What is comfort food? People talk of something gooey, unhealthy and delicious that usually makes them forget about the world when the chips are down. Others may consume a dessert or look at having a chocolate-based something that is again gooey and delicious.
Personally, desserts and gooey food are delicious. I love them and enjoy eating them. But it’s not comfort food. When I think comfort, I think of that scene in Pixar’s Ratatouille where Anton Ego, the food critic, eats the dish placed before him and is transported back to his childhood where his mother made ratatouille for him after he hurt himself.
Anton Ego after he tastes the ratatouille – Pixar
For me, however, food for the soul is curd rice with gunpowder chutney with thick dal, a fried potato curry with Haldiram’s Bhujia Sev on the side.
The combination may sound bizarre to many, especially my foodie friends, but trust me when I say this: it’s delicious.
For starters, rice and curd does wonders to anyone in a bad mood. My mother once told me that whenever her younger sister threw a tantrum, she was pacified with rice and curd. This isn’t the only case, to be honest. Ask any Tamil family and they will tell you that no meal is complete without rice and curd – irrespective of whether you have an avial as a side dish or whether it’s a beef masala.
Now, let’s come to the fried potatoes. It’s a family recipe, which I have managed to master.
You need,
3-4 potatoes (chopped),
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp urad dal
1 tsp turmeric
3 tbsp oil
salt (to taste)
Method: In a kadai, pour 3 tbsp of oil. Once it begins to simmer, add the mustard seeds and the urad dal until you see spluttering. Add the potatoes and mix well. Add the turmeric and salt and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes. You will see a thick fried layer on the side of the potatoes that has mixed with the urad dal. Once you transfer the potatoes into a serving dish, garnish it with the crisp parts of the potato that have stuck to the kadai.
Finally, the bhujia sev and thick dal is a combination like no other. Pour bhujia onto your plate and mix some dal with it. That, along with the potatoes and the rice and curd takes me to food heaven.
When you ask people to think of the first thing that comes to mind when they talk about Calcutta, people generally speak about the city’s street food, Park Street and in some cases, the Victoria Memorial. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is the partnership between Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman in 2001.
This memory – especially of that cop raising his hands – after Harbhajan Singh trapped Glenn McGrath in front of the wicket to give India a fantastic win is still etched in my memory even after all those years. I thought that it would change after I visited Calcutta (I still can’t call it Kolkata – sorry) in 2010, but the city – mysterious as it is – didn’t leave too many memories to bring back, even though I spent a few days there.
I’ll probably attribute this to the fact that I stayed in Fort William, which is an army base in the city. Because of this, we spent most of our time around the area and were ferried to and fro in army jeeps, which didn’t give us a real feel about the city.
During these ‘escorted’ trips, we visited The Victoria Memorial and Park Street on one day. And as I write this, another memory crops up. I took one of my favourite photographs at the Victoria Memorial.
One of the towers at the Victoria Memorial – Jayadev Calamur
Unfortunately, since we were a group of five people, we couldn’t decide what we wanted to eat at Park Street and by the end of it, most of the happening spots had shut down (it was 10pm), so we finally found a small, dingy room that served a Bengali meal that comprised rice and a fish curry.
Now, here’s my thing about fish. I love it, but when it comes to eating river fish, I don’t know how to eat it. It’s extremely bony and sometimes, I feel that I don’t do much justice to it because I find it difficult to separate the bones from the flesh and relish it. Two of the Bengalis, who were with me, were however relishing it and making several orgasmic sounds as if they had never had sex before.
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Escape from the army
After a lot of cajoling, we finally got a day to ourselves without the guys from the army. Don’t get me wrong, they were really nice guys and extremely helpful. But we wanted a feel of the city and decided to do what regular tourists do.
