THE WASHINGTON POST – With representation comes pressure. Whenever a sometimes-marginalised community gets the chance to tell its story on screen, expectations can be high. India Sweets and Spices, which looks at an Indian American family, takes that expectation and turns it on its head, giving us a more nuanced, complicated, and problematic look at the people it’s about.
Written and directed by Geeta Malik, the film first introduces us to Alia Kapur (Sophia Ali of Grey’s Anatomy, the daughter of Indian immigrants Sheila and Ranjit (Manisha Koirala and Adil Hussain, both well-established names in Indian cinema).
Alia’s relationship with her parents is strained because she fits into just enough of their boxes to be successful, while missing just enough to be frustrating. For example: She’s an honours student at UCLA, but she doesn’t maintain her eyebrows and is outspoken about the sexism and classism she sees among her parents’ wealthy friends. When she returns home to suburban New Jersey for summer vacation, she’s subject to Jane Austen-esque parties, all of which blend together. The same people gossip about the same things – mostly who’s married whom, and when – while subtly trying to outshine one another with their own polished perfection.
Once, while on a trip to the local Indian market, Alia spots an attractive young man, Varun Dutta (Rish Shah), and, to get to know him better, invites him and his parents – who own the market – to a family party. It’s a minor scandal because the working class Duttas don’t fit in with the Kapurs and their wealthy circle. It becomes even more scandalous when Varun’s mother (Deepti Gupta) turns out to know Alia’s mom from India, and harbours more than a few secrets about her.
It would have been easy for the filmmaker to make Alia the woke, Americanised hero of this story, but Malik wisely avoids that trap, at first subtly, and then more overtly. Alia eventually learns that the appearance of her parents’ lives is more nuanced than she thought. But Malik also reveals that Alia is completely unaware of her own privilege and how it affects others.
Rish Shah and Sophia Ali in ‘India Sweets and Spices’. PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST
When she invites the Duttas, it never occurs to her that the invitation might make them uncomfortable, as well. (They feel obligated to accept, and then feel out of place when they arrive). As much as Alia chafes against the rules of her world, she also knows how to navigate them, and she’s thrown off balance when others don’t. Unfortunately, such sharp subtlety doesn’t carry through the entire movie. While the major characters are written and performed with beauty and complexity – particularly by Koirala as Alia’s mother – the minor characters are more broadly drawn.
Revelations about them, for instance, don’t feel particularly, er, revelatory. Most of the twists and turns are relatively predictable, delivering a light buzz rather than an intense shock.
It’s not my place, as an outsider, to comment on the authenticity of India Sweets and Spices. But Malik has created a world that feels very real, ably communicating its occasionally frustrating and deceptively complex contours. There are some good laughs to be had, some good lessons to be learned and room to discuss the importance of being allowed to be imperfect.
THE WASHINGTON POST – Here’s the best kind of cookbook moment: You open it, you see a recipe so appealing you have to make it, you try it, you love it, you add it to your repertoire.
Sometimes the dish is something you already know – maybe you’ve had it in restaurants many times but never thought you could (easily) make it (well) at home, and the recipe proves you wrong. Or sometimes it’s something you’ve never heard of, but wish you had, and making the recipe just confirms that feeling.
For me, this wonderfully simple path to butter paneer is a little bit of both, but also kind of neither.
I had heard of butter paneer but never tried it, even though my husband and I eat Indian food at least once a week.
At our favourite two places, his go-to to-go order (say that five times fast) is butter chicken, mine dal makhani. I’ve ordered saag paneer plenty of times, and paneer korma, too, but even though butter paneer is a popular restaurant dish, I’ve never seen it on the menu at these spots, even under its aliases paneer makhani and paneer butter masala.
Simple butter paneer. PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST
This probably means I need to broaden my list of regular Indian takeout spots.
Now that Vina Patel has taught me how to make the dish, thanks to her cookbook From Gujarat With Love, do I even need to order it from a restaurant?
Probably not. Cooking it at home is just a matter of pureeing cashews with water, then simmering pan-fried paneer cubes in a sauce of the cashews, tomato puree, spices, butter and a touch of cream.
The sauce is nothing short of beautiful, a perfect marriage of complex flavours that dance on your tongue. And even though the dish didn’t originate in Gujarat, the western Indian state where Patel is from, it shows off one of the principles of Gujarati cooking: “Our food is spicy, sweet and sour,” Patel said in a phone interview from her home in Saratoga, California. “We add sugar into each and every dish, and it really balances out the sour taste.”
