2018-03-23 01.34.02 1_1.jpg — Welcome to Orgosolo. I imagine he is a bandit.

2018-03-23 12.55.36 3.jpg — The shepherd’s lunch took place in a barn

2018-03-23 11.55.29 2.jpg — Shepherds with their suckling pig

2018-03-23 11.55.28 1.jpg — Where they carve up the pig

2018-03-23 11.55.30 2.jpg — Enza pours us grappa

2018-03-23 11.55.31 2.jpg — Makes me faint with greed

2018-03-23 11.55.28 2.jpg — *Pane Carasau*

2018-03-23 11.55.30 1.jpg — Bread with ricotta, ham and porcheddu

2018-03-23 11.55.31 3.jpg — *Pastissus.* Thin delicate pastries, glazed with sugar, and filled with almonds

2018-03-23 12.55.36 1.jpg — *Canto a tenore*

2018-03-23 11.50.40 2.jpg — Streets of Orgosolo

2018-03-23 01.01.59 3.jpg — Cross-eyed with thinking? We women do think too much.

2018-03-23 01.01.59 2.jpg — Rural women go about the business of life

2018-03-23 11.55.33 2.jpg — Aunt Elisabetta, the sibyl of Orgosolo

2018-03-23 12.55.31 2.jpg — Vittorio De Seta, the director of ‘Banditi a Orgosolo’

2018-03-23 12.55.30 3.jpg — Bums. That’s my darling Enza.

2018-03-23 12.55.33 1.jpg — ‘If the most difficult kids are lost, the school is no longer a school. It is a hospital that takes care of the healthy and rejects the sick.’ Lorenzo Milani, an Italian Roman Catholic priest and educator of children who nobody wanted to educate.

2018-03-23 11.50.39 1.jpg — Cubism. Accident at work.

2018-03-23 01.01.59 1.jpg — On the left are scenes depicting Gaza and massacres visited upon by the Palestinians by the Israeli army. The right-hand side mural states, ‘We are all illegal aliens’, acknowledging the desperation of people who arrive in Italy, stuffed into boats, in the vain hope of escaping poverty.

2018-03-23 11.50.40 1.jpg — *‘Felice il popolo che non ha bisogna di eroi’* — ‘Happy are the people who do not need heroes’.

Mar 24, 2018

Arundhati Basu48 Comments

Inside The Ghetto

In the tiny bakery known as Boccione within one of the oldest Jewish ghettos in Europe, we queued up for a slice of Jewish pizza. The woman at the till, her hair tucked carefully into a plastic cap, doled out a rectangular piece of dense cake which tasted more like a biscuit as the moreish taste of raisins, almonds and dried fruits came together in a a perfect ménage à trois of sorts. Then the beauty of butter. Eternity is encapsulated often within the briefest of moments.

A few metres from us was the atmospheric restaurant, Nonna Betta, which declares that Anthony Bourdain could deign to eat only within its august interiors in Rome. It is charming inside Nonna Betta. White walls, old-world wrought iron brackets for its equally old-world lamps and extensive murals splashed across the walls that portray what life would have been like in the ghetto before the 1800s. We did not lunch at Nonna Betta yet I could not resist a peep. Instead we meandered through the Jewish quarter, nibbling on rich fruit cake, taking in the quiet alleys where Jews have lived for 2,000 years, history etched into the stones of the buildings with their peeling plasters, facades chipped away by the inexorable passage of time.

Shutters, ribbed and fastened against e’en the honeyed beauty of the sun on the December winter afternoon that we drifted through narrow passages beneath balustrades of marble, our minds lingering upon the kind of stories that those passages must nurse, forgotten tales of people taking flight from persecution. Then there were enclaves that must have been thronged by the poverty-stricken multitudes. The Carmel Temple that you see in the lead photo must have been the repository of dark thoughts festering within repressed souls who in the 16th century had been commanded by the pope to attend ‘compulsory preaches’. How did the adult Jews combat such decrees you think? They plugged their ears with wax, yessir, because who wants to be told what faith to follow. If some dared to fall asleep, they were kicked by watchful papal guards to wake up. Pieces of history that crept up along the walk through The Ghetto.

A piece from a 17th century poem by a certain Giuseppe Berneri captures the misery of life in The Ghetto and it goes like this:

The Ghetto is a place located next to the Tiber
On one side, and to the Fish-market on the other;
It is a rather miserable enclosure of streets,
As it is shady, and also saddening.
It has four large gates, and a small one;
During daytime it is open, to let people out,
But from the evening until morning has broken
It is kept locked by a porter guard.

