A Madam's Life

Once upon a time I fancied myself an intellectual, and put on airs and pretended, like so many others of my generation, to read Sartre, Joyce and others which today’s under-thirties would disdainfully dismiss as ‘books’. Then one day I noticed that weeks had slipped into months and years and all I’d done, day after day, was iron three even-sized but gradually expanding sets of school uniforms (and pajamas, and play clothes) fill three water bottles (and snack boxes, and lunch dabbas). Life blurred into a haze of endless bottles of white shoe polish, unit tests, twice-a-week home-baked chocolate cakes, lazy Saturday afternoon ice lollies and Disney movies, with nothing but some intermittent mommy violence to break the monotony.
It struck me that I might easily lay claim to the title of The Erma Bombeck of Pune. After all, we live in a city of pompous epithets – the self-important Oxford of the East that generates hordes of postgraduates who cannot distinguish an apostrophe from a garden spade.
A phase of adventure tourism began and life became a confusion of grave responsibilities and impossible commitments, with stress-induced ailments resulting in major surgery.  Meanwhile, grouchy bad temper had submitted to a sanctimonious streak and I’d become a Reiki Master.
Shouldn’t that be Reiki ‘Mistress’? my friend Amita frowned. But for various reasons I wasn’t that keen to be called a mistress – though now that I think about it, I’ve been called ‘Madam’ for long enough with great forbearance. People recognize me at forty paces – even on the telephone if you want to know the awful truth – as ‘Madam’, and I’ve learnt to live with it and keep smiling.  We’re a tiny and sadly marginalized community, us Madams, with our headaches and bridge mornings and afternoon naps, especially these days with attrition figures in the household-help industry marching ahead of the IT and even BPO sectors. Speaking on behalf of the Society of Highly Opinionated and Amply-endowed Madams (SHOAM), Maharashtra chapter, I encourage the government to set aside some kind of reservations for us too. In fact, if I was Chief Minister (and believe me, you could do worse) I would go right ahead and allot separate parking spaces for Madams whose drivers didn’t turn up for work that morning.
As CM, it would also be my pleasant duty to publicize the sensational, path-breaking research of an internationally reputed agency which intimately relates poor driving manners to sexual dysfunction. Men who broke through traffic lights were shown to suffer premature ejaculation. Road hogs who swerved, cut lanes, and shoved small fry out of the way were observed to have the most hilariously teeny-meeny wedding tackle. Those who used the cell phone while driving, the report elaborates, had been blatantly cuckolded many times over. And those who senselessly blared their horns were, naturally, those who leapt onto their beds with hope and anticipation but never managed to actually get horny.
Parts of this  appeared in Saaz ki Awaaz under the title Sallying Forth in Times of India, Pune on 13 Jan 2011

Tools, mining, materials – and fika

In August 2008, Sandvik Asia commissioned me to write a corporate biography, a wonderful assignment that kept me warm and well-fed right through the nasty recession that waited considerately till the project was well on its way.

