Our friend Janice Valdez is a woman with a mission… or at least an adventure… or perhaps both. She is in the midst of a two-month tour of India to promote an extremely cool machine: the Stromer electric bicycle. Unlike the old mopeds, which used peddle energy as a way of forcibly jump-starting a motor, or electric scooters, which use no human power whatsoever, the Stromer uses an electrical drive to augment the rider’s contribution to forward motion.

Back home in Vancouver, Janice cycles everywhere and her (non-power-assisted) bike is her principle form of transportation within the city. With a strong commitment to sustainable, low-carbon-footprint living, Janice is a contributor to isCleaner.com, a web portal of news and ideas on clean energy. So she was, perhaps, a natural ambassador for this tour of India to show-off the Stromer.

Yesterday, Janice visited us in Pondicherry. One person we were eager to have see Janice’s bike was our friend Bappu Deshmukh. Bappu is one of the most enthusiastic cyclists we know, having recently ridden in organized tours of Tamil Nadu and the Nilgiris. He was also an early adopted of electric scooter technology, and has been a forceful advocate an implementer of solar energy solutions here in Pondy; so he was perhaps the perfect target audience. While we spent time catching-up and hearing about her trip, Bappu spent some time drooling over Janice’s bike. Eventually, he set-off on his own Tour de Pondechéry. Two seconds into his ride, he gave an ecstatic shout of “Wow!” and, moments later, disappeared around a corner. It wasn’t immediately clear that Janice was ever going to get her bike back, but eventually Bappu returned and the four of us – Yoo-Mi, Janice, fellow Vancouverite Rohit Chokhani (who is organizing Janice’s tour), and I – were able to pry Bappu’s hands from the handlebars, splash a little cold water on his face, and get Janice on her way to Bangalore.

You can follow Janice’s adventures here. Bappu’s exploits are, fortunately, less well publicized.

Ishwarbhai Patel was the role model to my role models. Today, on the first anniversary of his death, we remember him fondly.

In a country where ritual hygiene is sacrosanct and actual hygiene is observed mostly in the breach, Ishwarbhai devoted his life to the rational, hygienic management of human waste. Recipient of India’s Padma Shri for distinguished service to the country, among many other national and international awards, Ishwarbhai’s greatness and achievements were certainly widely admired. But, true to his modesty and good humor, he got more pleasure from his more humble nickname, “Mr. Toilet”.

Ishwarbhai was as matter-of-fact as could be about all matters of human waste. Within the first five minutes of the first time we met, he advised me how much my average daily dump weighed in grams – I forget the number – and added that it was likely more dense than the average Indian feces, because the Western diet includes more refined and processed foods. This was typical conversation, and there was nothing casual about it. It was part of Ishwarbhai’s mission. Having made sanitation his life’s work, he could hardly afford to be abashed in discussing these things. Moreover, he understood that the polite refusal of most people to talk about human waste entailed a pernicious complicity in the epidemic of debilitating and frequently lethal diarrheal diseases in India. “How can we solve a problem people are too embarrassed to talk about sensibly?” he complained.

It is quite true that sanitation was a lifelong passion for Ishwarbhai; but it is equally true that he was driven into the field by higher ideals of service and a sense of need. Ishwarbhai was a Gandhian of unusual character: one who not only celebrated Gandhi-ji’s philosophy, but actually rolled-up his sleeves to do the hard work of domestic development which Gandhi-ji saw as essential for successful swaraj, self-governance. Indeed, Ishwarbhai said that Gandhi-ji’s famous line, “Sanitation is more important than independence,” was central to his decision to begin studying solutions to human waste management. “We had won independence,” said Ishwarbhai, “but it was as if we had forgotten everything that Gandhi-ji had taught us. No one was doing this work. So I did it.”

It was never clear to me whether Ishwarbhai, had ever received any formal training in engineering; but his approach to toilet design was absolutely rigorous. He could speak endlessly about the geometry, materials, and user-interface. He was constantly prototyping and testing. He even developed a simple, low-cost solution for the vexing problem of the abundance of shit on the tracks at railway stations. Despite the well-posted admonitions not to use the train toilets (essentially stainless steel holes in the floor) when the train is at a station, this is precisely the time when most people will use them, because squatting is less precarious when the train is not rocking and bouncing its way down the tracks. Ishwarbhai developed a holding tank beneath the toilet openings, with a hatch operated by a simple governor. When the train got to speed, the hatch would open automatically and remain open until the train slowed again. While the engineering won praise from Indian Railways, it has never been implemented. “There is plenty of money to line [the bureaucrats’ and politicians’] pockets, but not enough to do this simple thing,” Ishwarbhai told me nearly a decade ago.

