Secret Spots to Visit in Kohima – the Capital of Nagaland

Kohima, as opposed to a heaving metropolis, is an idyllic town surrounded by lush foliage and rut-covered roads winding through a perfect forest of pine and cherry, of wild orchids and honey-combs. The houses are quaint and good-looking, and there are lots of churches, many of them.

Secret spots are in abundance in Kohima. If you love the place and explore it frequently on foot, your legs will carry you, on their own accord, toward one of your favorite promontories.

Some places are spoken of in whispers; few are underrated, while others have taken time to discover.

The Heritage:

What, once, stood the rambling old DC bungalow, with lines grown indistinct with moss and rooftop laden with ferns, now stands the Heritage with a haphazard improvised look, spruced-up interiors and a sprawling wide complex. However, it still has the feel of an old gentry English cottage, like a symmetry restored.

Great chambers, chandeliers and paintings by local Naga artistes adorn the interiors of the Heritage as you strut through the freshly polished wooden-floors.

At dusk, when the town envelops in a quivering red glow, one can capture the best sunsets in Kohima from the Heritage, overlooking Western Kohima town and the Puliebadze mountains.

Chingtsuong:

Chingtsuong, translates into ‘come and eat’ from the local Changki Naga dialect.

Minimalistic, conventional looks with its atypical charm with a Naga theme complete with bamboo-woven blinds, wooden water jugs, and earthen pots laden with firewood, gives an artist’s rendition of a traditional Naga kitchen.

This is the place to satiate your pining for authentic Naga fare. While the smoked Pork with anishi and akhuni are house favorites, the more adventurous can glut on Pork trotters, intestines, snails, and other house specials.

As you walk in, the smell of smoked meat wafts through the air and the sight of warm, food-scented condensing on the faces of happy diners, gives you the impression that you are in for a more than ordinary human enthusiasm and culinary fare.

Café Caffeine:

The next eating-stop on Kohima’s itinerary is Café Caffeine.

The café has an intimacy which is outlandish, with off-beat, psychedelic graffiti and is a total flipside to the other places catering traditional Naga fare.

Beef stroganoff, braised beef, macaroni napolitan, muffins and pastas, roast pork, and good coffee. Largely Italian and Continental fare, the list could go on. Beef lasagna is a perennial favorite among regulars.

While the café is frequented by youngsters perched on café stools and dropping provocative phrases which stand apart from a general conversation, it also promotes local musicians and artistes by regularly hosting promotional gigs and concerts.

Guitars, Manga and black leather sofas add to the ambience of the café.

Super Market:

The Super Market offers a fascinating cultural experience and a glimpse into the local way of life. It remains true to its roots. From the time the day dawns, the locals come flocking in from the country within the town which sprawls out for miles.

As the day broadens and the crowds start settling in, clusters of Naga spring onions, ginger blossoms, Naga beans and lentils, wild mushrooms, yams and banana flowers, tree tomatoes, Naga King chillies and prickly ash peppers, fermented soy bean paste wrapped in banana leaves, fleshy bamboo shoots, plums, apricots and wild gooseberries, and a host of other aromatic Naga spices and local flavors are up for grabs.

Bee larvae, silkworms, wood worms and hornet nests are common sightings, and the sound of slippery eels and cat-fishes stirring in tiny water reservoirs, the buzz of grasshoppers and water bugs, and the croaking of wet-weather frogs resonate through the air.

The Super Market is thronged by tourists snapping and whirring with their cameras; pausing, inching back and even dropping to their knees, to catch the perfect shot, with just enough time to trigger their shutters, before the rank of the market sends them into a raucous frenzy.

Nagaland Emporium, Western Book depot and other bookstores:

Nothing much has transpired the rustic streets leading to the Nagaland Emporium flanked by four bookstores; Western Book Depot stands out as the oldest book store in Kohima.

There is a certain familiarity between the Nagaland Emporium and the four bookstores creating mirror images of each. There is a rare merger, like the unions of souls, with one preserving the oral and written literature of the Nagas, while the other, art and culture.