Firstly, we took a tram. Now, the tram service is still operational in Calcutta and we reached this part of the city that looked quite dodgy. There were a few ragpickers and street kids moving around, but it was a place I knew I would not visit at night. The starting point for the tram was a closed shed-like structure with slums all around it. As soon as we boarded the tram, we could see the dusty streets of the city. Trinamool Congress workers were celebrating Mamata Banerjee’s victory in the state elections. It was the first time in 35-odd years that the Communist Party of India had lost an election in West Bengal, so it was quite a big deal. Crackers were bursting, even as our tram slowly moved out of the shed and made its way into the city.
Tram in Calcutta – Image source Wikipedia
After we alighted from the tram, we stopped for lunch at a traditional Bengali restaurant and had aaloo poshto (potatoes with poppy seeds), Ilish Paturi (a fish dish where the fish, in this case Hilsa, was put inside a leaf and steamed). The latter was so delicious that I ended up having two of them – a big mistake, I must add because during the course of my 36-hour train journey from Calcutta to Bombay, which was the next day, I must have visited the loo in the coach at least a dozen times. But I’ll certainly remember that trip.
While Dravid and Laxman’s partnership at The Eden Gardens is still my first memory of Calcutta, I’m glad that I do have a personal connect with the city.
There is something about the hills. They call you. They welcome you. They embrace you like you’re its lost child. And when it’s time to go back to the plains, they cry for you to stay.
It’s always hard leaving the hills. The last trip I made was this time, last year when my wife Shaili, her folks, her younger brother Lalit, and I took a trip to Dhanulti in Uttarakhand.
I had heard of Dhanulti. My brother had visited it in 1998 just before he went off to the United States. He had told me that it was a pretty village that had one big temple at an altitude. He had also said that it was close to Mussouri, the town that Indian writer Ruskin Bond calls home. Other than that, he told me, there’s nothing.
And that’s exactly what I wanted.
Work wasn’t hectic. It was just that I was sick of Bombay. Doing the same thing again and again; travelling through traffic-infested roads; getting stuck in traffic jams. I could go on, but all that I knew was I needed a holiday.
Shaili’s folks live in Delhi and we had booked tickets to go and see them, but both of us were not interested in staying in Delhi. We just wanted some peace and quiet. Fortunately, her folks sensed this and booked a nice resort in Dhanulti.
Delhi isn’t exactly the nicest place in summer. The temperatures are always over 40 degrees C, it’s dry and by the end of the day, you feel dehydrated and sick. So when we did our research before going on our trip, we found – much to my happiness and Shaili’s horror (she can’t handle extreme weather) – that Dhanulti was 7 degrees C. That was all I needed to know. I packed a couple of sweaters, but Shaili insisted, much to my annoyance, that I carry thermals. Reluctantly I did, but I did thank her later because we discovered that none of the rooms had any heating system in place.
Delhi to Dhanulti
We took off from Bombay after our work and reached Delhi at midnight. We could still feel the hot winds hit our face even at that hour. We got home soon after and immediately went to bed.
The next morning, we were up at 7 and left the house an hour later. The road journey between Delhi and Dhanulti is approximately 11 hours and is quite literally a pain in the backside, given that you sit in the car for all that time, except for a half hour break for lunch. This 10 and a half hour journey is 293 km, out of which a bulk is on hilly terrain. To put things in perspective, we reached Dehradun at approximately 4 pm. Dehradun to Mussouri is 30 km, which is a two-hour road trip, while Missouri to Dhanulti is 17 km, which is another 90 minutes. Added to that is the fact that the sun goes down by 6 and there is no source of light on the single-lane road that has vehicles coming to and fro. The driver, who had been doing this for several years, had the high beams on and we were relying on the instincts of a complete stranger to get us safely to our destination.
And finally, in the envelope of darkness, we saw a series of lights outside tiny hutments. There were at least a dozen structures, most of which were lodges for tourists. The few that were occupied by locals had lanterns outside the house. Since my brother’s trip 16 years earlier, things had not changed at all.
I knew this was going to be a good holiday.
