Vintage!

I had never seen op-shops before coming to Australia. In India clothes that have had a prior life are given away within the family or to the domestic help and no one would think of actually buying second hand clothes.

Though the contents of an op-shop can widely vary in terms of quality I think what first fascinated me was that they stocked clothes from a different era. For e.g. I had seen a great many American movies from the 80s but never seen any of the clothes featured-India in the 80s offered very little when it came to Western women's clothing. So it was interesting to see the fabrics and cuts employed in earlier decades. Later when I discovered shops that branded themselves vintage (and consequently were more expensive but also had more quality control) e.g. Broadway Betty, C's Flashback, Grandma Takes a Trip, The Vintage Clothing Shop and the like, I did pick up a few pieces. It of course helps that I am not a trouser person and more a skirt/dress person - the choices are plenty.

There are several op-shops around where I live, perhaps it's the competition that makes everything cheap as chips (ever so often they have a promotion and the already low prices are further slashed). Whatever the reason, I have never seen the clothes I see here in the op-shops I patronised earlier. Perhaps it's because the suburbs around here have a slight European flavour. I like browsing in the shops on a Saturday (unusually for op-shops they are also open on Sundays). Since the suburbs also seem to host very many theatricals, there is actually a section devoted to theatre clothes that have been given away which is quite interesting to say the least.

Last week I picked up a tunic that I quite liked (below). The fabric was slightly thick and the bottom half had thick broad stripes that had the texture of a painting. The dress had a label - Mila Schon - and it indicated that it was Made in Italy. It turned out that the label is fairly well known. Though the op-shops have a separate designer section it's not something I am very interested in - this in fact was wrongly located. So this was a bit of an unusual buy albeit one I quite like.

This week I picked up a frock which appears to be have been stitched at home (below). It has a sweet neck detail and I like the print where butterflies seem to be go up and down. Also I like its touches of mauve. The fabric is a slightly shiny and silky synthetic which is rather unusual these days but I can't place the decade.

Neither can be worn at work but I hope to wear at least the frock for my niece's birthday this weekend.

I also really do need to get a camera, it is hard to take good pictures with just the mobile and the Mac :-(

Red Dust!

A few days of mild sunshine and balmy skies and then last night the rain pelted down. This morning a dust storm and strangely for Sydney red skies. The Sydney Morning Herald has pictures of it, the above picture pretty much captures the view from my window. I cannot see the bridge today and given visibility, it is not surprising ferries have been cancelled.

The bauhinia I posted on still has its blooms, if a little sepia tinted from the dust.

Though dissimilar, the last time I remember darkened skies was during the bush fires of 2002. Wonder if we are in for a bushfire season this summer.

Spring!

Flowering Bauhinia Tree @ The Railway Station.

In Praise Of.....Sesame Oil

Given the pervasiveness of sesame oil in Tamil domestic life, my love affair with the oil was perhaps inevitable. Though I sadly note that with the arrival of newer oils, the role of sesame oil in daily life has reduced to the point that often it's only use is in the “gunpowder” that accompanies idli-dosai.

Not too long back, before the arrival of “neutral” and light varieties in the country, cooking oil in India was regional….and strongly flavoured. Be it groundnut, mustard, sesame or coconut oil, these oils had strong personalities and given the Indian habit of slathering internals and externals with oil were also olfactory indicators of region of origin. Though coconut oil is used in Tamil Nadu, sesame seemed to be more predominant at our place. In fact we used it even during our weekly oil bath, in the face of what appeared to be an army of advertisers attempting to strongly link coconut oil to beauty in India. Running around in the sun smelling of sesame oil before a cold water bath can be quite a happy feeling.

My mother, in keeping with the times, didn’t always use sesame oil when cooking. We knew enough people, sadly including Tamilians, who didn’t like it’s flavour which ruled out its daily use. Though I too don’t use it when other people are around, when I cook for myself I use no other oil. Even when I can’t be bothered cooking, I have my rice with salt and some sesame oil (along with some ginger pickle – but I will leave ginger for another post). No meal is more simple, cleansing and delicious.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to get sesame oil here. Often even the Indian stores stock Chinese sesame oil, which is distinctly darker and has a roasted flavour. Last month I located a supply and have been gorging on the stuff. Right now I am frying potatoes in sesame oil and the aroma is, to put it mildly, quite heavenly. In fact I felt such a sudden rush of love for the oil that I felt obliged to make it public. Of course the fact that alone of all traditional oils it boasts many health benefits (perhaps the reason it’s known as nalla ennai in Tamil Nadu) grounds my infatuation in good sense .