In 1969, Ishwarbhai assumed the directorship of the Safai Vidyalaya (Sanitation Institute) of the Harijan Sevak Sangh at the Gandhi Sabarmati Ashram – which includes and awesome toilet museum! – and, in 1985, founded Environmental Sanitation Institute (ESI) for the broad dissemination of his accumulated social research and engineering development. Like any good engineer, Ishwarbhai keenly recognized that the chief impediment to better sanitation was not immature technology. “I’m not Abdul Kalam,” he told me – his funny way of saying, “Toilet design is not rocket science.” The problem has been the failure to create a broad-based social transformation. For Ishwarbahi, this meant starting at the bottom of the pyramid, improving sanitation for the poorest of the poor. After all, they are the ones least likely to have access to hygienic facilities and those who suffer most from the epidemic of water-borne diseases related to poor sanitation.

I recall another story he told, which seems to have been formative in his understanding of the need to change popular thinking about hygiene, both on a social and microbiological level. He had been helping street-sweepers when he was spotted by an auntie from the community. She was incensed that he had not only become “unclean” himself by handling the brooms of the Dalits (untouchables or, as Gandhi-ji and Ishwarbhai would say, Harijans), but that he risked infecting others as well. So she washed his hands with water from a filthy bucket that had been used for carrying cow dung, and then completed the purification by touching a piece of her gold jewelry to his hands.

Ishwarbhai’s work continues in the institutions he built and served and through the many talented people he inspired with his passion and compassion.

I loathe Christmas. But just as every cloud has a silver lining, there is one truly excellent thing about Christmas: eggnog.

In fairness, eggnog is not exclusively within the Christmas domain. But let’s throw a crappy holiday a bone of redemption. And, anyway, this is really not about Christmas; it’s about eggnog.

This morning, before I was even fully conscious, I had a flash of inspiration: caramel eggnog. In other words, caramelize the sugar (in a syrup) instead of incorporating it raw. The result, pictured above, is superb.

Really, you need a recipe? Damn this season of giving!

For every four glasses of eggnog use roughly:

2 eggs
1/4 cup + 1 T sugar
1-1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup dark rum
a hint of vanilla
a dash of nutmeg

Caramelize the 1/4 cup sugar over medium heat in a heavy pan with 1/4 cup water. When it’s a rich, dark amber, stir-in another 1/4 cup of water (the first will be long-gone) until the caramel is completely dissolved into a syrup. Set aside to cool a bit.

Separate the eggs. Whisk the yolks until pale, then whisk-in the rum, the caramel syrup, the dairy, the accents.

Beat the whites using a hand- or standing mixer, first until softly coherent, then, adding the extra sugar, until stiff but still moist-looking. In other words, don’t beat them so stiff that they become dry and brittle.

Fold the fluffy whites into the rest and you are done.

Garnish with fresh grated nutmeg.

Jane Roskams, UBC neuroscientist and fellow Point Grey denizen, has a mighty apple tree in her backyard. Each year, it provides an abundant harvest — or rather, an over-abundant harvest. To mitigate the apple onslaught, to broaden the wealth, and to share the fun, Jane holds an annual Apple Pie Party. The 2011 event took place last night, and we were fortunate enough to wrangle an invitation.

The concept of the party is simple: help Jane use the damn apples. And one more thing: be prepared to be judged on your effort.

Starting Wednesday evening, Jane sets-out bags of freshly harvested apples on her front door for collection by the invitees. On Sunday afternoon, many of those guests will turn-up at the party with freshly baked pies, which are taken discreetly and anonymously into the dining room, to be laid-out with the other submissions for a blind tasting. Although apple pie is a principal subject of conversation in the party’s opening hours, guests are forbidden to describe the pie they have made for fear of compromising objectivity. Judges, it seems, walk among us; and the identity of the three-judge panel is not disclosed until moments before they enter the Star Chamber for a private tasting and deliberations.

