The king of mangoes

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

To the uninitiated, the names perhaps sound like islands on the far side of the globe: Aapoos, Mulgoa, Langra. But to those in the know, those words conjure indescribable gastronomical delights. For them, a mango is never just a mango, and it is certainly not that hard, fibrous abomination with the blushing skin that is unceremoniously dumped on North American grocery store shelves, year in and year out. That variety, more likely than not the Tommy Atkins or one of its relatives, is one of the most common cultivars in North America. But a thousand others exist in India, each with a particular provenance, each inspiring cultish devotion. For some, nothing beats the Neduchalai of the south, a mango so lush, with such a small seed, it scents the whole house. Others swear by the curvaceous, powerfully succulent Banganapalli, or the graceful Dussehri. But no mango can claim more passionate devotees, especially outside the subcontinent, than the small, fat golden mango called the Alphonso.

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iPod Fascists

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Monday, November 9, 2009 at 11:30 AM - 3 Comments

The hijacker usually strikes without warning. He has an iPod stacked with examples of his discerning musical tastes burning a hole in his pocket, and he’s in the mood to impress. Perhaps imagining he has just flown back from a gig at a club in Ibiza, he slinks toward the iPod dock. One moment your party guests are enjoying tracks from the new Air record, and the next—yoink, and on comes a laborious Middle Eastern fiddly jazz number with a sudden extended Strokes-style rock section, which the hijacker—let’s say he’s the bearded fellow in the corner drinking port—is conspicuously alone in savouring. “Well, I kind of liked it,” allows Chris Church, a violinist and singer-songwriter from Halifax, who witnessed this precise act of musical terrorism at a recent house party. “It was interesting. But I looked over at these women with kids who were sipping Chardonnay, and I wondered what they were thinking.”

Hijacking may not be an entirely recent invention—one woman who works in publishing recalls a traumatic operation from years ago when a well-meaning friend pressed the eject button on the painstakingly assembled mixed tape she and her husband were playing—at their wedding. But it’s a plot line that’s become increasingly commonplace at parties, weekends at the cottage, the car, even some workplaces. It has never been easier, or more tempting, to foist our musical sensitivities on our fellow men. In an era of unprecedented musical portability, we walk around, most of us, with our preferred soundtracks to our lives—not to mention our entire record collections—in our pockets. We’re used to turning any public space into our own private universe, courtesy of a single pair of earbuds. Is it any wonder that when we find ourselves on the wrong side—this seems to play a part sometimes—of several jiggers of booze, near an iPod dock that’s playing some tripe that’s definitely not our taste, some of us can no longer resist the urge to intervene? Continue…

Good golly, Noddy’s back!

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Britain’s librarians must have been frowning last summer when results of a nationwide poll of favourite writers were announced in the press. In top place, beating out Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens, was a children’s author their ilk has gleefully detested for 40 years now, the implausibly prolific and popular Enid Blyton. The author of an astonishing 700-odd books—which still translate to eight million copies a year in sales—Blyton is perhaps the most popular author you’ve never heard of. Her name may mean little to North American readers, but in France, in Germany, in countries as far-flung as Australia, Portugal, Singapore and India, Blyton, who wrote mostly in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, remains not merely the beloved author of such series as Noddy, The Famous Five, The Magic Faraway Tree, and Malory Towers, but a rite of passage, an icon conjuring the magic of childhood.

In the U.K., she’s also a lightning rod for controversy, and after the poll results were announced, there was carping. Anthony Horowitz, writer of the TV drama Foyle’s War, complained in the Daily Telegraph that Britons were “being asked to genuflect in front of a fossil.” The children’s author Philip Pullman compared her stories to “mechanically recovered meat.” They’re only Blyton’s most recent detractors. The aforementioned librarians viewed her as a hack and simpleton who kept kids from serious reading. Progressives got her books banned from libraries on charges of racism, sexism, middle-class-ism; one writer called her work neo-fascist. And she didn’t find much truck with the other side either. The conservative British journalist Colin Welch famously excoriated Noddy, a little wooden fellow who lives with his friend Big Ears in Toyland, as an imbecile, “an unnaturally priggish, sanctimonious . . . witless, spiritless, snivelling, sneaking doll.”

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For the last time, people, she's nothing like Hillary—or Michelle Obama

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Friday, September 5, 2008 at 9:25 AM - 18 Comments

Why do people keep assuming that just because Sarah Palin can theoretically wear a pantsuit, she’s part of Hillary’s sisterhood? Or—even more desperate reach here—of Michelle Obama’s?

Much more accurate to compare her with Dubya, as Salon has done, with this excellent quiz, a list of cowboy quotes from Palin and George W. Bush. Which ones are Palin and which ones Bush? It’s pretty damn hard to tell.

Whaa? The "hottest VP" is a WOMAN?