I used to make my own hair oil when I lived in India, the ingredients were a mix of my grandmother’s suggestions and my own ideas. I attribute the general good health of my hair to it’s wonderful properties. Sadly it has not been easy to make here as one or the other ingredient is missing (most notably the champa). I am quite sure my greying sparser hair is not just ageing but a result of sad follicles starved of my concoction. Here it is:

One small iron karahi (wok).
Sesame Oil (or it’s more evocative name, gingelly oil)
A handful of red hibiscus flowers, hibiscus leaves, curry leaves, pepper, jeera, fenugreek and dried champa flowers.
And to make Anu’s Oil, heat oil to smoking in karahi, chuck in all ingredients and "cook" till all of it is charred. Cool and filter. Be warned, if the flowers are fresh the oil can crackle. Some of the ingredients darken hair (most notably hibiscus and curry leaves), some provide cooling properties (jeera). The end oil is quite viscous and quite difficult to remove completely from hair with shampoo so it can leave you with that slicked down, old fashioned look ☺ But it will leave tresses thick and black and leave you feeling like the pretty women of old Tamil movies with long, lustrous locks - you know the kind poets would compare to a black cloud.

This Morning

It’s officially been spring since the beginning of this month. This morning I found my nasturtium flowering. They are my earliest memory of flowers as we had an entire flower bed in Delhi.

I do most of my reading on the train. It is therefore rare that I observe anything at all of my surroundings though there is little as pleasurable as watching landscapes go by. These glimpses from a train are momentary and yet whole worlds in themselves. Of course the daily commute has a repetitive nature which is why everything that passes is commonplace. Today I didn’t feel like reading a book and the train was blissfully empty so I decided to sit by the window and idly watch the world between home and workplace. Not that at the latish hour of my ride much was stirring. The backyards of the innumerable houses that make up Sydney suburbia lay still. Some completely manicured, others more straggly, many with forlorn Hills Hoists. The sun-lit stations, some with old fashioned fixtures, had few people. Cooks River glinted in the sun, the grasses alongside were blonde and tall. I thought, as I have often, that I needed to come one weekend and take a walk in the adjacent park. Near the city, dense habitation. Atop an old factory what looked like the rusted sculpture of a skeleton with cape. It passed by so quickly that I wasn’t sure I had seen what I had seen. Then into the tunnel, the passengers in my train and those alongside the last of the stragglers arriving for work.

Before starting work a quick check of the papers online. Amused that Aussies are doing their darned best to retain their right to cock a snook at authority.

Food - Fast, Cheap, Dirty

I have little interest in films that deal with the politics of food/food production partly because it makes the very act of eating a moral issue. Whilst criticism of McDonalds and the agricultural-industrial complex is not entirely misplaced, anxiety about food in an age of plenty is a bit of a luxury. Plus food has become a fiercely moral pursuit often at the expense of those not economically privileged or with limited means to procure food that has been duly sanctified as organic, allottment grown and the like. Fast Food Nation was therefore not high on my DVD list, I ended up buying it merely because it was part of a bundle of DVDs that I got on the cheap. The fact that I am blogging on it is obvious indication that it did provoke a couple of thoughts.

The movie, directed by Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise), is based on the book of the same name which I haven’t read. But if the movie is faithful to the vision of the book, it would appear that it intends to cover all aspects of food in present day developed societies from the meat factories to food companies to the people who fuel this vast enterprise, be they middle class professionals, cheap immigrant labour, the underclass that is the backbone of the food service industry or activists seeking a more ethical way of making food. It also looks at the people left behind by the modern food industry like small farmers and cattle men. This it does by way of a plot where the inventor of a best selling burger called "Big One" is dispatched to the meat factory in the fictional town of Cody, Colarado due to a suspicion that the meat in the burger contains merde (it does, the obligatory Latina who works for an oldtimey cattle type announces that everyone knows the meat contains shit). For all its aseptic appearance, the meat factory has more than one dirty secret to which everyone involved turns a blind eye. A parallel story has illegal immigrants from Mexico who are employed by the factory and stay despite the harsh conditions at work because it is far better than wages back home. Yet another story strand has a student working at the burger outlet who is awakened to the realities of her job and gradually falls in with a bunch of activists out to close down the meat factory (one of whom incredibly is Ms. Lavigne).