Naga authors and historians are promoted by these bookstores. Easterine Angami’s ‘Mari’ and ‘Naga Folktales’ share window space with APJ Kalam’s ‘Indomitable Spirit’ and Gandhi’s ‘India of my Dreams’.

Across the street, a few meters away, the Nagaland State Emporium houses Naga handicrafts and handloom products, and Naga paraphernalia, including miniatures of the Kohima War Cemetery.

Dzukou Valley:

Whenever there is a dull and stifling in the town; and you run out of lofty interests, pack your bags and head toward Dzukou valley for a memorable trekking experience.

The valley is etched in the poetic memory of every wander-lust traveler. It is a sacred corridor for the Nagas, laden with dew-cold lilies, hooded aconitums, wild strawberries and gathering dreams.

No matter how anyone construes the valley, there will always be a lack of verbal eloquence.

Native to the world’s tallest rhododendron trees, and the source of inspiration for Vikram Seth’s ecological fable ‘The Elephant and the Tragopan’, a trek to Dzukou is identical to attending a festival of understanding with nature.

Khonoma Village:

Roughly situated on the fringes of Kohima, en route from limestone cliffs housing rock bee colonies to whispering pines, Khonoma is a sprawling, clean village of descending clouds hanging and leaping across hill slopes, of lush green paddy fields, corridors and war-beaten cottages painted with brushes dipped in nature’s palette.

Khonoma was once the tragic personification of memory and past-violence. It is not a walled village manned by warring clans anymore, but remnants of resistance to British infiltration into the Naga hills, in the guise of War memorials and forts (reconstructed by the villagers) are restored.

In a sudden flight from vivid realism, the village reveals itself as an embodiment of survival and self-preservation.

Secret spots and places are like poems. They are somewhere behind, and have always been there. The wander-lust traveler, like the poet, merely discovers them.

Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground

Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground together reflected the broad popular culture of their times which moved from the innocent frenzy of the late 40’s, and the muted cool of the 50’s to the irresponsible excess and flamboyance of the 60’s – the age of rock ‘n’ roll, the Beat movement, and sex and drugs.  An age fueled by creative energy and breaking free from social constraints – an age where art and music took on the task of responding to the chaos and disorder of a society triggered by racism, sexism and its restraints on individual freedom.

When you listen to Sunday Morning or Venus in Furs and imagine the dark romantic milieu conjured by drug-slowed folk rock, the passionate fervor of Cale’s modernist musical genius, and the rugged urban poetry of Lou Reed – you will understand how the Velvet Underground’s music was like a mirror to Andy Warhol’s world. Reed was like a reporter who gave voice to lost souls in Warhol’s Factory.

Many worlds converged at the Factory and it was probably inevitable that Warhol met the Velvet Underground here through Gerard Malanga, his personal assistant during the mid-Sixties. By this time, Warhol had plans to front a rock band and open his first mixed-media show in New York, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, involving live music, dance, and film.

The Velvets regularly rehearsed at the Factory and toured with Warhol and his entourage. The artist had a strong influence in the New York rock underground scene and by taking the Velvets into his social world; he was virtually creating the underground music scene all over again. By the late 60s, Andy was bringing together classical modernist music with gruff pop by managing the Velvet Underground.

The affinity between Warhol and the Velvets goes much deeper than great album art and the atmosphere at the Factory and Exploding Plastic Inevitable events. The Velvets saw the best of the artist and preserved it in their music. There is a fairly broad consensus that their love song I’ll Be Your Mirror is in a sense a portrait of Warhol and his vacant, extinguished gaze. The poetry of Heroin reflects his art, especially his car crash paintings.

Warhol’s soul is witnessed in the music he nurtured. He was driven to make art music and his recognition of the Velvets’ talent was one of the finest moments of the age and they went on to make a modern classic music album in The Velvet Underground & Nico.

The Velvet Underground was also far ahead of its time in many ways, and were headed towards their very own new direction. Their paranoid aggressiveness and boisterous alternative lifestyles have been picked up by other sub-cultures later on, especially punk rockers.