This marks the end of my series on Rome that was punctuated by that on Florence and my mind is quite ready to exit Italy (do I hear hurrahs at this point?) and enter India where I am currently staying at my parents’ for another week before I fly back home to Adi (Though I cannot promise you that I shall not bring forth photos from Rome and Florence all over again for I have such fond memories tucked into every nook and cranny there).

The walk from the Colosseum to The Ghetto

Portico d’Ottavia, a portico built by Emperor Augustus in 23BC

The Roman fish market was housed within the portico from the Middle Ages to the late 19th century.

Dilapidated columns and remains of the past inside The Ghetto

Jan 12, 2018

Arundhati Basu59 Comments

Romanced by Florence

I saw Florence once again through the eyes of my love. In it, I found inordinate pleasure.

That was another time it seemed when I had caught the train from Milan to Florence in the spring of 2016. Though it was not quite long ago. I had set out on a walking tour with a middle-aged artist with a long, gaunt face, dishevelled hair covered by a tweed flat cap, his ample girth covered by a capacious coat that had seen better times. He had drawled about the finer points of Florence which could not be missed by the most absent-minded person that ever existed. Mouths gaped open then at the sight of the Renaissance magnificence that reared its head in a cluster upon the Piazza del Duomo.

The wonders wrought by the compilation of bands of serpentine green, red and white stones by Renaissance architects Brunelleschi and Giotto. Sculptors of the likes of Ghiberti and Pisano whose doors retain their arresting quality so that Michaelangelo declared Ghiberti’s doors of bronze to be the ‘gates of paradise’. Those gates lead inside the Baptistery of St. John where the mosaic clad dome blinded me momentarily with its flamboyance in gold. So that when I had stepped outside and one of those street artists, a pot-bellied jocular Italian, had grabbed my hand while streaming out words in Italian, I remember feeling bewildered, amused and seized by the urge to swat his hands off mine. My blank expression made him break out into bits of English and the mixture of persistence and perseverance was difficult to escape.

But this was now and Florence had acquired an added sheen of romance. Adi’s jaws dropped visibly as we walked into the Piazza del Duomo just like mine had. Soon his face wore a hangdog look as he followed me up Giotto’s Campanile. A steady stream of climbers made sure that we had to keep climbing. By the end of it, legs reduced to a jelly consistency, my darling flatly refused to subject himself to the same torture up the Duomo. His excuse was the 5pm ticket slot we had. ‘It will be dark by the time we are up on the Duomo,’ he insisted. I felt benevolent. I relented. You have got to choose your battles after all. There was a long walk ahead. I had planned to make him walk up the hills that climb above the city. We lunched at a cutting-edge seafood restaurant where the salted codfish made me want to trill. The dopey fellow who took our orders and messed it up did not however make me want to trill. Balance was achieved.

We were soon wandering around the Uffizi, staring at the imposing Palazzo Vecchio guarded by the copy of Michaelangelo’s David and Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus. We stood at the spot where the Renaissance preacher Girolamo Savonarola had been hanged and burnt, shivered at the thought, and Adi wondered aloud at the Rape of the Sabine Women. You see, when the first king of Rome, Romulus, came to power, the Romans wanted to marry the Sabine women. But the ancient Italic tribe did not agree and the Romans abducted the Sabine women. There might not have been sexual violation thrown into the fray, yet the event was dubbed so. The plethora of stories upon stories that lie buried within the old walls of Florence makes the mind whirl.

We found curious quiet once we had crossed the Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge populated by rows of jewellery stores spanning the River Arno. A bylane led us up and up and soon we were on cobbled paths lined by elegant old villas and olive groves, an old chiesa, an old man stooping upon a walking stick to pick his way carefully upon the cobbles. The silence of it broken only by the occasional Fiat that swept by us with great speed. The Italians are supersonic on their Vespas and Fiats.

Adi wondered if we were lost. I soldiered on with a determined look that relayed more confidence than I felt. The road not taken was taking its own sweet time. Yet how beautiful it was as it gradually opened up to a road that snaked past the gardens of Boboli and offered up views of Florence below us, framed by an army of green and golden trees. Words are always inadequate to express the beauty of any moment.

Later, after we had watched lovers embracing by the medieval defensive walls of Florence, traipsed through alleys in which leather shoemakers sat crafting hair-raisingly expensive shoes, peeked into shut antique stores and upholstery studios, gobbled up cake and coffee at a charming coffeeshop, watched a couple of men stop in their tracks to gawp at a woman running in shorts, we had a leisurely stroll by the Arno. Dusk descended upon our shoulders in rosy hues and an old man bicycled along the river with his arms entwined about his lover. There it was, that incredible feeling of love and belonging. We were caught in the bubble where nothing else mattered but that we were there together in the midst of the impossible beauty of that ancient city called Firenze.