It would therefore seem that the film is a fictionalised version of Schlosser's book (itself a nod to The Jungle, Upton Sinclair however, reflecting the concerns of his time was writing about the plight of workers rather than food per se). The problem is that none of the characters seem real, a situation exacerbated by dialogues that appear to be chunks of text from the book. The worst is reserved for the illegal Mexican immigrants who are not given an ounce of resourcefulness but for the most part are merely herded into their fates. And like all food polemics, it is entirely silent on the consumers who patronise fast food. Part of my problem with food politics is that it equates consumers to the cattle they consume. The consumer therefore has little or no agency both in decoding the messages they receive on fast food or in deciding the food they eat (in an aside I was amused by Powell’s piece which indicates that buying ready made meals from Whole Foods is fairly common. The fact is cooking is an arduous process and most technology is aimed at reducing the drudgery of the kitchen which is precisely why there has been an inexorable shift towards food that is partially or completely prepared). It also seems reasonable to assume from the reviews that the book is intended as a scathing attack on the food industry in the US, in particular McDonalds. The movie however appears to occupy an uneasy space. It is by turns earnest, morally improving in tone, horrified and gently meditative on the nature of modern society as represented by a small town in Colarado. As it happens, Linklater is more effective when he adopts the latter approach. Cody, for example, is a bit of a nowhere town dominated by the meat industry and Linklater evokes this expertly by way of the white and fluorescent factory, the little bars, the roads, the accommodation the immigrants live in, the motels for executives who fly in, burger outlets and the like.

The centrepiece of the film is a workplace accident and the “processing” of a bewildered and very much alive cow into chunks of meat. In fact these scenes render the movie so Dickensian that ultimately it seems the movie is not so much about the food we consume and the pervasive influence of corporations in our century as much as the fear and dread that accompanies our relationship with machines. Like in a Victorian novel, the machine consumes both man and beast and spits them out maimed or dead. And in the film’s ending scenes more sacrificial victims crossing the border wait to be fed into the engines of industry.

She Tells Her Love

She tells her love while half asleep
In the dark hours
With half words whispered low
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow.

~Robert Graves~
Poems 1938-1945

The Mountain Side at Evening

Now even falls
And fresh, cold breezes blow
Adown the grey-green mountain side
Strewn with rough boulders. Soft and low
Night speaks, her tongue untied
Darkness to darkness calls.

Tis now men say
From rugged piles of stones
Steal shapes and things that should be still;
Green terror ripples through our bones,
Our inmost heart-strings thrill
And yearn for careless day.

~Robert Graves~
The Carthusian
June 1911

Sunny Side Up!

Not quite living up to the egg yolk yellow of the title here. But citrus yellow seems equally upbeat and with white surprisingly cool. In anticipation of a coming summer which will no doubt combine white heat and brilliant sun. And your imagination needs to set this in the azure blue of the Sydney sea and sky.

The feather in the centre is a real feather that I found and is not painted. For the rest, the paints are acrylic and the shapes are inspired by my 2 year old niece's building block set. It helps that it didn't require much more than her painting skills :-)

Romance & the City

Sign at the food court in the city. The sign had barely gone up for a week or two before the fishmonger had a first success a la Emma.

It wasn't however the girl in the picture who coupled up.

We are waiting for the fishmonger's next foray into matchmaking.

Tamil Geometry

I am partial to the geometric unadorned motifs of Tamil Nadu and had a few ideas for my tiny canvases based on these designs/motifs. Further I wanted to restrict the palette to white, brick red and ochre. In part this is because these colours as well as abstract geometric designs are integral to much aboriginal art in Australia and I like to think about the links between the two.

The first one is inspired by temple walls in the state. I wish I could have got some of the faded nature of these walls but it was a bit difficult with the paints I had and my painting skills are fairly rudimentary.

The second is inspired by Saivite caste marks in the state.

The third is of course inspired by the ubiquitous kolams of Tamil Nadu. My intial idea was to reproduce three kolams for the three canvases I had which I subsequently abandoned. The colour scheme here is an inverse of most kolams where the main design would be made with white rice paste, the border would be formed by "kaavi" (red brick paste) and the base would be mud or black slate. I decided to go with the white background but am still undecided on which colour scheme might have been the best.

The lines are not very symmetrical partly because I wanted to retain some of the rough nature of the designs (though that is also an excuse for my poor skills - kolams of course tend to be beautifully precise more often than not).