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Rodo Dendron and other hilly traditions…
Apart from the temple, I discovered that the botanical garden is what made Dhanulti famous. Spread across a huge chunk of land, the garden has a variety of trees including apples and the infamous rodo dendron tree. Rodo dendron produces a very sweet juice, which tasted weirdly like cough syrup, but I liked. Shaili gagged, and her dad and Lalit agreed that it was nice.
We purchased a bottle, but never drank it when we came back to Bombay. Eventually, it caught fungus and we had to throw it out.
Through the trek uphill through the garden, we realised that hardly anybody visit Dhanulti. Most people, I figured, preferred Mussouri because of its tourist spots, the fact that Ruskin Bond would sit at the local bookstore and sign autographs for visitors.
In the midst of all this, we realised how cold it was. I had a jacket over my sweater, but refused to wear any gloves. Fortunately, it wasn’t very windy and there were people around me – not the family – who were dressed even more than I was. I didn’t feel so bad then.
We then drove down to Missouri and stopped at a restaurant where we tried a variety of parathas. I wasn’t the biggest fan, I must admit. Despite the outside cold, the parathas looked more greasy and I thought that it was a bit too much even for the cold outside.
After lunch, we began a 45-minute walk up to the shop Ruskin Bond frequents. On the way, we came across a number of local bakeries that made their own chocolate and chocolate milkshake and despite the temptation in front of me, I resisted. I’m glad I did because I suddenly felt my stomach lurch a bit and knew that if I had another bite, I was going to regret it.
We finally reached the store, but much to our disappointment, figured that we were a day late. “Ruskin usually comes to the shop on Saturday,” the kind shop owner told us. “Don’t look disappointed. We still have a number of books that he has signed for his fans,” he smiled looking at my sad face.
I was disappointed. I had grown up reading Bond’s work and loved the adventures he shared with his grandfather (whom he had never met) and his grandmother, whom he was a bit afraid of despite her being very fond of him. While I’m not the biggest fan of his novellas such as The Sensualist (I still find it ridiculous that he was arrested for it) and A Flight of Pigeons, I adore his short stories, especially the ones that involve his love for the hills. It was Ruskin Bond who romanticized the hills for me even before I had ever seen them. But then, an autographed book was still better than having nothing at all.
The temple
We then drove towards the temple and realized that despite the fact that there was a stairway, it was quite a steep climb to the top. Lalit and I decided to test our fitness levels, something I regretted then because Lalit was pretty fit.
We began our climb. Ten minutes into it, my back was aching. Five minutes after, so were my shoulders. As I kept climbing and stopping every two steps to catch my breath, I felt every part of my body ache. Lalit, on the other hand, was marching ahead. He kept on encouraging me to follow him, saying that it wasn’t too far. We even saw families walking barefoot, carrying rucksacks on their backs and effortlessly climbing up. I then felt horribly ashamed and fought with myself to get to the top.
And when I finally did get there, I realised that the climb was worth it.
It was the only part of the trip where we could see any snow. And Lalit and I, who never take pictures of ourselves, ended up taking a celebratory selfie.
The hills sure make you do silly things.
At the end of the trip, when I look back, I was sorry to be leaving and going back to Bombay, but I knew that I would come back to the hills that would always welcome me with open arms.
One-hundred-and-fifty years after Rudyard Kipling wrote the Jungle Book, Taj Safaris created a Mowgli Trail that recreates Kipling’s India. As part of the trail, visitors go on a safari, visit the local village and share a meal with the locals, and are part of a luxurious experience that involves lying in a bubble-filled tub and staring out into the wilderness as spotted deer come by and drink from the local river. The idea behind Taj Safaris is a culmination of a partnership between the Taj Group and andBeyond, a luxury South African-based safari service provider.
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The Mowgli Trails are only offered in two Taj Safari Properties – the Banjar Tola at Kanha National Park and Baghvan at Pench. These two national parks are connected through a thick dense forest cver, and according to experts, are where Kipling based his famous series of short stories.