Adi turns his back on the Renaissance magnificence of the Piazza del Duomo rather grudgingly.

Florence Cathedral and Baptistery of St. John in profile

Salted codfish with onion relish in chickpea puree

Hercules and Cacus by Baccio Bandinelli at the entrance of Palazzo Vecchio. Cacus, the fire-breathing giant, was slayed by Hercules for terrorising Aventine Hill before the founding of Rome.

Chiesa di San Leonardo in Arcetri, an 11th century church from the pulpit of which Dante and Boccaccio had preached sermons.

In the distance stands Torre del Gallo, an ancient castle belonging to the Galli family of Arcetri.

Leather shoemakers off the Tower of San Niccolò

An alley opening up to the Tower of San Niccolò

A slice of chocolate cake to take the sting off incessant walks above Florence

2018-01-04 0971240170..jpg — The Ponte Vecchio on the Arno

Jan 4, 2018

Arundhati Basu60 Comments

Ambling Around Rome

I have been neck deep in eating, hence the absence. Hedonism in the new year. Indo Chinese and biryanis and street food and what not. All of that would be fodder for another post. I am in Calcutta at my childhood home which means that I am persevering to achieve Zen. A tall order given the frequent squabbling with my mother who remains the most headstrong woman I have ever known. But because I am home alone — something I ached for as a child when my parents refused to leave me to my devices as it would involve my racking up the phone bill to palpitating figures — I thought about reconnecting with my beloved bloggers. After all, I have left my passion for waffling on the phone behind. The passage of time. If this were a 13-year-old me, I would have shrivelled a person who uttered such ludicrous thoughts with deep-dyed contempt and scowls.

Back to our rambles in Rome because I have a truckload of photos to unload upon hapless you, the day we drove into the city from the airport we met a cab driver who lives in a small village near Rome. This large and drawling Italian, born in Rome with an invigorating love for the city, rattled out figures. For example, the dimensions of the Circus Maximus, the former stadium of ancient Rome that now looks like a serene and long vat of green and which 2,700 years ago could hold a 40,000-strong crowd to gawp at chariot races. Our mobile cache of facts was amusing and charming. It was a long conversation about the state of the world, his teenage daughter who has grown out of clinging to her dad for everything, her quest for learning Arabic, his experiences in Afghanistan when he served in the army, their move to the suburbs of Rome, his nonna who makes the best bruschetta for early evening snacks,… but the tip that we picked up was — climb the Altare della Patria that stands at the cobbled crossroads of the Piazza Venezia.

For if you take the combination of stairs and elevator to the top of the boxy monument in white marble built for Victor Emmanuel II (the first king of a unified Italy), you get a breathtaking view of the city. We stood on top of the monument for a long time beneath stellar blue skies and a caressing winter sun, watching people photograph sizeable (could be the pizza and pasta diet) preening Italian gulls with the Colosseum as a dramatic backdrop, photographed them ourselves, and then later retraced our steps to the Roman Forum where I remember jostling with crowds in the summer of 2016.

The road to the largest amphitheatre ever built in this world of ours is in Rome, as you well know. Yes, the Colosseum, and that thoroughfare is flanked by historic columns and arches, basilicas and ruins of former government buildings that must have held sway over ancient Rome. We walked below the many stone pines with their umbrella tops, past tall poplars standing like spare soldiers, sauntered past temples to various goddesses, peered at worn doorways above which murals faded away as if they could not be bothered to defy the ravages of time.

*Cordonata*, the flight of steps to *Campidoglio,* Capitoline Hill, one of the seven hills of ancient Rome. In the backdrop of the piazza designed by Michaelangelo is Palazzo Senatorio.

Elevator to Terrace of the Quadrighe, atop the Monument of Victor Emmanuel II.

Inside the Monument of Victor Emmanuel II

A survey of the Roman Fora and Colosseum

Quadriga (chariot) at Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II

*Teatro di Marcello.* Theatre of Marcellus.

The oldest surviving theatre from the 11B.C. It is dedicated to Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a young lad, and most importantly, nephew of Emperor Augustus. The boy died five years before it was finished – at the age of 19.

The crowds have melted away from the Colosseum

Waiting for the owner to emerge from the coffeeshop on a frigid and dull day

Jan 3, 2018

Arundhati Basu68 Comments

Night Streets of Rome

It was the morning of Christmas eve when I wrote this but life right now is caught in a tornado of socialising in Delhi where the days are pleasant and the sun is ripe with mellow beauty. The skies are blue and I am getting a few sunrises into my kitty as I head out for early morning runs with the cool wind in my hair. Here I feel the need for four stomachs as I did in Rome (as I always do) for my mother-in-law has been rustling up feasts every day for meals at home, you see. Time at hand is a bit tight so I thought I would share some clips of the night lights of Rome. The Christmas spirit there is all over the city and quietly cemented by the elegance of its ancient Corinthian columns, the cupolas and domes and clock towers.