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 12:40 PM - 2 Comments

Andrew Coyne blogged last night that Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican Convention was the best bit of political theatre he’s witnessed in years. I’d have to agree. Her performance – and it did feel like a performance, complete with that awesome baby prop, handed from telegenic person to person – was pretty spectacular. She’s tough, she’s confident, and even her fiercest critics have had to agree she’s got buckets of charisma.

Of course, as with any hot-button show, reading the reviews is half the fun, and it was hugely entertaining to watch the CNN crack team, for instance, falling all over themselves to be sensitive and non-sexist (in reporting, incidentally, on an event peppered with placards hailing “the Hottest VP” from the coldest state). Campbell Brown seized on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s response to Palin’s speech as “shrill”—would he say this if she wasn’t a woman? Wolf and Anderson and the whole gang jumped on a commentator’s mention of Palin’s speechwriter … Hold on a minute now: would we be mentioning the speechwriter if this was Bush or Obama or McCain? (Uh, probably.) And it’s pretty adorable, watching them reach for words that aren’t “spunky” or “sassy” or “feisty” (though one poster on the Huffington Post did suggest that Palin’s ready to star in her own movie – Mean Girls 2).

I’ll be honest, I’m no fan of Palin’s. Or of the screeching turn the Republicans just made toward the same old trumped-up culture wars of elections past. But the big bad liberal media, chastened by critiques of its liberalness, now being in contortions to be even more liberal…. The irony is sweet. Poor Hillary. If only she’d been a bit less “shrill,” “witchy” and had less of a “nagging voice,” and looked more like Tina Fey. It’s not just the Harball gang; the same media elites Palin blasted at last night just might have treated her better.

You know what would help sell this whole God thing? Some hot nuns.

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Monday, August 25, 2008 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

For too long now, sexy nuns have languished in the shadows of convents and abbeys without so much as a catcall to flatter them. At last their hour has come. An Italian priest has announced a beauty pageant, the Sister Italia contest, along the lines of the Miss Italy pageant, but for ladies who won’t kick the habit. (No more of those, I promise.) Father Antonio Rungi, an entrepreneurial priest based in a town near Naples, seems to have been inspired by the strides nuns have made in recent years. “Do you really think nuns are all wizened, funereal old ladies?” the Times of London quoted him as saying. “Today it’s not like that anymore…” Father Rungi took special notice of nuns from Africa and Latin America—particularly Brazil. I’d make a joke here but, really, do I need to?

I’ll keep it short as this news will surely give media outlets everywhere a chance to run some photos of lovelies in wimples: Sophia Lauren in White Sister (see above), or Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus, say. But in brief: no, there’s no swimsuit round; yes, there is an age cap (40); and Father Rungi expects a thousand or so nuns to enter. He’ll start posting their pictures next month on his theological blog (which appears to be down right now). Assuming it’s back up, the contest will soon start driving up site traffic and oh, yes, getting out the Word of God. Continue…

Who's making who crazy?

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Friday, August 22, 2008 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

It’s interesting to watch the ripple effects of the American Psychological Association’s report last week that having an abortion does not mean a higher risk of mental illness. Pro-life/anti-choice groups are in conniptions about it: see here, here, and here. Wonder if the report will change anything in South Dakota, where a recent law already requires that doctors tell women who are considering an abortion that it might, well, make them nutso. And if John McCain will say with a straight face he’s heard nothing about such a report, or this strange practice you call abortion. (See Sarah Blustain’s recent piece on him in the New Republic:

Despite all this evidence, McCain’s anti-abortion fervor hasn’t registered with the public–in no small part because, in addition to his waffling on choice in the 2000 campaign, he hardly sounds like a true believer on other reproductive-health-related issues. When pressed to speak about them, he often evinces stunning ignorance, a fact that helps reassure the moderate middle that he could not possibly be as conservative as his record suggests. In early July, for example, a reporter raised the issue of whether it was “unfair” that insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. His response was painful to watch: “I certainly do not want to discuss that issue,” he said immediately. She then asked about his votes against legislation requiring insurance plans to cover prescription birth control, legislation the anti-contraception right strongly opposed. He rubbed his mouth, rolled his eyes, flexed his fingers, crossed his arms, and more, before admitting, “I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer.” Finally, he told the reporter that he did not recall how he voted. “It’s something that I had not thought much about,” he added.

At another press conference, when a journalist asked him whether he thought contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV, he paused–for much too long–then answered, “You’ve stumped me.” The reporter asked whether U.S. taxpayer money should fund contraception to prevent aids in Africa. “I’m not very wise on it,” McCain said. What about grants for sex education? A long pause, then, “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.” And, when the reporter pressed again, he finally said (after a reported twelve-second pause), “I’ve never gotten into these issues before”–an odd statement, given that he has voted on legislation related to all of them.

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