Speaking on the idea behind organising the Mowgli Trails, Neel Gogate, a lodge manager at Taj Safaris, said that the Taj Safaris have been around since 2008. “We have five properties – four in Madhya Pradesh (Bandavgarh, Pench, Kanha and Panna) and one that recently opened in Nepal. The properties have been a hit amongst customers, but we realised that we needed to do something different to make a safari more interesting and came up with the idea of organising the Mowgli Trails at Pench and Kanna. It’s perfect timing, given that it has been 150 years since Kipling wrote the book. Also, the movie has released, which adds to the fun,” he said.
The road to Kanha
Kanha is famous for tigers. I have previously visited tiger sanctuaries, but have never been able to spot one. So I went without expectations, though in secret I wished that I could see the magnificent beast – even if it was for a few seconds.
Kanha National Park is a five and a half hour road trip from Nagpur airport. The car passes through the dry foliage in Vidarbha and slowly the topography changes as you enter Madhya Pradesh. From a light brown, you start seeing a variety of greens, even though the outside temperature during the day is 42 degrees celsius. Fortunately, I was in an air-conditioned vehicle and didn’t feel the heat, although common sense dictated that I drink water at regular intervals, so that I didn’t get dehydrated.
The overall drive was worth it. Once we entered the Banjar Tola property, we turned towards East Camp. The property is part of the jungle and has a rough terrain drive up to the main lobby area. We couldn’t see any animals because of the heat outside and assumed that they were in a cooler part of the forest.
Then the vehicle turned and we saw a group of people standing in line and waving at me and my fellow travellers. It looked like a huge welcoming committee and it was a sweet gesture. When I later enquired the reason behind the group waving (this wasn’t the first time they did it during the course of the three-day trip), Neel told me that since Taj had teamed up with South African luxury safari group AndBeyond, the staff had been trained in South Africa for a brief period. “This type of welcoming is something AndBeyond always does and they told us that it personalises a visit,” he explained.
A room like no other
There are luxury rooms, but then Taj Safaris gives you a luxury tent. You walk into a room that has rustic wooden flooring. The bed is a queen-sized one and gives you a direct view into the jungle (see picture). Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you wake up to spotted deer drinking water from the Banjar Tola River.
If you walk into the bathroom, it’s as big as the room! Truth be told, it’s more of a dressing area and bathroom in the same area. There is a tub and a separate shower system, which makes you feel like Harry Potter when he entered the Prefects bathroom in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the first time. In fact, the tub was a blessing. On my second day, the outside temperature was so hot that even an air-conditioning system didn’t help cool the room down and made it difficult for me to take an afternoon nap. So I did jugaad. I filled the tub up with cold water, added some body wash to form a thick layer of bubbles and entered the tub and took a half hour nap. I believe that my skin, which was burning from the intense heat, cooled down for a few hours after that.
In the jungle, the mighty jungle…
Our day began at 4.30 am. We were at the lobby by 5.00 am and out into the forest by 5.15. Forest officials have made only 20 per cent of all forests in India accessible to humans. The remaining 80 per cent falls into restricted zone and whoever – guides or tourists – flouts these rules are immediately given a life ban. This is because forest officials record your identity cards before you enter the jungle, so it’s mandatory you carry your passport (especially if you’re a foreign tourist), PAN card, Aadhar card or drivers licence with you in case you visit the jungle.
The forest is open to public at 6 am and vehicles are supposed to leave the forest area by 11 am, according to Srinidhi, Narayan and Nikita, the naturalists who were travelling with us. “We have to be at the gates early, so that we can be the first to get in,” he explained, but we weren’t so lucky. We were seventh in line with a number of Maruti Gypsies ahead of us.
As soon as the gates opened, we saw the vehicles zoom into the forest, but Narayan was a little cautious. “We’re not allowed to exceed 20 km/h. Not everybody follows this rule because everyone wants to spot a tiger,” he explained. Narayan, however, reassured us saying that there had been several tiger spotting over the course of the month. “That does not mean you should not see the other animals,” he teased.