 

The Making of a Fashion Icon – Coco Before Chanel

Audrey Tautou plays the grande dame of Parisian haute couture in ‘Coco Before Chanel’ – a movie based on the life of Gabrielle Coco Chanel before she became a brand – became public property. Directed by Anne Fontaine, the film spans across a period in Coco Chanel’s troubled early life, tracing the genesis of her personal style, and perhaps the DNA of the fashion world itself.

Coco is orphaned at a young age with her sister, Adrienne (Marie Gillain). The movie follows the young girl into a life when she becomes a courtesan and starts performing in double-acts in cafes and bistro bars. She meets a rich gentleman farmer, Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), and follows him to his château outside Paris. She makes an attempt to crack into the Paris showbusiness with Balsan’s help.  It turns sour and she starts earning her bread as a dressmaker. While staying at the château, her bemused patron presses his sexual prerogative, but there is something in Chanel which will not let her become anything as banal as a kept woman.

Throughout the movie, Anne Fontaine focusses on Chanel’s instinctive prowess to notice what is amiss with women’s clothes – when they are too uncomfortable, too gaudy, or too absurd at times. She dons a short bob haircut and wears simple clothes that efface womanly curves, which in her eyes are unchic and unacceptable.

With the money and social connections of Balsan, Capel and d’Alençon behind her, Coco starts to slowly establish herself as a designer and revolutionise the fashion industry. And, in so many ways, re-invent the industry.

Conversations slip among velleities and carefully caught whispers and secrets, and as new plots start developing, white flannel trousers are replaced by themes of unrequited love and intrigue. Coco goes through a slump and a depression; she starts pouring her emotions solely into her art. The clean lines of her designs, the black and white colours juxtaposed with elegant high-contrast stitching – embody the underlying themes of the movie. This transitory phase in her life eventually reflects in her clothing – holding pieces of her past.

A tastefully furnished drama, the film is notable for outstanding performances from Tautou and Poelvoorde and their relationship. Tautou exhibits maturity to portray and carry off the big role of a complex personality and gives an excellent performance. Poelvoorde, on the other hand, gives a brilliant supporting turn as Coco’s sponsor and sugar daddy.

Tatou is far prettier in the movie than Chanel, but style does not come naturally to her. What Coco possesses goes beyond grace or physical beauty. The movie is brilliant but in the end, the viewer is left pondering. What is it that is missing in Tautou or what is it that Coco Chanel possesses that makes her such a brand success? Can it ever be bottled? If so, will such a thing smell like Chanel No. 5?

Contemporary Indian Art – An Overview

What started as a movement to revive and regenerate the Indian cultural scene some decades back – contemporary Indian art has now caught the attention of art critics and enthusiasts all over the world. There is a strong Indian presence in art galleries, exhibitions and auction houses globally.

Young artists from all over the country are experimenting with new styles and forms of art, shedding the clichéd and taking an altogether different approach on the contemporary, as opposed to the one conceived during the pre-colonial and pre- nationalist era. There is a huge boom in the art market across the sub-continent. This is evident from art galleries and exhibitions mushrooming all across the country.

Contemporary art in India takes a different trajectory from the West – gathering varied trends from all over the country spread across multiple regional schools of art. It is a mix of the radical and the provocative, with new artists experimenting with multiple and immersive forms of expression.

Many Indian artists have also immigrated towards the West and have started incorporating new forms of expression in their works, thereby creating artworks with a fine balance of their past in India and their new-found experiences in the west.

A striking feature which engages young artists from different regions of the country is the adherence to the medium of easel painting. Today, when more technologically advanced forms of art like new media, installations or photo performance are taking over, the decision to stick to the two dimensional surface of the canvas by young artists is, in itself, unique and a distinctive feature of  contemporary Indian art.

The return to more conventional mediums of art, viz. easel painting, and not entirely embracing the advanced technological approaches to art, is an indication of a developing avant-garde movement in the country spearheaded by young artists in the country. Their assertion to represent a contemporary experience, cutting across a wide variety of art styles and forms, within the constraints of a two dimensional surface is laudable.