In this case, it’s just a teaspoon, and even though I know I’ll hear about it from readers who hate to see even a pinch in anything, I stand by its place in this sauce.
If you’re skeptical, make the sauce without it, taste, then add the sugar and taste the difference. I think you’ll agree, but if you don’t, you know what to do next time.
Ultimately, when you make anything yourself, you can customise, of course.
That means vegan butter and a non-dairy cream alternative, if you follow a strictly plant-based diet, but what about the main ingredient?
When I asked Patel about substituting extra-firm tofu for the paneer, she tried it herself and reported that, while she doesn’t like it nearly as well as the paneer, it’s certainly suitable for any vegan cooks. Try asking for that in a restaurant!
Simple Butter Paneer
This popular restaurant dish, sometimes called paneer butter masala or paneer makhani, uses cashews and tomatoes to enrobe the Indian cheese cubes in a rich, gently spiced sauce. It employs three kinds of dairy, but you can use tofu, vegan butter and nondairy cream alternative if you’d like. Serve with flatbread or rice.
INGREDIENTS
FOR THE CASHEW PUREE
½ cup raw cashews
½ cup boiling water
FOR THE PANEER
Four tablespoons unsalted butter (may substitute vegan butter), divided
Eight ounces paneer, cut into one-inch cubes (may substitute extra-firm tofu, drained and patted dry)
Two cups tomato puree
¾ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon garam masala
½ teaspoon paprika
One cup water
One teaspoon granulated sugar
Three tablespoons heavy cream (may substitute nondairy cream alternative, such as Silk brand)
½ teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt, plus more to taste
One teaspoon coarsely grated fresh ginger (optional)
Five slices red chile (optional)
DIRECTIONS
Make the cashew puree: In a small bowl, combine the cashews and hot water. Let soak for 30 minutes, then transfer the mixture to a blender or mini food processor and puree until smooth.
Make the paneer: In a medium nonstick pan over medium heat, melt one tablespoon of the butter. Add the paneer and cook, turning the cubes occasionally, until light golden brown on at least two sides, five to seven minutes. Transfer to a small bowl.
Add the remaining three table-spoons of butter to the pan, and once it melts add the cashew puree. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is incorporated, then stir in the tomato puree, chili powder, garam masala and paprika. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens, one to two minutes.
Stir in the water and add the paneer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture darkens and oil rises to the surface, five to seven minutes. (You might want to use a splatter guard here, as the bubbles tend to spit). Stir in the sugar, cream and salt and cook just until the mixture is incorporated and heated through, 30 seconds. Taste, and season with more salt, if needed.
Garnish with ginger and chile slices, if using, and serve warm.
BEIJING (XINHUA) – China’s futures market posted strong growth in both trading volume and turnover in 2021, according to the China Futures Association.
The total turnover of China’s futures market surged 32.84 per cent year on year to CY581.2 trillion (about USD91.24 trillion) in 2021, the data showed.
The futures trading volume also registered double-digit growth during the period, up 22.13 per cent year on year to over 7.5 billion lots, according to the data.
In December 2021 alone, the trading turnover hit around CY44.74 trillion, down 18.76 per cent from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, the figure fell 11.91 per cent, the association said.
LOVETTSVILLE, VIRGINIA (AP) – When Maureen Donnelly Morris came from nearby Leesburg to open her café in Lovettsville, she got a warm welcome.
Neighbours rallied to her aid. Divisions ripping at their town and their country were set aside. America’s thunderous rage felt distant.
They sank posts for her parking signs. They brought solar lights for the cheery space outdoors, sharpened her bagel-slicing blades and contributed plants, all to herald what would become the town’s social hub and civil common ground, Back Street Brews.
Forget, at least for one split second, red, blue, left, right, pro-Trump, anti-Trump. No one asked the woman from Leesburg: Which side are you on? (And she wouldn’t have said, if they did. Still won’t).
In this community of some 2,200 and others like it across the United States, neighborly ways and social ties persist, even in a country that seems to be at war with itself. It’s a quieter force than all the yelling that is driving Americans apart. But the redemption of a nation and future of its democracy may depend on it as the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection at the United States (US) Capitol approaches.
At least among neighbors in the café, said Moe, as everyone calls her, “You’re allowed to be a Republican and I don’t hate your guts. And you’re allowed to be a Democrat and hopefully you like me if I’m not.”