We started off spotting a group of langurs. These monkeys, unlike their counterparts in North India, are less aggressive and tend to keep their distance from humans. However, that did not stop them from sitting on trees and posing for the cameras. The infants, however, tend to be more curious and are usually held by their mothers so that they don’t get run over by vehicles.
We also saw several spotted deer – most of whom ignored us because they were used to vehicles. The deer spent time grazing in the Kanha meadows or drinking from a waterhole. Sometimes, when we stopped in excitement, the animal would think we were predators and run away before we managed to get any photographs. However, when I look back at the images, I’m pretty happy with what I got.
The third animal we spotted was the gaur or Indian bison. We saw a mother and its calf and didn’t dare to go too close in case it charged at us. Nikita, one of the naturalists, then showed us a video of a tiger stalking a bison and the bison charging at the tiger, forcing it to retreat. “It’s capable of toppling over a SUV,” added Srinidhi, the third naturalist who was with us.
Through the course of the safari, we spotted several other birds including peacocks who were trying to impress peahens, pea fowls who kept running across the dirt track to evade getting run over, a variety of birds including eagles, the Indian roller, different species of vultures, a mongoose that ran into a burrow and even two jackals.
In all honesty, I was happy because this was the most I had seen during any jungle trip. Even if I didn’t spot a tiger, I knew that this was a well-spent trip.
Then Narayan stopped the car and pointed at fresh dung and said that the tiger was close. “Going by the freshness, the tiger would have been here 10 minutes ago and has marked its territory,” he explained and then pointed at the giant pugmark, which suggested that the tiger was a male.
We then rushed to search for the beast. Vehicles came and went with guides and drivers saying someone else spotted it, but they had the same disappointed expression suggesting that the tiger had eluded them all.
Another naturalist, Varun then came in his vehicle by our side and said that he heard a distress call from a deer. We stopped and waited in silence and heard another cry and even for someone who had not spent so much time in the jungle, I knew that it was a cry of fear.
And then Narayan screamed, “Tiger!”
The tiger knew she was being followed by a number of jeeps, but moved at its own pace. She was not too slow, but not too fast. There was lazy elegance about her walk. She didn’t bother to stop and pose. It was more like, “I’m moving. If you want a picture, take it now.” Some vehicles tried accelerating for passengers to get a better view, but then she turned around, glared at the driver for a few seconds and then walked into the bushes and left all of us with an adrenaline rush.
And then, I knew that even if I spotted anything else, it would not matter.
Life beyond the jungle
We returned to the resort where its manager Neel Gogate, a former forest officer, who joined the Taj group nine years ago, congratulated us on our success. He then asked us to freshen up and get ready to go to a village and hang out with the locals at lunchtime.
The delicious meal that killed me
The village is a 10-minute drive from the resort and lunch was served in a mud hut. Lunch comprised dal batti, a spring onion dish, a dal, a chicken dish, a smoked surmai and an atta kheer. Although the food was delicious, it was unwise to have dal batti on a summer’s day, which resulted in me ending up with a stomach upset on the day I came back to Mumbai.
The overall experience
Taj Safaris is a luxury experience, which means an individual pays Rs 50,000 per person per night in a tent. This means that you spend Rs 1,00,000 if two people share a room. If I could afford the trip, I would definitely do it again, but I strongly recommend it to anyone who has that kind of money.
Best time to visit
Between November and March (although people visit in April and May as well, despite the heat)
(An edited version of this had appeared in DNA on April 17. This is the original text that I wrote)
A rumour, however short-lived, is all it takes to create an enterprise. The rumour in question was spread by an Australian tourist visiting Cappadocia; he said that a portion of Star Wars had been shot here. In reality, the shooting of ‘planet Tatooine’ that he was referring to, took place in Tunisia. But the presence of a Star Wars cafe in Cappadocia is indicative of what the Turks still want to believe.
