We ground out of Chennai through the appalling traffic to the village of Sriperumbudur where, from a distance, you can see water buffaloes bathing and high-rise ancient temples which, if you squint, remind you of Gotham City. We saw the ancient reservoirs, so-called tanks, where the lepers cleanse themselves and the locals do their washing, but it ain’t like a visit to Salisbury Cathedral!
It was quite funny on the day that we all went there to film what is actually a very beautiful and fascinating place. On the way my beloved director, Nick, somehow got it into his head that the Indians grow a lot of rice and we should acknowledge that fact in our telvision programme. You have to remember, however, that there is nothing real in television land. Some 30 or 40 hapless Indian women were planting rice in a paddy field but, quel horreur, on the shady side of the field. This is, of course, totally unacceptable; for television purposes they must be in the sunshine to avoid shadows, so that the colours are bright and vibrant. To make matters worse, it was impossible to get a shot of these people from the road because the camera angle would not be correct. So, at the behest of Nick, our long-suffering researcher, Raj, was instructed to tell the semailleurs — which is French for seed sowers–to move over to the other side of the field and replant what they had already planted for the benefit of our camera. In the meantime, Stan, my manager, on this day dressed in combat kit, drawing on a cigar and for all the world looking like Stormin’ Norman, hijacked and occupied the adjacent hospital. He stormed the operating theatre, where bewildered surgeons were bullied into allowing him–in mid-operation–to place the camera on the roof so that the world could see something that they have probably never seen before, since the dawn of television, a load of women planting rice.
Sriperumbudur Temple and Tank.
Above left to right One of the many temples at Kanchipuram. Bogged down at Muttukadu.
Interlude at Kanchipuram
Some 40 or 50 minutes out of Madras there is a splendid Taj hotel called Fisherman’s Cove at Covelong Beach, near Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. The beaches are unspoilt, there are spectacular views, regular rooms in the hotel complex and utterly enchanting guest bungalows on the beach. Here, with Tess, I spent six magnificent days as the guest of Sarabjeet Singh, the general manager. During that time I learnt how to make some exquisite dishes, including the subzi poriyal (crunch spicy beetroot with coconut) and kathirikai kara kulambu (a spicy aubergine dish) on pages 153 and 156, from the hotel’s executive chef, Fabian. I seem to remember he had a couple of hits in the charts in the late fifties. (Joke! Rock-’n-rollers know what I mean.)
Kanchipuram is the Golden Town of 1,000 Temples, one of India’s seven most sacred cities. Nowadays only 126 temples survive, but five of these are considered outstanding. They are closed between noon and 3.00pm and are best visited in the afternoon. On the same stretch of coastline as Covelong Beach is the famous Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, probably the best-known sight in southern India.
A Bombay market.
So, on a high from the Fisherman’s Cove, our culinary circus rolled on to Bombay (or Mumbai as it is now known), birthplace of Rudyard Kipling in 1865, and a city famous for its red double-decker buses. Home of the wealthy and glamorous, Mumbai is the commercial hub of India. Here there is a huge contrast between the rich and the poor. The city claims more millionaires than Manhattan, and there is indeed an almost ostentatious display of wealth, and yet two million people in the city do not have access to a toilet, six million go without access to drinking water and over half the city’s population of 16 million people live in slums or on the street.
The huge natural harbour is the reason why commerce blossomed in Mumbai, helped by the opening of India’s first railway line which started in Mumbai. Elephanta Island in the middle of the harbour has magnificent rock-cut cave temples, one of the city’s main tourist attractions, and in February a festival of music and dance is held at these cave temples.
Mumbai is also the home of Bollywood, the Indian version of Hollywood, which produces more films than any other city in the world — 120 feature films per year. In Mumbai you can still savour the glamour attached to the notion of going to the movies at one of the glorious art deco cinemas.
The Gateway of India.
Above left to right Lunch box delivery.
The city also has over 50 laughter clubs. Members gather in parks all over the city each morning and laugh themselves silly, in the belief that happiness and health are connected and drawing on ancient yogic texts that highlight the beneficial effects of laughter.
Mumbai has a unique lunch service. Hot lunches are delivered to workers in their offices direct from their homes by something akin to a postal service. Before noon, dabbas, ever-hot lunch boxes, containing a home-cooked meal are collected from residencies by dabbawallas. They are sent to the city by train and dropped at various stations for lunchtime delivery by other teams of dabbawallas. Ownership and location of each lunch box is identified by markings decipherable by the dabbawallas alone. After lunch the whole process is reversed.
Crawford Market and the bazaars of Kalbadevi and Bhuleshwar sell everything from mangoes to tobacco to Alsatian puppies; if you can eat it or stroke it, you can probably find it here.
We stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel on the waterfront next to the Gateway of India, a huge triumphal arch built in 1924 to commemorate a visit by George V and Queen Mary. The last of the British troops leaving India by sea passed through this arch. Nowadays the massive stone arch is used mainly as an embarkation point for ferries taking tourist to the Elephanta caves or down the coast to Goa. According to the Lonely Planet Guide to India (quote) Places to stay — Top End, ‘The Taj Mahal Hotel, next to the Gateway of India is one of the best hotels in the country … the Taj is second home to Mumbai’s elite and has every conceivable facility, including three quality restaurants, several bars, a coffee shop, swimming pool, gymnasium and nightclub.’ While I am the greatest fan of the Lonely Planet guides, I can only disagree with their description of the Taj Mahal Hotel — I think it is the worst hotel I have ever stayed in.
The original flying dhobi.
One of the few delights of staying in an Indian hotel is the excellent laundry service. My grease-splattered, turmeric-stained shirts would come whizzing back, splendidly clean and immaculately pressed, and very quickly and cheaply too. But, they are not washed in gleaming Launderettes–they are literally flogged clean in Bombay’s municipal laundry, locally known as the Dhobi Ghat at Mahalaxmi. Here, in a labyrinth of open-air stone and concrete basins, thousands of men scrub, wash, rinse and dry tons of dirty clothes brought from all over the city all day. Then, after they have been through hand-operated spin dryers, the clothes are spread