Sanotsh Wada Pav: Alibaug's Pride, Mumbai's Envy

#SantoshVadaPav thanks a ton for making our Alibag stay truly worthwhile, amid all formal engagements and round tables in the serene environs of hashtag#Kashid and hashtag#Nagaon beaches.

The Wada Pav has a phenomenal taste, exactly as elaborated and endorsed by Amey Kadam ex Bharatiya Digital Party (BhaDiPa) and Bharatiya Touring Party.

If and when you are in Alibag, try their Misal too. Santosh will become your must visit landmark for sure.

Thanks to our architect and developer friend from Ville Parle and Alibaug, Hardik Ajmera, well known for thoughtfully designed residential projects like hashtag#AlibaugOne and hashtag#AlibaugDivine, we met Giri Madam, proprietor and manager of Santosh Wada Pav, in person, which is how we learnt about the making of Santosh.

This was the brainchild of Giri Madam's mother in law, which, thanks to the authentic food, welcoming and polite staff, and clean premises, has today become one of Alibaug's most reedeming features, amid the Golem-like real estate spread, mad motorists, bizzare bikers, bad roads, and of course terrorism of tourism, made even more reckless ever since hashtag#viratkohli made this island his vacation home.

PS: We once had an ancestral property in Alibaug {which was sold for peanuts by our elders} which is why my answer to the taunting remark phrased as a query by most Mumbaikars to dim-witted folks is always a resounding YES.

The question is: Alibaug se aaya hai kya? (Have you come from Alibaug?)

I take it as a compliment as it gives me the much-needed pretext to narrate a tall tale towards matching the Virat Kohli benchmark; how we too once owned a lavish vacation home here. {That it was a vocation home, not exactly lavish, and I never got to live in it are sob stories besides the point}

Talking of Alibaug se aaya hai kya? the Bombay High Court seems to second my stance. In fact, it dismissed a public interest litigation seeking a ban on the phrase, observing that there was nothing derogatory in it, and it should not be taken as humiliation. I profuesly agree, though in a different context. 😃

The seafaring litterateur

Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, born in Russian-occupied Poland and better known as Joseph Conrad, is hailed as a master storyteller worldwide, but precious little is made known or discussed in mainstream circles about his astounding ability to convert regular adventure tales into profound philosophical discourses.

Notwithstanding the stereotypical depiction of Africa in his ‘Heart of Darkness’ (‘merely as a foil to Europe’ as the great Nigerian poet-author Chinua Achebe aptly put it), there are few authors in the league of this mariner-turned-author who wrote probing fiction in an acquired language to underline the deep, dark truths of human existence and ambition.

Passing through Pimlico in Central London, Conrad’s home in London, I was instinctively reminded of his penetrative short story “An Outpost of Progress” about two shallow Europeans deputed to a remote African trading region, which most powerfully underlines the fraud and falsity of the far-from-civilised imperial enterprise, more so its golem-like hunger to invade foreign lands. Following the delay of their supply ship and amid depleting provisions, they agree to an immoral deal of trading local men for ivory. Later, one of them is shot dead by the other over a petty argument, and the slayer hangs himself in shame just as the supply steamer arrives.

This is uncannily similar albeit in a different context, to what happens to the two hedonistic and hypocritical landlord friends in Munshi Premchand’s iconic short story “Shatranj ke Khiladi” (The Chess Players), who are more than happy to shun family chores, marital duties, cheating wives, social pressures, and marching troops to reel in the hypnotic spell of chess. Fearing mandatory participation in the war against the Company in the light of the growing adversity, they flee to the outskirts and simulate their relaxed surroundings only to drown back in the game of chess. A trivial dispute in the game soon takes the shape of a war and all of a sudden, family honour is found at stake. Accusing each other of swindling, fraud, borrowed royalty and inferior roots, both lose their lives in a terminal combat, a mutual checkmate of sorts. Through the conflict of the two, Premchand highlights the irony of their beliefs - it was the false pride of individual honour, not the larger cause of their state that was found worthy of sacrifice.

A couple of lines from “An Outpost of Progress” have stayed with me, both for the style of the prose and the profundity it is lush with:

“Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.”

“To the sentiment of being alone of one’s kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thoughts, of one’s sensations—to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.”

The more you read and reflect on them, the more timeless they become—and so do the story and its author.

An Ode to Panini

 

 For many Indians, if not most, the noun Panini (plural in Italian, singular in English) is only an  yummy grilled sandwich stuffed with mozzarella, prosciutto, and pesto, not a certain revered scholar who conceived and created the grammar which forms the soul of Sanskrit and guides sincere seekers across disciplines to this day. For them, even the noticeable difference in pronunciation is hardly a cue, for what they see is what they fetch over-the-counter in inviting eateries across US, Europe, and Asia (not what they will never read; neither online on their laptops, nor off-line in the dusty corners of termite-infested libraries)

Ironically, I have met a handful of Italians who fondly associate the noun with the great grammarian who dexterously mapped the astounding territory of the human tongue, taking inspiration from founding scholars like Āpiśali, Kāśyapa, Gārgya, Gālava, Cākravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja, Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka, and Sphoṭāyana.

At home, amid the politically motivated religious jingoism, most of Panini’s life work does not get the recognition it deserves, including his eight chapter-long ‘Turing Machine’ magnum opus Ashtadhyayi with 4000 intricate and interconnected sutras.

Save for the discussion in stringently fortified scholarly and academic circles, Panini remains virtually unknown to most modern-day inhabitants of India, except if or when they

come across the glowing tributes of yesteryear scholars like the great Stanford linguist and Chomksy’s partner Paul Kiparsky,

or casually sift through Vikram Chandra’s Geek Sublime (probably mistaking him for Vikram Seth of ‘A Suitable Boy’ fame),

or learn in the course of their entrepreneurial and employment careers (from Western experts) why and how Panini can help AI move from convenient approximations towards reliable frameworks in addressing the sticky challenges of natural language processing, computational efficiency, logical reasoning, pattern recognition, exception-handling and a lot more.

This is a bigger tragedy than the scarceness of Panini's ‘part history part legend’  life story, including his sudden death while working on the last sutra of Ashtadhyayi, when he fell prey to a lion in the forest wilderness.

PS: I find Panini sandwiches irresistible, and I found ‘A Suitable Boy’ an engaging read.