As the release of the seventh movie of the franchise was going to coincide with my trip, I had planned to watch it in Istanbul. Unfortunately, movie theatres here screen the Turkish version. But that’s the thing about Turkey. If you ever plan to visit, I recommend you carry a phrase book with you because the locals although extremely helpful, struggle to construct even a sentence in English. The standard reply is in Turkish, followed by, “No speak the English.” Fortunately, during my 12-day trip I manage to pick up a few words: Güllüoğlu (sweet shop), cay (pronounced chai, is tea) and muzesi (museum). Thanks to its position on the world map and importance in history–both modern and ancient–Turkey has several museums, both open air and enclosed, including some converted from legendary monuments such as Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace. But more on them later.
Bazaars with history and Bollywood
There’s something exciting about being in a city, whose history can fill thousands of books. Istanbul’s history goes back to the Byzantine Empire that was followed by the Roman Empire and finally the Ottoman Empire. The city (originally called Byzantium, then Constantinople after Roman Emperor Constantine and finally Istanbul) has seen several cultures and traditions come and go over the centuries.
As I walk uphill along the cobble-stone streets from my service apartment to Sultan Ahmed Square, I pass a variety of traditional shops selling everything from lamps, teas and trinkets, to aphrodisiacs. While the old-school salesmen go, “Yes please. Come inside”, the younger ones serenade us with Bollywood songs, “Dil Toh Pagal Hai! Dil Deewana Hai!” Amused, I enter a souvenir shop and bargain for a lamp till the store owner says, “My friend, this is the best price you’ll get. If you don’t believe us, go to another shop”.
Apart from visiting The Grand Bazaar–a 15th century market that today comprises 61 streets and over 3,000 shops, I do other touristy stuff such as going to the Blue Mosque (to scratch it off my bucket list), Hagia Sofia (a revelation with a mixture of Islamic and Christian art) and a two-hour ride along the Bosphorus. The boat guide keeps pointing out houses of the rich and famous, specifying the price of each. The cheapest room at Ciragan Palace Kempinski, Istanbul’s costliest hotel, is around `80,000. However, the most striking place we discover is Chora Church, which despite being a two-room structure has some of the best art that I have seen. The mosaic of Jesus Christ and his 12 disciples on the ceiling keeps tourists busy taking pictures.
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Bus rides to the past
After six days in Istanbul, I spend a few nights travelling between cities in what appears to be the best way to move around Turkey–private buses. They are 50-seater Mercedes models with a screen in front of each seat, much like an international airline. Best of all, along with the ticket (which costs 40 Turkish Lira), you also get two cups of any warm or cold beverage and a sponge cake.
Travelling from Istanbul to Cappadocia and onwards from Konya to Izmir we can’t see much outside as it’s night. It’s difficult to sleep with the constant sound of children crying. And as we near Izmir, it doesn’t help that the heater is overworked. I sleep in just a t-shirt and jeans, though outside it’s -5 degreesC.
But the day trips make up for the trouble–the short journey from Cappadocia to Konya takes us through pretty mountains and snowfall and the locations are totally worth it. When it comes to open air structures, Ephesus, near Izmir, is right up there. The Roman city was rediscovered in the 19th century. It has ancient baths (where Romans socialised and shared important information), a church dedicated to Mother Mary and a structure that historians and archaeologists say was Mary’s home.Marble placards offer explanations in Turkish, English, German and French. Instead of spending 30 Turkish Liras (approximately `600) to see the house, we decide to explore other marvels such as statues of Roman Gods. It’s hard to miss the irony of modern beings taking selfies, juxtaposed against this ancient backdrop. After Izmir, the final leg of our trip is to Troy, where the tourism department has built a horse as an attraction, but it is the ruins that you must check out. We take 45 minutes to explore its broken walls, small open-air theatre and remains of a 5th-century well.
Even the the six-hour journeys between Izmir and Canakkale and back to Istanbul are beautiful; we drive along the Turkish coastline, a brilliant shade of blue that blends with the sky such that we can’t tell where one ends and the other starts. There on, it’s a hilly ride up and despite the spectacular roads many of us feel nauseated thanks to the speed.