Once the judges have reached a verdict, the tasting table is open to the mob – fifty of us, in all. An obscene amount of pie is consumed in very short-order. And some damned good pie it was! There were a number of picture-perfect traditional offerings, which looked as though they had been lovingly produced by a North American grandmother straight from central casting or a Norman Rockwell painting. The very best of these, to my mind, was not produced by a bent, gray-haired woman in a bad dress and worse gingham apron (in fact, the grandmotherly archetype was distinctly missing from this younger, hipper party), but by a strapping 15-year-old boy. It was Sam’s first-ever pie and it was brilliant. He won third place in the judging.

Yoo-Mi and I prepared our standard tarte tatin – or what would have been our standard tarte tatin had not Jane’s apples liquefied into applesauce within moments of exposure to the bubbling, caramelizing sugar. We feared the worst; but somehow, the tarte managed to hold itself together and came out of the pan astonishingly intact.

And, yes, it won first prize.

Pavi Mehta and Suchi Shenoy have just published an outrageous book, Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion. These are two women not usually given to prevarication;* but the inventiveness, thoroughness, and depth of their deceit in Infinite Vision is really quite breathtaking.

The book makes the following absurd claims:

1. That a doctor hailing from a tiny, rural village in South India, whose hands were so badly gnarled with rheumatoid arthritis he had to specially train himself to hold surgical implements, became perhaps the most important eye surgeon in history.

2. That this man, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, following his retirement from government service, started an eleven-bed eye clinic, called Aravind, which grew within his lifetime to become the largest eye-care hospital system in the world.

3. That Dr. V and his Aravind colleagues revolutionized cataract surgery, allowing massive numbers of patients suffering from the leading cause of needless blindness to have their sight restored.

4. That ophthalmology residents from the leading medical institutions in Europe and the United States come in droves to train at Aravind, and that Aravind openly and actively teaches its methods to administrators of public and private health care from around the developed and developing world.

5. That, in order to make cataract surgery affordable to the world’s poor, Aravind developed world-class manufacturing capability to deliver intraocular replacement lenses and other surgical supplies at a tiny fraction of the cost at which they were available from American and European manufacturers.

6. That Aravind operates an extensive, well-coordinated mobile outreach program to ensure that its services reach into the poorest districts and most remote villages.

7. That Aravind is the subject of a famous case study at Harvard Business School.

8. That Aravind sees more than 7,500 patients a day and performs more than 300,000 sight-restoring surgeries each year.

Finally, in a coup de grace of imaginary thinking, the book makes the preposterous claim that Aravind provides two-thirds of its services absolutely free-of-charge.

Ms. Mehta and Ms. Shennoy neglect to mention that the Aravind doctors ride unicorns to work; but, otherwise, they seem to have covered every fantastical angle imaginable. It makes for a wonderful read, even if one must suspend disbelief to get into some of the characters and it could probably use a more conventional trope (e.g., a love story, a double-cross, or a gruesome murder) to drive the plot in place of the incessant compassion, brilliance, creative problem-solving, and do-gooding. The only shame is that the publishers somehow saw fit to pass-off this compelling fantasy as non-fiction.

As with James Frye’s infamous A Million Little Pieces, an elaborate fraud has been perpetrated on the book-reading public. The only mitigating factor is that little of the public actually reads books.
____
* Okay, Ms. Mehta is not above white-lies, tall tales, and the occasional whopper; but Ms. Shenoy is a relatively straight-shooter.

UPDATE and CORRECTION

Holy crap! It turns-out this Aravind stuff is all true! Who knew?

You really must read this book. The story of Dr. V and Aravind is one of the most magical, heroic, and inspiring you will ever read. The people who fill the pages of this important volume are some of my favorite in the world — as are the authors. Infinite Vision is available through Amazon in soft-cover and Kindle versions.

And if you’ve overcome incredulity regarding the astonishing accomplishments of Dr. V and his Aravind team over the last three decades, you are probably ready for this unusual news: the authors are donating their royalties from sales of the book to the Aravind Eye Hospitals.

Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough above. Buy it. Now.