 Theirs is a fascinating story. In 1950, the newly-formed Indian government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru was faced with the task of building a nascent nation. Reeling from the after-effects of the Second World War, the withdrawal of the British, and the terrible tragedies of Partition, a large majority of our country continued to live in abject poverty. But the new government of India had great ambitions. While making plans to develop the villages and helping the farmers to prosper, they laid the base to build an industrial nation.
India had no technology and needed partners. Whom could we turn to? The British had left after a long struggle; German technology had been used for inhuman purposes during the war; The USA was too far away. Finally, it was decided to approach another quiet, inconspicuous country which just happened to have its industrial base intact. Nehru began sending trade delegations to Sweden.
Swedish companies, conservative, long-term planners, hesitated to invest in a country on the other side of the globe where tigers and snakes apparently roamed free on the streets, and the average person might hope to live just thirty-two years. So Nehru went along himself, and charmed their reservations away. In 1960, the swashbuckling Lars de Jounge arrived in Poona (as it was called then), Sandvik Asia’s first Managing Director.
Lars, now eighty-two, lives in the USA and came to Pune and spent some days talking to me about his experiences setting up the factory and starting business in India. He also gave me his wonderful collection of photographs, and many were used in the book. Other former Managing Directors of the company were also extremely helpful, providing any number of interesting stories, and continuous support as the manuscript progressed. E Gunnar Svensson took the trouble to scan and send me every internal news bulletin from his four-year tenure. He even did a thorough proofread of the manuscript, spotting any number of howlers before we went into production.
My most important oral source for this book was Dr Sanjay Basu, a former IIT professor who led Sandvik Asia’s research and development efforts for decades and, now retired, continues as consultant to the company. He showed me around the factories any number of times, explaining processes and answering questions patiently.
Sadly, the company had preserved almost no documents from which we could piece together its history. Luckily there was a solution – and one which turned out to be a fulfilling adventure. We visited the parent company’s archives, preserved in the municipality at Sandviken.
I had been told, “If they want to reward you, they send you to Sweden in July. If it’s a punishment, you get to go in winter.” So when I was told to block dates in November, I knew what that meant and humbly got out my winter coat, gloves and woollen cap, and a whole lot of regular stuff that could be worn in layers for that extra warmth.
We flew to Stockholm via Munich. I was busy soaking in atmosphere from my Stieg Larsson book but couldn’t help notice the cabin crew trying to speak to my neighbour in their plastic-cheerful German. He, being Danish, would stare back, slit-eyed, and sneer disdainfully, “Sorry?” An investment bank had sent him to India and he had been mighty impressed with the progress in the nation but I think he changed his mind when I said I was on my way to Sweden and gave me a ‘You can’t be serious, go get a Life!’ look.
“Boring,” is how Swedish people describe their countryside (“nothing but trees!”) Two hours out of the airport, we had arrived at the small industrial town where we would read original documents from the 1950s about how the Indian government wooed the Swedish companies to come and share their technical knowledge and contribute to the economic and social growth of our newly independent nation.
Our hotel faced the town square, with the Town Hall on its right and the Municipality building, where the archives were located, on the left. The air was crisp, the trees stark, the sky grey, and the winter coat handy. At the cemetery, the graves were low but lit with little lamps. Walking around, we saw a few relics of the region’s past: a Bessemer converter that was one of the first to be used for the industrial production of steel from iron, and an enormous forging hammer which would have been powered by steam.
It had been a long time since people treated me like a rare exotic creature and I quite enjoyed it. At the archives a number of city workers stopped by to say hello. One who had just come back from a trip confided that they all knew they lived in the best country in the world – but when they went abroad no one had ever heard of them, so what was the use!
Swedish people are modest to the point of being invisible. It’s such a marked part of their personality that when they write, they hardly ever use the word “I”. When they say, “nothing but trees”, they omit mentioning that those trees, and the lakes between them, are stunningly beautiful. Nobody raves about the delicious food, so my facebook posts showing plates heaped with colourful Swedish meals surprised and intrigued my friends.
Walking down the street, little flakes of snow settled on my shoulder, enabling me to marvel, next morning, at a universe in which a perfectly ordinary person could find herself residing temporarily inside a Christmas card. Bosse, the archivist, took us to see an axe factory – Swedish axes are apparently in great demand in the USA. We were fascinated to see that manual skill could be so important in a country of advanced machine technology.
In May the following year, I found myself back in Sandviken, feeling (and behaving) like an expectant father as the design and production team put the book together. The part of the day I enjoyed most was ‘fika’, a Swedish tradition which is hard to describe – I offer the Hindi word ‘timepass’ as my best approximation. Work stops and people hang out and relax over coffee and delicious Swedish cakes.
All the intense hard work was rewarded with a long weekend in beautiful Stockholm with my brother Ravi and his family, and my friend Amita, who flew in from London. I was reading Desiree by Annemarie Selinko, a fictionalised biography of a Frenchwoman who became Queen of Sweden. This, along with the sunny weather we were lucky to have, added depth and perspective as we explored this picturesque city. Walking through Gamlastan, the historic quarter, we discovered Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren’s interesting heroine on whom, say some, Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander is modelled.

The Sandvik Asia corporate biography was launched on 8 July 2010, fifty years after the company was registered in India. It was a low-profile event, in keeping with the essentially unobtrusive nature characteristic of the Swedish. I did feel sorry, though, that the people of my city would probably never know much about this wonderful company which established base here in 1960, making it one of the first companies to bring foreign direct investment into independent India. Other Swedish companies soon followed suit, and ‘Sveanagar’ came up on the old Bombay-Pune Road, with Sandvik’s manicured lawns charming passersby.
Fifty years of growth and contribution later, the Swedish companies are a shining example of one of the oldest and most significant corporate symbiotic relationships with India, organizations that helped India to become an industrialized nation.

