Nostalgia and Longing in Hong Kong
Sushmita Bose -
Sunday, December 14, 2008 3:01 PM
I've discovered an express delivery outlet (food obviously, what else?) near the Khaleej Times office called Indian Tadka. You have to order lunch by 11.30 (that's the outer limit), and the food comes by 1 - and it's really, really yummy. There are soft ghee-smeared chapattis, rice, a dal (at times rajma or kadi pakora), and two subzis, and raita, and when the Indian Tadka people are feeling particularly generous, they also pack in some halwa or a gulab jamun. It's heaven, bang in the middle of the arid industrial area (called Al Quoz) where the KT office is.
While I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, I sorely missed Indian Tadka. I was getting really fed up with Chinese food. It's very strange. Most Indians I know love Chinese khaana. But in India, even "authentic" Chinese is so very, very Indianised - you realise this each time you visit places in the Far East, and, of course, China. In Hong Kong, for instance, the smell of cooking on the roads made me want to gag - there is an eternal bland-and-sickly-sweet monotonousness to it. And it's the same smell everywhere.
Otherwise, Hong Kong is pretty, very pretty. There are sublime skyscrapers, pretty blue mountains you can drive up through, a sparkling harbour, pristine beaches, great shopping places, spectacular views - and one of the best public transport systems in the world. I got into a tram after years, and it had a kind of a soppy association for me. When I went to school in Calcutta, I used to catch a tram that went right in front of my school. The bus station used to be a bit of a walk - so even though trams were slower, I preferred them. If I caught the one at 7.25 am, I'd reach school by 7.50, and classes started at 8, so I had a 10-minute breather. My brother, on the other hand, used to walk it to school (it was a good 4 kms away) because he wanted to save the ticket money and buy himself junk food.
But while in Calcutta, a genial, uniformed conductor used to come and sell tickets (they still do), in Hong Kong you have to drop 2 HK dollars into a turnstile-like thing that gobbles up the change. And yes, it's a flat rate, wherever you go, however long the journey is.
For those of you who want to know more about HK - as seen through the eyes of a tourist, I am adding a couple of paras from the travel piece that I did in Khaleej Times. Those of you who have already read this, please bear with me, it's only a couple of little paras!
"The Victoria Peak, the highest point in Hong Kong, that is absolutely stunning, encompassing in one sweep the staggered skyline, the sunlight-spangled blue sea, and the blue mountains in the background. There's the charming Cafe Deco right up there, where you can tuck in to a seafood lunch and drink in the breathtaking skyline. It is propagated that a trip to Hong Kong is incomplete without soaking in the Symphony of Lights, the nocturnal multimedia show named the "World's Largest Permanent Light & Sound Show" by The Guinness Book of World Records. So, we dutifully went on a cruise while the show was on, basking in the sights and sounds. Then, there is the Avenue of Stars, where there are handprints of Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat, and a life-size statue of The Boss of kung-fu Bruce Lee. And, of course, there is Disneyland, from where my most significant takeaway was a massive, stuffed Pluto who I thought I'd get for my niece, but have changed my mind since. He's staying with me, no two ways about it - that's probably what Disneyland does to you." (By the way, there's also Ocean Park - where we didn't go to.)
Pluto (he's oh-so-adorable) has a pink tongue hanging out, and he wears a perpetually excited look on his face. When I bought him, Brian, my British friend - with who I struck up a firm friendship on the trip -- looked at me suspiciously. "I'm buying him for my niece, she's three months old," I muttered defensively. "There's no way you're giving Pluto away - your face says it all," he stated. He was so right.
Oh, I loved this story that I heard. I wrote about it in my KT piece, but here goes again. The prefix to this is that Hong Kong rents are exorbitant (but probably not as much as Dubai!), and space is at a premium. The city grows vertically - there's no lateral space - and you'd be really lucky to get a 600 sq feet apartment. Families live in single rooms. Even so, HSBC cocks a snook at the space crunch. I was told that the bank's headquarters, that overlooks the harbour front with the mountains behind, has an empty ground floor. It is widely believed, even by hard-headed bankers, that the dragon, who lives up in the mountains, passes through the empty first floor (with not a single telling machine getting in his way), and struts out to the harbour - where he has a drink of water, and goes back to the mountains, quenched and happy. And as long as the dragon's happy, HSBC doesn't have to worry about the market meltdown.
Wow, I thought, that was so cool!
One of the great things about Dubai is that it's so much like India - and I'm not talking about the food here (although that counts too). Plus, it's so close to Delhi. I mean, it's almost as close (or far) as Calcutta is to Delhi. This time, when I was on the flight to Delhi, the announcer said that the total journey time is 2 hours 40 minutes. It's a comforting thought, the closeness.
I have a friend in Hong Kong, who lives without his family there. His wife and son are in Calcutta, and visit him occasionally. I met him this time, and, over strong cuppas at a Pacific Coffee outlet close to the hotel where I was putting up, he told me that he spends his weekends cooking for himself, and cleaning the house. Weekdays go by somehow because there is office to attend. "I have no friends in the city - although I hear there is an Indian expats community somewhere - and although my colleagues are extremely nice, no one really hangs out after work." On weekends, when he's through with cooking and cleaning, and there's more time on hand to kill, he takes the ferry that shuttles between Hong Kong (the island) and Kowloon (the peninsula). I thought it was a particularly poignant picture: standing on a boat, looking at the breathtaking skyline (at nights, it's even more gorgeous) with no one to turn to and exclaim in delight, going from point A to point B because you want to kill time... "Being alone in a city" must be a horrible thing. My friend says that he'll probably return home next year: it's been three years for him in HK. When I spoke to him the last time from Hong Kong (the night I was leaving), there was a lot of static on the line. "Where are you?" I asked him. "On the ferry to Kowloon," he said. Oh yeah, I remembered, it was a weekend, and he probably had lots of time to kill.
When we came back to Dubai, we flew first class - and I have to admit here, that it's the FIRST TIME that I flew first class. The person next to me was an Indian, and while I kept fumbling with the snazzy headphones (I had no clue where to plug them in) and the seating mechanism, he instructed me grandly how to go about things. "I know the ropes, you see... I usually fly first-class whenever I'm travelling," he announced grandly, while I squirmed.
It's quite something: the fact that you can get drunk on endless flutes of champagne while being miles high in the sky. I, of course, had a few swigs of the divine fluid and made a face - I hate champagne. To make matters worse, I also hate caviar. So I was the only person who gave it a go-by, while everyone else went "ooooh" and "aaaah". A flight attendant, who insisted on calling me "Ms Bose" all through the course of the journey (she first wanted to know how I pronounce my surname, and whether it rhymed with Jose, as in San Jose; no, I said, it's like Bose speakers), insisted that I convert my seat into a bed; then she handed me a "comforter" (a rezai), covered me up and stopped short of singing me a lullaby. I think I've figured out why. It's a far better idea to let passengers sleep it off, than them demanding champagne and then more champagne (especially now, with the recession and all that).
So what did I do after my wonderful HK sojourn? I landed in the middle of the night, grabbed some sleep, and hared off to office first thing in the morning. Once there, I ordered food from Indian Tadka!