Neoconservative historian Andrew Roberts has written a thoroughly dickish profile of Mahatma Gandhi in the Wall Street Journal, entitled Among the Hagiographers. Under the thin guise of a review of Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography, Great Soul, Mr. Roberts unleashes an unprovoked, relentlessly cruel smear-piece on Gandhi-ji. The essay bristles with the sort of raw enmity one might expect from a man whose professional career has revolved around the lionization of Winston Churchill and who has unreservedly adopted the venomous loathings of the man he idolizes.

The facile way to read Mr. Roberts’s offensively negative presentation is as a smoking condemnation of Gandhi-ji: the father of satyagraha was a creep and a pervert. Indeed, the essay catalogs many of Gandhi-ji’s personal shortcomings and reversals of position; and Mr. Roberts’s project is to spin these into an unflattering portrait of hypocrisy, if not outright depravity. Roberts presents precisely the opposite portrait from that assembled in the usual, beatifying hagiography; and the true object of Roberts’s loathing may be as much the Gandhian canon as Gandhi-ji himself. But, in this detail, I see a shred of subtle value in Mr. Roberts’s malicious piece. It illustrates the absurdity and ruthlessness of a bizarrely one-dimensional mining of the historical record.

Mr. Roberts’s hatchet-job feels nasty because it is nasty, not because it is inaccurate. The characterizations he paints from the historical record are certainly gross caricatures; but they are effective in making an underlying point: we can parse the factual record in the service of whichever point-of-view we choose to advocate. As Shakespeare famously wrote, “The devil can cite scripture for his own purpose.” I know this as well as anyone, having made my career persuading civil juries why the facts of a lawsuit compel my favored result, rather than that urged by my adversary.

If Mr. Roberts’s true motivation was to make a general historiographical argument — intending the reader to find his own mean-spirited synthesis as ridiculously dumbass as the fawning portrayals favored in the Gandhian literature — rather than to draw specific historical conclusions, I would have to confess some appreciation for his aggressive presentation. (Those who know me will recognize my fondness for provocation as a literary tactic.) I am often annoyed by the deification and worshipful reconstruction of narrative employed by hagiographers of all stripes, from the biographers of Ronald Reagan of the American right to those of Gandhi-ji within the international community of his admirers. If I find the latter group marginally more frustrating, it is only because I fall within their camp; and I believe that nothing has done as much damage to Gandhi-ji’s legacy as the well-meaning, but tone-deaf messaging of Gandhians ourselves. The power and magic of Gandhi-ji’s ideas have been eviscerated by association with an absurd, god-like portrayal that effectively removes them from the realm in which people of ordinary human capacity might find them to be instructive.

The self-seriousness of Gandhian hagiography is extremely unforgiving. I have drawn withering, if generally incoherent criticism for a suggestion I find to be obvious: that Gandhi-ji intended a subtly confessional, comedic irony in the title of his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Gandhians seem to have a rough time with the idea that Gandhi-ji, a consummate politician and immense wit, might have been poking a little fun at himself and at the complicated exigencies of the political process, as well as delivering his more resonant, philosophical lessons. It doesn’t fit the righteous narrative.

The saintly whitewash of Gandhi-ji reached a cartoonish apogee in the popular Munnabhai films a few years back. Making-up in hipness what they lack in nuance, the idiotic movies have probably done more to popularize “Gandhigiri” within his homeland than any of the serious (and self-serious) discourse of the preceding half century. It is not a bad thing that the public received a minor civics lesson in the popular cinema; but it’s a bit like learning communitarian values through re-runs of Gilligan’s Island. It represents a trivial success of the superficial and highlights the failure of the appropriately rigorous to engender significant social transformation.

There is a tendency and desire among Gandhians to spiritualize Gandhianism. While this is not my approach, I certainly recognize the easy affinity and compatibility between Gandhi-ji’s profound and reference-shifting ideas and whatever-the-heck spiritualism turns-out to be. Gandhi-ji himself was not shy about urging the connection between the political and ethical, on the one hand, and the spiritual, on the other. The avoidable – but seldom avoided – hazard in this attitude is falling into a state of blind reverence.

Reverence is broadly considered a virtue. Its practitioners adopt their worshipfulness with a feel-good, self-righteous sanctimony that finds full support in many of our oldest and deepest cultural traditions. Still, I find its social utility, humility, and joy-producing self-sublimation utterly outweighed by the pernicious, willful ignorance it imposes.