Hill Road

Heaps of cotton clothes

Fixed price, white-hot in noon sun,

Hill Road, I miss you! // when can I go again?

Summer

Dragon breath on skin

Sweet mangoes, bright gulmohurs,

Summer is orange.

True confessions of a ghost writer

The awful thing about being in a profession where visibility is a key criterion of success is that regardless of the quality of your work, your friends will always think you’re a loser since you’ve never won the Booker Prize.
No one could possibly be worse affected by this unreasonable benchmark than me since I went to school with Arundhati Roy where – and the admission causes me massive shudders of mortification – she was a famous athlete and I was the one preening insufferably with the radiant glory of my wondrous and unmatched skill with words.
Worse yet is the fact that every book I’ve written to date, and also some I’m labouring over even as we speak, have been ostensibly authored by others.
Trying to feign sophistication is pointless – it’s only dismissed as sour grapes. Even my (actually rather priceless) one-liner, “If they give me cash then why do I need credit!” is no match for the sniggers of uncouth schoolmates who cruelly whisper to each other, “Ya, she’s on page 334! And you’ll need a high-rez magnifying glass if you really want to see her name!”
It’s no use my explaining that the biggest compliment to the ghost writer is when someone reaches the end of the book and only then realizes, with a start, that the voice that was speaking all this while is not that of the face on the cover but has actually been cleverly simulated by another.
It’s no use my explaining that even a book of the stature of The Autobiography of Malcolm X – listed by none other than Time Magazine as one of the ten most important non-fiction books of the Twentieth Century – was written by the high profile Alex Haley.
Yes, we ghost writers are a sadly marginalized tribe – but the truth is, our numbers are growing.
Publishing is easier today than it’s ever been before – and getting even easier. Outsourcing is now established as a mainstream alternative to getting things done, so no one need pretend any more that they actually authored their book themselves. Writing is considered a suitable – though perhaps not particularly favoured – occupation for one’s offspring. And, as the world grows more and more complex, people with fascinating stories to tell but without the skill to tell them are undoubtedly going to give more and more opportunities for highly-paid work to people like me. The prospect delights.
One day, surely, someone will coin the expression ‘self-written autobiography’.
Yet, and even after endless years spent honing the skill of presenting the most negative attribute, the most downmarket episode, the most trivial achievement in hues that colour it as enthralling – or candid, or upright, or touching, or endearing  – I’m sad pressed to portray this facet of my own professional profile in a manner that might possibly invite esteem.
Whooshing out of cupboards and down chimneys in my ghostly manner, I must muse moodily – but wispily, insubstantially alone – on the significant attributes of the sensitive scribe who can listen so carefully to another as to truly comprehend all the intricacies of thought and feeling of the subject, expressed in subtle ways even if unspoken, and convey them in a suitable manner.
Most of us go through life leaving the really important things unsaid. So ingrained is this habit that few of us really know what is important in our lives, and even less know how best to say it to the ones most important to us. And yet, when towards the end of a long and fulfilling life – or phase of achievement – we take up the task of writing our story, we must find the words with which to say these things: words that will cement our bonds with loved ones without gushing, repair our strained relations with others without grovelling, and create in strangers a feeling of warmth and appreciation for our life and times. This, of course, is no ordinary skill – but it is what the ghost writer must strive to excel at.
One of the simplest directives for good-quality journalism holds up hallmark parameters to the ghost biographer equally well: “Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.” These words come from Joseph Pulitzer, the Hungarian-American publisher who is best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes and for being one of the originators of investigative journalism.
What Pulitzer was never recorded as having said, but we all know, is that journalists learn early to casually project an air of comfortably superior knowledge by using the right key phrases that indicate one is an insider and well versed in areas one may never have encountered till just the previous day. The ghost writer must extend this skill further and delve the depth of her subject’s life experience, making it her own. And the ghost writer must have the discipline to resist the temptation – as every good reporter must – of icing the story with her own interpretations and experience, assuming and conjuring detail or sensation where none existed in fact.
When I write on behalf of someone else, though I am primarily working as a journalist, I also project myself into a range of different roles.
I am the village letter writer who will communicate this person’s message to another.
I am the client-service executive who will investigate my client’s requirements with single-minded commitment, and work to my utmost to fulfil them as best as I can.
I am the PR machinery that will give a context to both the achievements and the failures in this person’s life and, by showcasing them in a favourable perspective, matchlessly enhance his or her reputation.
I am the confidante who will receive a stream of information and it will be my responsibility to judge which shall be published, which relegated to the wayside, and which – for some of these will be secrets never told before to a single soul – shall go with me to my grave.
To the opinionated grandson who scoffs, “Why a book about HIS life, what is so great about HIM that he should write an autobiography!” I am the Victorian school teacher who raps knuckles with the stern admonition that each human being – and in particular grandfathers of overindulged young people – has a fascinating story, and each human being has the right to tell it.
I am the productivity-oriented project manager who must structure the project into clear phases, defining milestones, moving effortlessly from one role to the other as appropriate to each changing phase, anticipating, apprehending and resolving key pressure points – while at the same time monitoring and managing every discernible parameter. And I am the commercially-savvy professional with the relaxed confidence to lay down a payment structure which protects the interests of both parties, while simultaneously nudging the project along a carefully-configured but relentless time-line.
I am the stage artiste whose own character and nature and gender and family and past – and ego – vanish completely as she seamlessly dons the persona of another.
And I am also the unglamorous writer who will never win a Booker for her work, and even if the press in her own little city beams with kind satisfaction at her every achievement, must ultimately content herself with these words that a wise woman once coined: “If they give me cash, then why do I need credit?”
first appeared as I’m not there in Open magazine  on 13 Feb 2010 