In a terribly fractious America, that sentiment can no longer be taken for granted.
Cafe owner Maureen Donnelly Morris talks to customers at Back Street Brews. PHOTO: AP
A year after the violent assault on the Capitol by supporters of a defeated president, Donald Trump, the United States is split in nearly every conceivable way. Shared sacrifice seems to be an artefact. Against the coronavirus and other problems, we’re conspicuously not “all in this together”, as the pandemic cliché claims. There’s no common set of facts.
Still menaced and now exhausted by COVID-19, Americans can’t agree that it’s better to be vaccinated. Elected officials, even the number two Republican in the House, refuse to say that the duly proper, legal and fair election of President Joe Biden was not stolen from Trump. To be clear, it was not.
The battles have filtered into professional sports, where some players were willing to forfeit USD400,000 a game to preserve their right to expose themselves and others to a disease that has killed over 800,000 in this country.
Deeply complicated questions about race, parental rights, schooling and the teaching of history gave rise to fiery, simplistic slogans and a sense among voters in Virginia and elsewhere in November’s elections that Democrats are out of touch. Virginians put the brakes on their drift from red to blue, electing a Republican governor for the first time in a decade.
The Republican Party remains in thrall of a man who peddled conspiracy theories from the highest office, eggs on local Republicans to skew election laws to make it easier for them – and perhaps him – to win, and threatens Republicans in primaries who do not endorse his lie that the 2020 election was a fraud.
The public is deeply split over whether to believe an unassailable fact – that Democrat Biden was honestly elected. In the January 6 aftermath, about two-thirds of Republicans agreed with the idea that Biden’s election was illegitimate and by the fall, their interest in seeing the insurrectionists prosecuted had declined.
To Fiona Hill, who served the previous three presidents across party lines as a Russia analyst, it all adds up to politics in the US as “Mortal Kombat, the video game”.
“You have to kind of slay your enemy,” said Hill, whose new book examines the root causes of the rise of Trump and other populist leaders. “It’s all basically framed as win-loss, victory-defeat, red versus blue, different factions and shades of blue fighting with themselves. The Republican Party, the party of the people that I worked with when I was new in the Bush administration, they’ve all disappeared.”
That’s the warring America. It plays out in Washington, in decidedly uncivil town meetings across the country and over the airwaves. It infects social media, where people, by their own admission, lose their minds.
There’s another, quieter, America, too. It asks about the family. It commiserates about the water bill and shoots the breeze. It’s a place where people who can be Facebook-nasty are face-to-face polite. Often it meets over coffee.
BLESS YOU
There’s no question that Trump drove people further into their political corners and made things louder, coarser and more chaotic. And the one-two punch of political distancing and social distancing has taken a toll.
Trump and the pandemic “pretty much ripped a hole through the centre of town”, said Kris Consaul, a left-leaning activist and a former town planning commissioner in Lovettsville.
Into the breach came Back Street Brews, which set up in a building shared with the Painted Pig craft shop in late 2017, then expanded in 2021 to fill the space after pandemic-plagued months of serving people only out a window. The town got its first place to hang out, sit with a laptop or strum a guitar.
A new-mum gathering and various other coffee klatches have taken root. Political discussions pop up, though rarely a heated argument. And when you sneeze in one cubbyhole, a stranger in another calls out, “Bless you.”
“It’s not really a pot-stirrer kind of place,” said Moe, who turns a brilliant smile on everyone who walks in. “I just don’t invite it. And if it comes up, you know, as long as it’s respectful, you can talk about whatever your beliefs are. I don’t care. If you are a staunch this or staunch that, I always say, keep that out of here.”
John Ferguson, a long-retired foreign service officer who moved here five years ago, contributed flags and solar lights to Back Street on Lovettsville’s Pennsylvania Avenue, a lane barely wide enough for two cars to pass. He’s there often and makes runs to Costco for Moe. He was massively relieved when Trump vacated the big white house on that other Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington.
Ferguson was raised in the “FDR Democrat” tradition in Hartford, Connecticut, where the Republicans were wealthy businessmen and Democrats were almost everyone else.
A student of history as well as a career diplomat, Ferguson shudders at the fresh memories of Trump on rally stages, “strutting around, jutting out his chin… like Mussolini”, the Italian fascist of World War II.
“A colossal mess and a tragedy,” Ferguson said of the Trump legacy. When it comes to defending the integrity of elections and standing on guard against more insurrections like January 6, “I don’t think you can pussyfoot around right now and certainly not for as long as Trump is on the scene.”