One might think that the astigmatism of the deferential gaze would be at complete odds with the admiration of truth professed by Gandhians; and yet, we apply ourselves to reverence with a thoroughgoing stubbornness. This was perfectly illustrated by the formidable Gandhian, Nirmala Deshpande, both in her life’s work and in the glowing eulogies penned in the wake of her recent passing. She was a complicated figure, whose actions were often as brainless and deplorable as they were commendable and inspiring. Yet, she was remembered in uniformly saintly terms, depriving future generations of the opportunity to correct or to learn from the many profound errors she made.

The problems posed by reverence in both the writing and reading of history is not unique to Gandhians. For example, devotees of Sri Aurobindo from around the world are currently twisting themselves into painful contortions of outrage at perceived slights found in the largely innocent biography, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. The sad irony of the ideological battle, which scars this once-tight-knit community, is that the author, Peter Hees, has penned nothing short of an adoring hagiography. His principal sin was the ham-handed inclusion of rather lame, easily rejected, straw-man counterpoints to lend the book the veneer of even-handed objectivity. Reverence brooks no dissent – or even the implication that dissent might exist elsewhere.

This is the ultimate value of Mr. Roberts’s obnoxiously poisonous tirade. It demonstrates, by putrid example, the dishonesty and danger of selectively reducing depth and complexity to flatness and over-simplification. This is just as often a vice of those with whom we concur as those with whom we disagree, of those who admire as those who detest.

Shuddham, the remarkable volunteer-run NGO doing solid waste management in the heart of Pondicherry’s French Colonial district, has ceased operations, effective 1 January 2011. After eight years of going door-to-door, teaching households and businesses the importance of segregating waste streams into compostables and recyclables at the source – and slowly building compliance to an astonishing 80% among households – Shuddham has fallen victim to the incessant corruption of local officials and the negligence and callous indifference with which the government performs its obligations to the public.

First, the corruption. One year ago, in a decision that was taken with the utmost secrecy, the local administration division of the Puducherry government awarded an enormous contract for solid waste management for the whole of Pondicherry to Kivar Environ, a Bangalore company with absolutely no experience whatsoever in garbage collection, recycling, or any related endeavor. The contract, which runs 19 more years, represents an annual expenditure of more than four times what the government is currently spending on waste management. Given the difficulties Shuddham has faced over the years getting approvals for even minimal necessary additional capital expenditures and increased labor, this vast budget would appear to be a welcome shift of priorities. It is not. It simply represents a staggering level of kick-backs to government decision-makers and implementers. This is hardly news in Pondicherry – or anywhere else in India, for that matter – where publicly funded projects are determined by the lucre of the graft rather than any measure of social utility.

Eventually Shuddham would be replaced, by Kivar – operating in a “public-private partnership” with the government, the only practical effect of which is to externalize and subsidize many of the costs of operations by, for example, providing the contractor with scores of valuable properties to use for equipment storage, local transfer stations, offices, and other things. But when news of the contract became public in late-December, Kivar was nowhere close to being ready to commence operations. “We have a three-phase plan,” Kivar’s head of operations in Pondicherry told me. I asked of what those phases consisted. “I cannot tell you,” he replied, as though it were some official state secret. When will you be ready to start work in the French Town? “I am not permitted to say.” What are your objectives for this contract? What specific things do you hope to achieve? “Clean and green Pondicherry,” he replied as if by rote. That is a tired, old slogan; I don’t want to know your slogans; tell us specifically what you hope to achieve and how you plan to accomplish it. “Clean and green Pondicherry only.”

The thing that pushed Shuddham into its New Year’s termination in the face of inevitable, but not immediate replacement was something I’ve written about previously: the chronic failure of the Pondicherry government to pay Shuddham for its work. By year’s end, the government was more than four months in arrears in its payments – not just to Shuddham, but to many other contractors as well. The problem is always more acute with Shuddham since, unlike the for-profit contractors, it does not pay bribes to local officials to expedite the payment on its contract. It is also far less tenable.