The beatings will continue

For many years I worked for an IT company, and observing at first hand the rate of evolving technology never failed to make me dizzy. So high was the acceleration that it was clear we must brace ourselves for the day, soon, when there would be new and unexpected gadgets, climate changes, lifestyle options, product markets, means of communication, behaviour patterns (and so on) not just after every few decades – but every year, every month, and even every day.
Now, at an age when women traditionally deal with painful personal change at every level of their existence, I peer into my memory looking for a significant moment that changed me more than any other and I spot that afternoon twenty-two years ago when a tiny, perfect, human being appeared in this world and suddenly – unexpectedly – made a wise and important person of me.
In the years that followed, I was gifted an assortment of life experiences that logically should have belonged to many different people. Of them all, this has been the role I most cherished.
Many complain of postpartum depression but I experienced the opposite – an exhilarating energy that turned me into the most blissfully devoted attendant there could be. I remember that I never left my baby’s side, not even once, for more than a year!
Then came a time when it was necessary for me to garner every latent marketable skill I could invent to draw forth some kind of sustenance for the two of us.
As existence spun some fantastic patterns to make this possible, it also now blessed me with the ability to be nothing but relaxed and patient and friendly even as a storm of unhappiness and despair battled within.
I developed a secret empathy for the young women who stand, palms outstretched at traffic signals, with babies slung against their sides. This fanciful affiliation led me not to tearful flights of self-indulgence but instead lent a parallel poetic vision which came in handy to power my byline.
A few short years later, the adored one was narrowly snatched from the inelegant fate of the overfed by a rapid turn of events which abruptly bestowed on her a brother and a sister.
The three were so close in age that, like a batch of cookies baking together, they marched in faultless step across developmental milestones at easy-to-manage intervals. It was hard work fixing dabbas, helping with homework, administering first aid, and mediating in the occasional gory interpersonal squabble. At work I was encountering Japanese productivity techniques like Kaizen, JIT, and 5S, and coolly adapting them for use at home, to deal with fundamental icons of housework such as leftovers and laundry routines. The children knew nothing of this secret life of mine, though. For it was at this time that I achieved the highest pinnacle of success of my career: I was always there when the school bus brought them home.
We had fun too: Disney videos on Saturdays, summer holidays with mornings in the sandpit and ice lollies after lunch, a healthy (high-fibre, low-fat, low-cholesterol, extra-delicious) chocolate cake that bestowed instant popularity, and kiddie birthdays with bright, fancy-shaped cakes and invitations produced in-house. We travelled round the country by car and survived some nasty battles since only two could have window seats. But sulks could easily turn to giggles when the others pulled faces or pretended to vomit or a lorry passed by with something particularly inventive inscribed at the back.
At this time, I became so presumptuous as to write a column loftily airing my views on motherhood. I had experimented with different parenting formats, and read a few books, and the kids did seem happy, so I quite fancied myself the expert.
What I wrote was based on a belief – innocent, but deep-rooted at the time – that when children are given love, patience, and understanding, and when the responsible adults around them try to look at the world through their eyes, and guide them towards a life that is healthy and balanced, using a well-thought-out mixture of discipline and fun – well, surely they would grow up to be good, sensible, loving people and what more could anyone possibly want?