But what of the Democrats?
“They seem to take a sort of smug attitude,” Ferguson said. “They are treating Trump voters as if they’re stupid. That’s a huge mistake. It’s tremendously dangerous to alienate them.”
Erik Necciai, a consultant to federal agencies, brought his family to the Lovettsville outskirts just more than 10 years ago. In the early 2000s, he worked as a Senate aide to Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine on the Small Business Committee. He knows about quaint bipartisanship. He’s also handy with a shovel.
So when another neighbour made wooden posts for Back Street’s tight parking, Necciai bought the concrete, dug the holes and poured the footings.
“We all have different political views,” he said, describing his own only as moderate. “It’s very hard to have conversations nowadays in public spaces. But I sat here in this coffee shop not long ago… and some topic came up, and then all of a sudden, we were solving five or six different political problems. “Everybody’s opinion was greatly accepted. And I think we need a little bit more of that. We live in a world now where we are learning better to not judge people on their exterior. Yet, if somebody were to come with a particular hat – a red hat… we instantly judge them. When we don’t necessarily know them.”
Jessica Sullivan, a professional tarot-card reader who also works behind the counter at Back Street, moved to Lovettsville 15 years ago to take a job teaching at a private school across the river in Maryland. The town had a reputation then as a backwater of Loudoun County, a fast-growing area of northern Virginia encompassing the tech corridor outside Washington and rural towns and farms.
“I remember thinking, please let me not die here because this place has nothing in it and I don’t know anybody,” she said. But as the town grew in the years since, so did her attachment to the people.
Now, she said, “I don’t want to live anywhere else. I’m very relaxed and chill and I don’t need anybody to think the same things that I think in order for them to be a good person to me”.
PERILS OF ‘MASKBOOK’
Still, Sullivan said, “we do have a kind of dark undercurrent at times”.
In one provocation, a pro-Trump parade that came through town during the 2020 campaign diverted off the main street and stopped outside the home of the activist, Consaul, and her partner, Sheryl Frye, blaring horns to intimidate the couple.
It was also in 2020 when the couple turned their sprawling fence line into a showpiece
The decoration has delighted many in town while upsetting some on the cultural right.
As Consaul described how 20 people showed up to help paint the fence, her cat sat on her lap on her porch and her roaming chickens stop to listen, heads cocked sideways.
The parade was an overt sign of friction. But behind the shield of social media, where you can spout an opinion and not have to look someone in the eye, the tone has been harsh and confrontational.
The local gun store owner, who routinely posts inflammatory, liberal-hating slogans on a sign outside his store and rages on social media, in 2020 announced a sale on AR-style rifles. The sign named the sale after ‘krazy’ Kris and her neighbour – with a mangled spelling of their names – in a call to “Be Armed”.
Yet on both sides of the divide, people share a consensus on a few things. One is that Lovettsville is a family-friendly place where you can send your 10-year-old to the 7-Eleven alone without worry.
Another point of agreement is that Facebook has given a few ugly voices an outsized megaphone – half-hiding behind the online veil that Moe called “Maskbook”.
In raw exchanges on the local Facebook group, a downtown home and family displaying multiple pro-Trump banners were denounced as a “Trump dump”. From the other side, vile insults have been flung at gay people and anyone on the left.
Many in town have quit this online competition of cruelties. As if rubbernecking a car wreck, others can’t quite look away.
In that forum, “people feel more free to just say whatever they want and attack”, said the woman whose yard boldly displays the pro-Trump sentiments of her husband and herself.
“I’ve heard it all.” She asked not to identified because of local tensions.
As she spoke, her cat jumped on the chest-high fence with the 2024 Trump banner and rubbed insistently against the interviewer’s face.
Off Facebook, the Trump supporter has got some liberal friends and doesn’t hesitate to visit Back Street, sizing up Moe as “definitely down the middle”. “We take our little one for milkshakes and things like that”.
So do the radical lefties. So do the moderates. So do the just plain people. They’ll all shoot the breeze, ask about family, complain about the water bill or something.
Then it’s back to the ramparts. That’s America for you.
“It’s affecting people,” Moe said of the perils of this era. “Not me. Not in my bubble. We’re going to be fine, everyone! We’re going to land on our feet in my coffee bubble.”
Brunei Darussalam recorded eight new COVID-19 cases yesterday comprising six local and two imported cases. This brings the accumulative COVID-19 cases in the country to 15,499.