Shuddham is the only waste contractor in Pondicherry who, when its contract goes unpaid by the government for months at a time, continues to pay its workers. Other contractors tell their workers, We have not been paid – what can we do? The women who sweep the streets and collect the trash are then forced to borrow from their village money lenders at exorbitant rates of interest, just to meet their basic needs. While the failure of the contractors to support their workers is shameful, more shameful still is the conduct of the government, whose cavalier attitude toward payment places an enormous burden on those least responsible for the situation, least empowered to do anything about it, and least able to afford it. By contrast, Shuddham members have taken loans for tens of lakhs of rupees to ensure that it’s workers were paid without interruption.

At times in past years, arrears on Shuddham’s contract has reached as much as nine months, sometimes resulting from budgeting failures of the local administration, sometimes because some official or other simply refused to believe that Shuddham would not pay kick-backs and was convinced that, if they simply withheld payment for a little longer, Shuddham would acquiesce. In every instance, this was a miscalculation; but Shuddham bore the burden of the corrupt miscalculation.

By the close of December, the situation was once again intolerable. This time, Shuddham took the decision to cease operations. Here is the letter Shuddham sent to the Chairperson and Commissioner of the Pondicherry Municipality:

31 December 2010

Chairperson Smt. B. Sridevi
Commissioner K.T. Azhalagiri
Pondicherry Municipality

RE: Suspension of Work

Dear Madame and Sir:

After months of working conscientiously without payment from the government on our contracts, Shuddham regrets to inform you that we are forced to suspend all street sweeping and trash collection activities in the Raj Bhavan ward, effective immediately. We simply cannot afford to provide further services without the government meeting its financial obligations.

The injustice of our situation is well-known to all concerned and has been the subject of innumerable meetings and correspondence. Our grievances include:

1. Although we have a work order extending through March of 2011, the sanction orders for two of our contracts (for 24 hours of cleaning of the Beach Road and 8 hours of daily sweeping, collection, and processing) expired and have not been renewed since September 2010. We are therefore unable to submit invoices or receive payments.

2. We have not been given sanction orders for our night sweeping contract since February 2010.

3. Agreed allotments on unpaid tractor loads, incurred between March 2010 and August 2010, remain unpaid.

The previous Commissioner expressly confirmed these obligations, in person and in writing. Promises of immediate payment have been made repeatedly. Still, no sanction orders have been issued.

The municipality has enjoyed a special relationship with Shuddham for eight years. We have worked as an all-volunteer NGO – not a for-profit contractor – to keep the streets of the Raj Bhavan spotless and create a model of integrated waste management that has been the sole source of recycling excellence in all of Pondicherry. Unlike other municipal contractors, when the
government fails to pay Shuddham, our members have always borrowed funds to ensure that our workers received their payments. This is a burden we cannot continue to carry.

We are ready and willing to resume our street cleaning and trash collection work – but we are simply not able to do so until the sanction orders have been issued and back payments have been received. We regret that the failure of the government to meet its obligations to us will create hardship for the households, businesses, and institutions we serve; but the matter is not
within our control.

Very truly yours,

Bhupi Maru
President

One week on, Shuddham’s work stoppage is having profound effects in the business sections and public areas throughout the Raj Bhavan Ward. But one heartening sign that Shuddham’s eight years of work were not in vain, is the fact that the neighborhood streets remain remarkably spotless. As one resident told me, “After years of feeling we were making a difference by segregating our wastage for recycling and composting, how can we now go back to simply throwing it onto the streets?”

For eight years, the volunteers and staff of Shuddham represented the single bright-spot in Pondicherry’s otherwise careless and corrupt approach to solid waste management. The new big-money strategy takes government corruption to new levels of excellence. We are hopeful that the expenditures might also result in zero-waste systems continuing to be implemented in the Raj Bhavan and that these more sustainable practices might be introduced in the areas of the city where Shuddham was not previously operating.

Hopeful, but not optimistic.

My new years eve was just as I prefer it: quiet, relaxed, with great food and great friends – a dinner party and sleep-over in the lovely forest township of Auroville.