Years passed in this type of self-complacent haze until one day I noticed that my name had been changed and my smug satisfaction turned to dismay. From the once popular, beloved, and idolized “Mumma” I had now become known in an off-hand and rather patronizing tone, as “Mom”. Certain cute and cuddly people had vanished, to be replaced by lanky individuals who stalked about the house, being witty and laconic and saying “Ya, rright!” to each other with lofty disdain. Fundamental rules, in place for close to two decades, were being carelessly flouted!
At that time I remember we had a poster stuck on the fridge, a circular drawn up in a (rare) attempt at humour. We had been implementing ISO 9001:2000 at the office, and I had mockingly documented my Household Laundry System, listing recommended procedures and schedules for linen maintenance, white-shoe polishing and the like. At the bottom ran the line, “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves!”
Funny – but was it really?
We never had overt rebellion, as many families do. On the surface we were close-knit and communicative – yet, strange and often frightening events occurred.
It was a confusing time for me, and one of intense reflection. All these years, I had believed that my parenting was sophisticated and effective. Most of the actions I made were painstakingly thought out and carefully implemented. I had exercised the right to express my anger the way I would in any close relationship – having often favoured a healthy, natural, aggressive and potentially destructive reaction over a polite and well-meaning but contrived one. When I encountered areas of guilt and resentment, I had tried to confront, define and resolve them. I had never overworked myself to win their favour in any way that was insincere – cautiously anticipating and sidestepping every trap a stepmother might characteristically embrace.
I now began to wonder whether, in the bargain, I had overdone it and exposed my ugly side once too often. Had I been too domineering? Could I have avoided it? Would we have been happier today if I had taken less trouble to relate, or to guide and monitor in those days? (And had I really been relating, guiding and monitoring – or just messing around with a sledge hammer?) I remembered one occasion when my youngest, an effervescent comedian of age six – now a suave and distant young man of twenty – had earnestly confided that his happiest moment had been the one on which he first met me. The saddest, he added without missing a beat, was when I first whacked him.
Funny – but was it really?
I’d love to pretend that in those days it had been my practice to glide about like a wise Zen master, cleverly concealing a stout staff behind my back and whipping it out occasionally with the express purpose of jolting the little darlings to a higher awareness.
Ya, rright!
As parenthood progresses, supremacy wanes, and now with the wisdom of the powerless I must counsel myself on the responsibility each previous generation has to allow the new one to live life in the new world, its very own special world, on its own terms. After all, I have brought my children up to make their own decisions. How must I react when they choose to do something I don’t want them to? Do I have the courage to watch them make their mistakes and learn what they will without my protective fussing, without charging in to provide perspective, without blatantly insisting they do things my way?
Part of the process of adapting to changes in my physical and mental composition must be the achingly painful realization that I can no longer be the most important person in the lives of those who once, not so long ago, swore me their undying loyalty and devotion in too many unspoken ways to enumerate. When this colossal change comes, will I succumb to the private pain of a spurned lover? To the panicky prospect of loss of occupation and omniscience faced by a corporate boss overthrown in a boardroom coup? Will I resist the urge to metamorphose into that melodramatic Bollywood mother whose anguish and its expression is always a source of mirth?
And will my actions ever reveal the depth of my anxiety at the prospect of regressing to that nameless, shapeless adolescent entity I once was, before I became that most wonderful, powerful, loved and revered of all beings, a mother?
first appeared as Mother Superior in Open magazine on 8 May 2009