The return of easel painting is reminiscent of an erstwhile prevailing trend in the 1980s in Europe and the United States when dialectical discourses on the choice between the figurative and the abstract were hugely debated.

However, the point of contention among contemporary Indian artists revolves around reconsidering the prospects of easel painting as opposed to the radical alternatives of Minimalism and Conceptualism.

The art scene in the country is a far cry from imitative representation; the conflict in modernist art in India emerges from within the figurative modes of art representation themselves. The conflict is not within the historical and the contemporary, but the medium itself.

Contemporary Indian art is highly vibrant and integrated. Artists have intricately impressed on layered contemporary art canvasses with ground-breaking and innovative art works transcending across cultural barriers. One can notice the fine blend between the traditional and the modern in the works of these artists, while leaving no stone unturned to preserve the rich legacy left by their worthy predecessors.

Lookbook – Whose looking at you this season?

I never doubted the link between fashion and marketing, and while I was transferring responsibility from my line of thinking over a cup of coffee, my thoughts were fixated at the launch of Lookbook – a fashion and lifestyle magazine.

When the magazine came together, I kind of felt that it was like a curator’s handbook at a fashion carnival. As I pored over pictures from the season’s collections, gathered from runways around the world, my thoughts sailed back to the time when I was with my fashion editors trying to bring these pages to life – by combining artistry with humour and fashion with extraordinary storytelling.

We rummaged through pages and pages of fashion kitsch and prevailing awkward trends, including tropical animalistic prints to wacky camouflages, before finally landing a role for the more straightforward, or with a turn of phrase if I be allowed to say, the vintage and classic approach to summer dressing.

We made it a point to approach Lookbook in a different way from the already existent fashion magazines. With a primary focus on engaging what was in it for our consumers personally, we zeroed in on various aspects like the context, the perverse twists, and the narrative.

The creativity of various designers and stylists were ushered in – the need to capture the sheer vigor and chutzpah of youth was a unanimous choice. Of course, there were timeless yearnings and timely style (and we all know that the years can get the better of any clothing: the John Travolta leather jacket and motorcycle boots from Grease you swore you would have forever? Doesn’t work anymore.), and suddenly you have your moment of despair, and swing back to fervent faith in the passivity of the young.

But isn’t there always a perennial drive to express ourselves by any means possible? Or, the desire to come to grips with the prevailing trends relevant to the way you live now? It is a gargantuan task of being in fashion without being fashionable.

In the hours and the minutes that followed, portfolios after portfolios were circulated, and we were spellbound more with fear than awe because of the looming proximity of the launch. There was summer suits – light-weight, softly lined, easy-to-carry and slim fitted. There were sporty separates – windbreakers, sweatshirts – with more focus on technical efficiency and aesthetic simplicity. Then, there were beautiful shirts and exquisitely designed tops, intricately patterned and drenched in multiple hues, that impart a certain elegance. No coats or jackets necessary.

And there we were, all perched on our swivel chairs, delivering our goods in our quietly determined voices; weaving in imagination, art and fashion altogether in a little glass room. Devising smart fashion for the here and there, and quite possibly, for a few years to come – encapsulating into the magazine: the various incarnations of style and trends to galvanize generations and to start a fashion revolution.

When Lookbook hits the high-streets and newsstands, the story will begin.

Fashion And Art

Much has been discussed over the defining point at which fashion becomes art – the co-mingling of these two worlds and if they share a genuine exchange of creativity. Both fashion and art require the translation of ideas from one form into another and they have established well-known collaborations, feeding each other in many ways.

However, the überbranding propelled by PR agencies by overlooking their aesthetic integrity paints a fairly faint picture that commercial aspects alone drive their conceptions, especially fashion. Critics have, in fact, gone to the extent of labeling fashion as a trivial offshoot of capitalism and vanity.

It is true that fashion specifies no medium. It is easier to express ideas in terms of fashion which can be accessible to audiences in a way that contemporary art cannot. Paintings and sculptures are a mirror of changing fashions, but fashion per se is devoid of boundaries and refers to any aesthetic change for its own sake.