If I were to do the trip again, I’d most certainly ensure it is just as strenuous and wouldn’t eliminate any city, except Konya, which is freezing. You can’t skip it if you’re taking the bus from Capadocia to Izmir, but you can, if you’re willing to spend a little more and take a train. The thing is, despite its beauty, Konya doesn’t have much to offer; anything that you want to buy from here, you can get at Istanbul too.
(This article originally appeared in DNA on February 21, 2016)
As the aircraft begins its descent, I stretch my neck to see the view of an unexplored land. The clouds have created lovely patterns; patterns similar to what I have seen in the hills in Northeast India. And then I see land. It’s green, there are tiny vehicles moving quickly across well-constructed roads, and drivers clearly keep a distance between each other because I can only see a handful of cars in the long never-ending road stretch.
That’s my initial thought about Sweden. It’s beautiful but distant. In the next one week, thanks to a trip across the country, where I was fortunate to see the north and the south, my initial thought about beauty was spot on. When it comes to being a distant nation, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Swedes are some of the friendliest people that I have met; they show interest in you and your culture, they are law-abiding, they are funny and, most importantly, they believe in teamwork. In fact, an American ice hockey coach, who is considered a legend in the game, said that the Swedish ice hockey team did not need coaching because they understand the value of teamwork better than any other nation in the world.
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We visited four places in Sweden – Stockholm, Uppsala, Umea and Lund – as part of an international junket organised by the Swedish Institute to show journalists from India, China, Brazil, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia how Sweden is still a popular education destination, despite its government making tuition fees mandatory for international i.e. non-EU students.
During the week-long trip, these were a few observations I made while also speaking to several Swedes about their homeland
Individualism means teamwork
Every Swedish university we visited had its charm. While Royal KTH, Lund and Uppsala spoke of being modern despite a traditional background, Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska and Umea University spoke on what the future would look like. In fact, Umea, which celebrated its 50th anniversary while we were there, came out with a booklet citing their Vision 2065.
What all found unique about the Swedish universities was how they encouraged individualism. If a student came up with an idea or an invention that stood out and impacted society, then the university ensures that the individual gets the patent. In fact, Anna Ramsten a marketing assistant at the University of Lund narrated an interesting story of an Indian student studying there. She said that the Masters student had come up with a unique idea resulting in his guide insisting that the student’s name go before his on the research paper. This belief in putting the individual first is a perfect example of leadership and great teamwork. I heard similar stories throughout my week-long trip, which shows how truly progressive Nordic nations are compared to the rest of the world.
Food and health
My research on Swedish food prior to the trip largely gave me recipes of a variety of seafood, and meatballs with lingonberry sauce. Meatballs I get, but the idea of mixing them with a sweet sauce and mashed potatoes left me feeling ambivalent. This, though I am a foodie. My wife advised, “Just go with the flow”. When I look back, I’m glad I listened to her.
The very day that I landed in Sweden, I learned that Swedes literally celebrate food; there have days dedicated to it. There’s ‘Fat Tuesday’, preceding Lent, meant for eating calorie-high buns filled with semlor (cream and almond paste), ‘Sweets Day’ or Lördagsgodis, which came about after research suggested you should eat sweets only once a week, followed as an unwritten rule statistics show that the average Swedish family (consisting two adults and two children) eats 1.2 kilos of sweets per week, most of it on Saturday! The day I arrived, October 4, was Kanelbullens dag or Cinnamon Bun Day. Post a 14 hour flight from Mumbai (with a three-hour transit at Doha), starving and jet-lagged, I entered a local bakery in Stockholm; looking at my indecisiveness the kind woman behind the counter then suggested I try out a cinnamon bun because it was National Cinnamon Bun Day. I expected it to be like what you get in Mumbai—traces of cinnamon with overpowering taste of maida, but here cinnamon is the hero and it’s custard-like centre melts into my mouth.