Discovering Toronto with Smita

The low red-bricked houses and neatly-marked streets looked familiar, and with dal and alu-bhindi for dinner, how could anyone blame me for thinking that this was just another suburb of London?
My first clue to the contrary was when I tried to get into the driver’s seat – ambitious, considering I can’t drive even back at home – and Smita gently showed me around to the other side. Still, it took a long while of staring at the maple tree outside my window before I could coax out that “Oh wow, I am actually here in Canada!” feeling.
Canada, eclipsed as it is by a bossy neighbour, tends to have an unglamorous branding. And with those supposedly never-ending winters, who in their right mind would go? I myself was only visiting a beloved friend, something we had wanted to do for so long that when it finally happened, it didn’t matter even remotely which country it was.
Years ago I’d read Margaret Atwood’s description in Cat’s Eye, of Toronto as “a world-class city” and I remember thinking, “how wannabe is that!” So when Toronto began to unfold before me, I felt like Columbus discovering a new land.
Toronto is a multi-cultural city and the diversity is such that on a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum we saw children of every imaginable skin colour. Of twenty-five, only about two were white. Canada has welcomed immigrants over centuries, the biggest wave of which arrived in the late 1840s from Ireland, fleeing the Irish Potato Famine and numbering twice the Toronto population of the time.
Over the years, settlers from different European, Asian, African and South American countries carved out sections of the city for themselves. You can browse in the ubiquitous China Town, but also eat spanakopita in cafés next to Greek street signs just as easily as crisp fresh dosais in restaurants with large nameboards in Tamil. With so many different ethnic groups mingling easily, racism is really just interpersonal friction. There are infinite varieties of the English accent, with an Indian who grew up in Kampala speaking a quite different idiom from one who grew up in Trinidad. The immigrants I met were proudly, passionately Canadian, grateful to the country that had given them lives of comfort, opportunity and pleasant stimulation.
It was only in the early years of the Twentieth Century that citizens began to work actively towards the creation of a strong Canadian national identity. One of these was a community of landscape painters that came to be known as The Group of Seven, and Smita introduced me to their work at the National Gallery, later driving me into the country to visit the McMichael Collection, located in the woodland setting that inspired them, and even buying me a beautiful art book representing their work.
Toronto’s vibrant cultural life made me feel that under-hyped Toronto is surely one of the world’s best-kept secrets. Friends took me to the National Ballet of Toronto and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra where the high-quality infrastructure and appreciative audience added to my experience of the performances.
Smita and I had always shared our books, right from the days when we both lived in Bandra and she would drop in to visit on her way back from college nearly every day. I now enjoyed discovering her favourite Canadian authors. Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright is told through letters and narrative and depicts the dramatic lives of two sisters who grew up in small-town Canada. One, a schoolteacher, remains a spinster, while the other becomes a radio star in New York. The Divine Ryans by Wayne Johnston is told by a young boy whose father has recently died and has the mixture of humour and tragedy characteristic of the Irish writers. No New Land by M.G. Vassanji is a hard-core immigrant story filled with struggle, humiliation, misunderstanding, alienation from offspring, and crisply told.
I knew I was in Toronto when, at the shortlist readings of the Griffin Poetry Prize at the MacMillan Theatre, Margaret Atwood was right behind Smita in the queue for the toilet.
Our weekend visit to Ottawa, Canada’s capital, happened to be on Doors Open, a day on which public buildings welcome visitors. So we dropped by at the Supreme Court, Houses of Parliament, and even the Governor General’s home. Security arrangements were in place but there was no trace of paranoia or hatred. This complete lack of fear was for me the most refreshing aspect of this country, and doubtless a consequence of the thanks-to-big-brother-you-can’t-see-me syndrome. The streets of Ottawa are wide and clean. Coming from a land of teeming millions, there arose within me a very loud question, namely: “Where IS everybody?” which made Smita laugh. Toronto by contrast can get crowded – but I found it a relaxed place with the screaming inner-city adrenalin absent.
On our last day we drove out to Niagara Falls where we enjoyed looking across the gorge and gloating at those standing on the American side, peering over but unable quite to see all that we could. As we headed home, Smita’s formidable, internationally-acknowledged organizational ability had two rainbows arranging themselves over the falls, and we rode into a magnificent pink-and-purple Toronto sunset, Lake Ontario rolling alongside, and the deep-throated Canadian genius Leonard Cohen belting out his soulful ballads all the way home.
parts of this first appeared as Steeped in a maple world in Sunday Mid-day on 6 Sep 2009