Styles of painting or other artworks might evolve in pursuit of form, but the change in styles of coats or skirts are seen merely to entice. The changes are strongly influenced by whatever the subjective eye craves for, with an aesthetic logic of their own.

Not all fashion is art but fashion has been influenced by art over the ages, and it is evident in modern playful illustrations which are a mash-up of pop art, op art, surreal art, and even vintage and classical art.

Fashion designers and labels including YSL, Zara, Levi’s, Tommy Hilfiger etc. put a fresh spin on an artist’s work by combining it with their own imaginative and aesthetic creations. Pop art artists – Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami – have designed the most recognizable bags of all time for Louis Vuitton.

No Art Fair or Fashion Week is complete without an event that involves collaboration between a designer, gallery, museum, and a major fashion brand. The new sponsors for museums are no longer banks and insurance companies, but the who’s who of the fashion industry including Armani, Gucci and Prada.

Not everyone can afford to own an original Picasso, but for much less you can have a bit of the maestro in your wardrobe and wear his art on the streets.

Food Review – TGIF Vasant Kunj

I set out on a balmy winter evening with the sole intention of visiting a good steakhouse in Delhi. Having worked up a gargantuan appetite after watching a re-run of America’s best steakhouses on TLC, I came out looking for the best, and the first steakhouse that came to mind was TGIF.

It was some time before I got there. I had gone to the mall with a friend, and she wanted to shop. All the mall-crawling whetted my appetite even more.

When we finally reached TGIF, we were greeted by a fantabulous deal on Tequila shots flashing at the door. We ignored, and walked straight in, with the settling evening sun and the aroma of steak in the passageways. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t flirting with the idea of a good steak anymore – I was tantalizingly close to gobbling one down.

We preferred a table by the window with a view overlooking the Mandela Marg. The music was good and the sitting area was less crowded. My glance bounced over an old lady busily munching down chicken strips by the dozen, barely managing to take notice of anyone around her. We stepped up to a table and took our place next to a couple caught in an embrace over plates and full cocktail glasses.

I have always been some kind of a beer connoisseur, especially with home-brewed draught beer. It didn’t take long before we were greeted with two mugs of TGIF draught beer. We started our meal with some spicy chicken wings sautéed in a house-special sauce to go along with the beer. The succulent wings looked fiery on a plate accompanied by celery sticks and cheese sauce. I picked one and as I steered it towards my mouth, I was hit by a rush of pungent vinegar aroma. I felt super jittery – I can’t quite say I enjoyed the sensation. I quickly chewed on a celery stick – the freshness and blandness of the celery stick toned down the acute tangy taste. The cheese sauce was equally sour, if not less.

In some time, the much anticipated Tenderloin Asada made its way into our table along with a plate of Spaghetti – the latter, for a moment, looked even more sumptuous and appealing than my steak. My friend loved Italian food and she was pretty adamant on sampling some Italian. I didn’t waste time and dug into my steak with a razor-sharp knife. Usually, tender beef is not served in restaurants around Delhi, so the tad harder and fibrous Buff meat is used as an alternative. The steak was a little stringy, but well-cooked and richly spiced. The only disappointments were the oven roasted potatoes, and the onion and pepper rings which came with the steak. They were soggy and horribly presented on the plate unlike the steak. The onion rings looked like rags and the potatoes were better left untouched. Not quite the potato incarnation I had in mind.

The spaghetti was the catch of the day. Consistently and brilliantly cooked beyond perfection and garnished with the right mix of spices and vegetables, including some lovely skewed cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. Not too much mozzarella, but if it was not cheesy enough for you, you could help yourself to more. The steak was exactly how I wanted it to be – juicy, succulent, well-bodied and evenly grilled, if not barbecued.  It went perfectly well with my beer-aided appetite. I downed the last morsel with the last swig of beer from my mug.

There is nothing sadder than the end of a great meal, knowing what comes next. But my gastronomical tryst with TGIF is far from over. I have my sight on the legendary TGIF Loaded Potato Skins and Spicy Jack Glazed Ribs. That’s for another time.