We drank plenty of wine, munched on bruschetta, pizza, cacio e pepe and aglio e olio pastas, walked arm-in-arm down the streets so softly lit, the old buildings casting half shadows, the occasional pair of lovers around the corner caught in a passionate embrace, men zipping down the cobbled streets of the alleys on Vespas with alarming speed and recklessness, the Carabinieri posted everywhere with their rifles and enough male beauty to make you go ooh. We sat with a fashion designer friend of mine and her half-Italian prince, drank into the night with stories of faraway places and times, and it felt heady, all those stories with sips of prosecco.

An Italian artist from Florence possibly got Rome in a heartbeat when he noted sometime in the 14th century that it is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning. Because that is what it does for us, produce the yearning to walk its cobbled streets for a long, long time till you want to walk it no more. But how can that even be?

On that note of wistfulness, I wish you all a wonderful Christmas with plenty of mulled wine and Christmas cake and roasts, and I also raise a glass of wine, a deep ruby, to you from my end.

Blessed Virgin Mary stands atop the Column of the Immaculate Conception

Operatic singer at the Temple of Hadrian

Corinthian columns of The Temple of Hadrian

Dec 24, 2017

Arundhati Basu66 Comments

The Rome Diaries

We are back in Rome. Soporific Rome with her unbearable beauty that squeezes my heart with barely contained pleasure, ancient temples and theaters lurking around every corner. It is 4.30 in the morning and I am wide awake because I am just so and Adi is patting me to go back to sleep but I feel like pouring my heart out for it is brimming. From arriving in a boutique hotel in the old quarters of the city where Pope Julius II had wanted his architect Donato Bramante, the Renaissance master, to design the Palazzo dei Tribunali, the city’s justice system. It was an incomplete mission. The stone seats of the unfinished courthouse remain as a quiet reminder of the gap between aspiration and attainment. Every master must have a few tucked into his kitty of achievements.

We walked around in the evening after an afternoon spent drinking Champagne with tuna and cream cheese canapes. The hotel surprised us, throwing in a couple of flaky pastries, their hearts filled with apple and cinnamon, some profiteroles and chocolates, because it was in lieu of the six years we have been married. Eight years made up of frustrating, quiet, joyous, unsettling and delirious moments. For life is such a wonderful concoction of the drama and the dull. One cannot exist without the other and really it would be tedious with only the highs to ride. There are nudges of mortality from time to time with close relatives shedding their mortal lives behind, reminding us that ‘time’s winged chariot’ is ‘hurrying near’, undeniable and as tangible as this plush hotel bed I find myself in.

The neighbourhood around us is networked by medieval alleys aged by the stories of the giubbonari (jacket-makers) who worked in one, the calderari (coppersmiths) in another narrow cobbled one, the baullari (trunk-makers), the cappellari (hat-makers) and so on. You get the drift. The many workers who served the wealthy who lived in the palazzi in the area. At the end of our street lived Raphael once. I doubt the streets have changed much, the faded pastel houses and shuttered windows silent witnesses to the life stories of generations unfolding within.

At an intimate osteria we stopped for a spot of dinner. Fine, rich Merlot fished off the high shelves of the establishment by its owner with a bottle grabber and presented with a flourish to go with the carciofi alla romana which is stewed artichoke beloved of the ancient Romans, grilled seafood, creamy pasta and succulent chicken cooked in sweet Port, his craggy face wreathed with smiles as we thanked him for giving us a table meant for four. He had turned away customers even though we were about to finish up and he said, “No hurry, okay? Food is to be enjoyed. You walked in, I liked you both and I wanted you to relax.” A small place filled up with his relatives, their large families divided between the old and young tables.

Simple flavours married together with a dexterous touch. Italian food in an osteria tucked into the quiet alleys of Rome with its unassuming charm and modest menu, a beaming owner keeping an eye on his diners, dropping by to chat in bits,…then pressing our noses to windows of antique shops, armed with giant cones of gelato and swinging by that great Baroque masterpiece of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi at Piazza Navona, fingers freezing and nose tingling with the sudden icy winds that swept through the empty square. A few locals walked through the cobbled square. The crowds of summer have melted away. Vine-clad walls of townhouses towered above us in the alleys, festooned by canopies of fairy lights, as we passed in the shadows of the chiesas and returned to our hotel room to fall into bed with jasmine tea and exhaustion.