Fat talk
It’s past midnight and our party of five is sitting in a 24-hour restaurant in Los Angeles. Our local friends are an attractive LA-based actress, Roma Court, younger sister of the London socialite, Ramola Bachchan, and her husband, Joell.
The subject under discussion is obesity. One of our group, Kabir Khan, a cameraman from Mumbai, makes a profound observation: “In America, only the rich can afford to be slim.”
According to official statistics, 65 per cent of Americans are overweight. In clinical terms, 31 per cent suffer from obesity, compared with 23 per cent in 1994. The proportion of overweight children has trebled since 1980. In a mall in Morgantown, West Virginia, I noticed that even the US-born children of Indian immigrants are tending towards tubbiness.
We do not require statistics to witness the widespread incidence of obesity in America or understand one of its reasons. The individual portions served in restaurants are almost sufficient to feed the average Indian family.
As we contemplated the food mountains on our plates, Joell explained: “Americans like it this way. They consider it value for money. They would not like it if the portions were reduced.”
Roma and Joell are admirably slim, though.
Bhadha’s buzz
A.R. Rahman is currently staying in New York East Side at the Radisson Lexington in rooms a few doors along from suite 1806, which was occupied between 1956 and 1963 by the iconic American baseball player, Joe DiMaggio.
The hotel’s legendary manager, Sam Bhadha, says an old-timer who retired recently could still remember Marilyn Monroe being smuggled up to DiMaggio via the service elevator.
DiMaggio, who was briefly married to Marilyn, inspired the intriguing Simon and Garfunkel lyrics in The Graduate: Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Marilyn’s evocative photograph, taken on the balcony of suite 1806, hangs in Sam’s office. And today, Sam’s hotel provides a watering hole for Indian celebrities (Karan Johar, Shah Rukh and the rest of the Kal Ho Naa Ho crew, diamond merchants, Sharad Pawar, Jagmohan Dalmiya and the Mafatlal family) passing through New York. Sam has fond memories of the late Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen whom his non-Indian staff respectfully addressed as “Your Majesty”.
Now that relations between India and the United States are growing apace, it is just as well that Sam is taking over another hotel, only three blocks away. He is not only general manager and vice-president of the 705-room Radisson Lexington, but he is also spending $30 million renovating the 755-room Metropolitan.
Shouldn’t he be appealing for a couple of good in-house Indian restaurants for his two hotels?
“Appeal?” responds Sam. “I would go on bended knees and plead.”
Though New York has 5,000 classy restaurants, Indian food has not really taken off. Other than the Tamarind and the Tabla, Sam cannot think of any to recommend. “The Indian food scene in New York is unfortunately quite bad,” he laments. “We are a generation behind London.”
He has high hopes, however, that top chef Jean-Georges Vongerichtenor, who has been to the Taj in Mumbai for food tasting, will open The Spice Market, an “Indo-French” venture to add to his fashionable 66.
“Two tables from me at 66 was Nicole Kidman, and my wife, Skaila, said, ‘Look, look, who’s coming in.’ It was Leonardo DiCaprio.”
In celebrity-driven New York, “that’s what creates the buzz,” emphasises Sam.
Incidentally, Sam’s tip is Bush is “odds on favourite” to win.
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| ship shape: Roma Court maiden attempt: Samina Aliliberal voice: Dennis Johnson and Valerie Meriansfor art’s sake: . BhavsarAT YOUR SERVICE: Sam Bhadha |
When Levy met journalists at NBC Nightly News, “they agreed with him that Pakistan is the greatest threat to the world right now. Right now, we are mired in Iraq, a mistake, when we should have gone and done something about Pakistan.”
Dennis, whose voice seems to represent liberal America, tells me that the United States “has become a closed, xenophobic society”.
Melville House will soon publish two books, Irreparable Harm and The Road to Illegitimacy, bravely questioning the very legality of George Bush’s election.
“I think that was probably the most significant presidential election in American history,” argues Dennis, who is publishing his own critical account of the Bush presidency, The Big Chill.
Dennis and his wife were present during Bush’s inauguration. “The crowd was so hostile that Bush could not get out of his car,” he recalls. “Opposition to Bush is profound and widespread but I don’t know if it’s profound enough to defeat him — which is shocking.”
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| ship shape: Roma Court maiden attempt: Samina Aliliberal voice: Dennis Johnson and Valerie Meriansfor art’s sake: . BhavsarAT YOUR SERVICE: Sam Bhadha |
In three cities, I picked up the local newspaper and found “India-Pakistan talks fuel optimism” in The Philadelphia Inquirer; “A Tale of Nuclear Nuclear Proliferation: How Pakistani Built His Network” in The New York Times (a front page story plus all of page 18); and “India, Pakistan Set a Timetable for Peace Talks” in the Los Angeles Times.
Could there be a Northern Ireland type power-sharing solution to Kashmir?
There was this intriguing paragraph in the LA Times report from Islamabad which might reflect American thinking: “Neither India nor Pakistan has publicly outlined a settlement for the decades-old Kashmir dispute, which sparked two of the countries’ three wars. But moderate Kashmiri separatist leaders, who are holding their first negotiations with the Indian government, reportedly have suggested that a united territory could be jointly ruled by India and Pakistan.”
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| ship shape: Roma Court maiden attempt: Samina Aliliberal voice: Dennis Johnson and Valerie Meriansfor art’s sake: . BhavsarAT YOUR SERVICE: Sam Bhadha |
Which film wins an Oscar tonight does not depend entirely on merit but also on how much individual studios are willing to spend on promotion. This year’s contenders include Seabiscuit, Cold Mountain, Something’s Gotta Give, Mystic River, Master and Commander, Lost in Translation, and, of course, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, a triumph of technology over traditional acting.
As always, the fashion writers are out in force to reinforce how the stars are enviably richer and, more importantly, slimmer than the bulk of their fellow Americans.
Oscar fever notwithstanding, the LA Times did not forget to devote a whole page to the remarkable Norah Jones, whose second album, Feels Like Home, has sold 1.02 million copies in its launch week. “Few artistes have enjoyed a quicker ride to the top of pop than Jones,” noted the paper, which saw no reason to mention she is Ravi Shankar’s daughter.
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| ship shape: Roma Court maiden attempt: Samina Aliliberal voice: Dennis Johnson and Valerie Meriansfor art’s sake: . BhavsarAT YOUR SERVICE: Sam Bhadha |
“The couple gamely try to make a go of their union, while India crumbles around them, racked by Hindu-Muslim violence,” says the review in the New York Times, which finds “the novel descends into melodrama that is livened by Ali’s astute, almost anthropological commentary on contemporary Hyderabad society”.
Samina, who was herself born in Hyderabad, was educated at Oregan University and now lives in California. In terms of social progress, America’s Asian community is 20 years behind Britain’s. Nevertheless, post-September 11, educated Muslim women in America are making their voices heard.
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| ship shape: Roma Court maiden attempt: Samina Aliliberal voice: Dennis Johnson and Valerie Meriansfor art’s sake: . BhavsarAT YOUR SERVICE: Sam Bhadha |
Bhavsar’s paintings are currently on display at an art gallery next door to his sprawling fifth floor apartment in Soho. The establishment, apparently named after a descendant of the poet, is called the Sunderam Tagore Gallery.