This was highlighted by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in its daily updates.
The new cases were detected through 649 laboratory tests carried out in the last 24 hours.
The rate of positive cases is 1.2 per cent. Nineteen cases have recovered, bringing total recoveries to 15,299 while 100 active cases remain in the Sultanate.
The bed occupancy rate at isolation centres nationwide is 2.3 per cent. One case in Category 5 is receiving treatment at the intensive care unit and requires artificial ventilation.
Meanwhile, 94.5 per cent of the population have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine while 93.3 per cent have been administered two shots and 21.4 per cent three jabs.
PARIS (AP) – Seven-time Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi is among four players in the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) squad to have tested positive for the coronavirus ahead of the team’s French Cup game tomorrow.
PSG added that one staff member also had COVID-19 in a statement on Saturday night.
None of them were named at that point, but in a further statement on the team’s medical news yesterday the club named Messi, left back Juan Bernat, backup goalie Sergio Rico and 19-year-old midfielder Nathan Bitumazala.
PSG is playing at third-tier Vannes.
Last year’s runner-up Monaco was in action this morning at second-tier Quevilly-Rouen in one of 13 games scheduled for the day as sides bid to reach the last 16.
Monaco said on Saturday that seven players had COVID-19 but none showed any worrying signs and are isolating.
FROM LEFT: PSG’s Lionel Messi; and Juan Bernat. PHOTOS: AP
KUALA LUMPUR (CNA) – Continuous heavy rain has resulted in floods in several low-lying areas in seven Malaysian states, with more people being evacuated to relief centres (PPS) yesterday morning.
Two districts in Sabah – Telupid and Sandakan – are the latest to be hit by the floods, after Kota Marudu, Paitan and Beluran.
The State Disaster Management Secretariat said in a statement that the number of flood evacuees districts has increased to 717 people from 212 families, up from 566 people on Saturday night.
Sixteen areas in Paitan were affected by the floods, followed by 10 in Kota Marudu, two in Telupid and one each in Beluran and Sandakan.
Kota Marudu remained the district with the highest number of flood victims, with 253 of them at the relief at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Tandek, while another 251 victims were at the relief centre at Sekolah Kebangsaan Teritipan.
Army soldiers rescue children from their house affected by a flood in Malaysia. PHOTO: AP
In Melaka, the number of evacuees rose to 1,122 people as of 8am yesterday, up from 677 people at 8pm on Saturday.
Melaka Civil Defence Department director Lieutenant Colonel Cuthbert John Martin Quadra said all the victims were from 11 areas in Alor Gajah, 11 areas in Melaka Tengah, and three areas in Jasin.
“A total of 653 victims, involving 172 families, are at eight PPS in Alor Gajah, while 437 victims (101 families) are at two PPS in Melaka Tengah, and another 32 victims (six families) are at a PPS in Jasin,” he said in a statement yesterday.
In Johor, the number of flood evacuees in the Segamat and Tangkak districts continued to rise, totalling 1,646 people as of 8am yesterday, up from 1,167 people at 8pm on Saturday.
State Health and Environment Committee chairman R Vidyananthan said eight more relief centres were activated in Segamat. This brings the total number of relief centres in the district to 27. One relief centre had been opened in Tangkak. Rain was reported in eight districts, with cloudy weather in Tangkak and Pontian, he added.
Water levels in two major rivers in the state – Sungai Segamat in Bandar Segamat and Sungai Tangkak ini Kampung Sri Makmur, Tangkak – are still above the danger level. In Pahang, the State Disaster Management Committee Secretariat reported that there were 1,804 flood victims at 39 relief centres in eight districts.
With the consent of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Sa’adul Khairi Waddien, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, the Yang Di-Pertua of Adat Istiadat Negara announced the royal wedding ceremony for Her Royal Highness Princess Fadzilah Lubabul Bolkiah and Yang Mulia Awang Abdullah Nabil Mahmoud Al-Hashimi.
The announcement was carried across Radio Television Brunei (RTB) last Friday evening.
Students are heading back to school starting today after a four-month hiatus following the second COVID-19 outbreak in the Sultanate last August.
In a recent statement, the Ministry of Education (MoE) announced that the learning and teaching session for the first phase of the Endemic Stage would begin on January 3 for Years 10-13 students, with physical classes to be held five times a week. Meanwhile, Years 7 – 9 students will commence in-person classes on January 17, in the second phase of the Endemic Stage.