While on foot, travelling long distances or even at the Stockholm Subway, I noticed that though the Swedes are extremely fit, they eat all the time! They munch on chocolates, rolls, buns or a variety of sweets—marshmallows, cola candies, skittles and so on—sold by weight, at every grocery store. I didn’t dare to go near any of these, given my family history of diabetes, and instead opted for healthier options such as the local fruits (usually golden apples).
I did, however, sample some local cuisine, mostly at cafeterias of universities that played safe with what they plated us as we were a group of international journalists. One attempted to mimic our chicken curry with rice; while it wasn’t awful, it was bland. The curry tasted more like barbecue sauce. But at Upasala University gave us their local fare—a plate of thick, rich potato soup with lemony zest, and bread toasted just right for dipping. I can’t convey how good that soup was; for the longest time, I thought my mother’s potato soup was right there.
And then, I was in for a big surprise, meeting a number of vegetarians in this meatball- and fresh-fish loving country. They were vegetarians by choice and loved the variety of vegetarian fare, a specialty I saw in the restaurants had a giant potato dumpling with carrots and peas served on the side. This still didn’t prepare me for a study that I had read before leaving—one in 10 Swedes are vegetarian or vegan!
Despite the delicious veg options available, I finally went ahead and tried the meatballs with lingonberries. And I have to admit, it was worth it. The sweetness of lingonberries perfectly balanced out the blandness of the mash, and together with the melt-in-the-mouth balls of beef in a peppery sauce, they resulted in a burst of flavours in my mouth. Despite being full from hogging all day, I managed to do it justice to it—although dessert, I skipped.
Fika
“Did you hear about Fika?” asked Douglas Washburn of Swedish Institute on our first morning in Stockholm. When we replied in the negative, he said that Fika is a Swedish concept where companies ensure that employees take time off and unwind for at least one hour per day. The reason, he explained, was for better productivity, as well as trainees meeting and interacting with the MDs, thereby creating an informal and casual environment to work.
This, in addition to the proposed idea of introducing four-day weeks in Sweden, proper healthcare and free top-level schooling for children definitely, makes Sweden a place that its residents cherish. They love physical maps
At Stockholm, at every place I went to ask for directions – be it the help centre at Arlanda Airport, Stockholm Central Station or my hotel – the people behind the counter would present me with a map. They would circle the spot we were at and circle my destination. I was then given the map, something I always struggle with reading unless I use GPS, and asked to find my way. The good thing is the weather was perfect. It was autumn and the maximum temperature was 10 degrees Celsius and the minimum on the last day going up to -1 degrees Celsius, so walking around the city wasn’t too much of a problem.
The Highlights
In my opinion, there were three highlights of the Sweden trip. The first was sitting in the auditorium of the Karolinska Institutet’s Nobel auditorium and hearing the Nobel Committee announce the prize in medicine. Even for those who aren’t interested in the Nobel Prize, this is certainly an experience.
The second highlight occurred when we went to a traditional Swedish restaurant after a long day at Umea. One of the journalists, Ha Soojeong, who studied at Uppsala University, met her professor, a mild-mannered gentleman and gave him a book written by her on the life of Olof Palme, the Swedish Prime Minister who was assassinated in 1986 outside a metro station. After enjoying a few pleasantries, including telling us that his maternal grandmother married one of the founders of the Communist Party of India, the gentleman left. Soojeong went on to tell us that he is Palme’s son, Joakim, a professor of Political Science at Uppsala University.
Finally, I am a fan of underground train travel, and the Stockholm subway, especially the tube line, makes for the world’s largest art gallery. The work is straight out of a sci-fi movie and if you look at the images, you will wonder if you’re part of a postcard.
If there is one regret I have about this trip, it is that I missed the northern lights at Umea by a couple of hours. Our plane landed at 8 am, while the northern lights lasted for a few hours the previous night. But then, this gives me enough incentive to go back, doesn’t it?
Disclaimer: This is a part of two articles I wrote for DNA, a Mumbai-based newspaper
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