At some point before dinner, my friends and I visited the Pavillion of Tibetan Culture, within Auroville’s International Zone. In my jaded experience, it is seldom less than nauseating to combine Tibetans and Western spiritual seekers – through no fault of the Tibetans. The scene at the Tibetan Pavillion, however, was perfectly wonderful. A thousand diyas and paper lanterns had been lit, and people sat in stillness or walked quietly through the compound. A cleanly, modestly amplified soundtrack alternated between throat chanting and simply rendered devotional music. If the feel of the event was here-and-there, in one-participant-or-another too ostentatiously and self-consciously reverent for my taste, the overwhelming mood was of simple serenity and gratitude – both superb attitudes with which to bring in the new year.

Check out Auroville’s video glimpse of last year’s event.

It’s time for traditionalists to face facts: turkey is a pretty lousy item of poultry. That it became the standard for the Thanksgiving celebration is, of course, a function of the mythologized first pilgrim and native dinner date (no kiss, marriage of convenience, later ending in a messy divorce) in 1621, Plymouth Colony. Turkeys were one of the principal comestibles mentioned in the account of Plymouth Governor, William Bradford. But he also listed waterfowl, venison, fish, lobster, and clams on that first menu – all of which are way tastier than turkey.

So why has turkey persisted as the Thanksgiving mainstay? Undoubtedly because it is big enough to feed an army of poorly mannered relatives and is relatively cheap. Scalability of domesticated production is also a key consideration. Turkeys can be easily and economically (if rarely ethically) raised, slaughtered, and frozen in order that whole countries – first Canada, in October, then the U.S., in November – can sit down to essentially the same meal at the same time.

A week of post-partum Turkey sandwiches may, to many minds, offer compelling justification for doing the bird. Perhaps. But if a turkey sandwich is good, a roast chicken sandwich is still better; it just doesn’t come to mind as readily. Why? Because chicken is delicious enough (and appropriately sized) to devour at the first sitting, leaving far fewer such leftover opportunities.

My mother would add another factor in favor of the turkey. She thinks there is a thrilling, primal culinary drama when such a large bird is roasted essentially intact. I challenge this rationalization. Only those in the kitchen generally get to appreciate the bird in its complete, golden majesty – and, then, only for the brief period between emergence from the oven and the point at which it has rested sufficiently to be carved. Or should I say, “hacked.” Despite the fact that carving a turkey is about the simplest thing one can do with a knife and a bird, most people manage to make quite a mess of it. And there is nothing dramatic about a hacked-up turkey carcass – unless you are a compassionate vegetarian, in which case it is absolutely the wrong kind of drama.

My preferred approach to preparing the Thanksgiving bird would be to roast a chicken and pretend the “turkey” shrunk in the oven. When tradition prevails and prevarication won’t fly – as on, say, a day when we are supposed to be expressing gratitude for the beauty of life and the bounty of the earth – I take an approach to turkey that fully abnegates my mother’s delight in its roasted wholeness. I reduce the turkey to pieces before anyone has a chance to see it.

The basic concept for my preparation comes from a piece published several years ago by the fabulous Mark Bittman in his New York Times column, The Minimalist. Bittman argued that roasting a whole turkey is not only a waste of time (four hours or more for a large bird), it is almost guaranteed to produce a crappy meal. Since breast meat cooks in a fraction of the time required for the legs – not to mention the stuffing in the body cavities, which is actually the good part of the thanksgiving meal – it is invariably dry and tasteless. Braising the meat allows each part to be cooked according to its individual needs.

Bittman’s recipe involves braising some veggies along with the bird; but it does not really address the full-blown Thanksgiving context, which requires a dressing (stuffing) and gravy that are directly influenced by preparation of the meat. What follows is my adaptation of Bittman’s Braising technique to the traditional Thanksgiving menu.

But I’ve done one more thing, which you might find useful. I’ve placed the methodology within a chronology, so that even the least coordinated cook can turn-out all the components of the dinner on-time and well synchronized. My objective was to demonstrate that one can shop for Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving morning and still comfortably have it on the table by dinnertime. My approach makes for a very simple, fast, relaxed Thanksgiving Day preparation. There is plenty of time to create the other dishes – say, cranberry relish, sautéed Brussels sprouts, cornbread, and, of course, mashed potatoes – even if you don’t start cooking until noon. Not only is this the best damned turkey you’ve ever eaten, it is the easiest.

So give thanks this Thanksgiving to Mark Bittman for suggesting braising, rather than roasting your turkey.

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Braised Turkey and Stuffing for Thanksgiving Dinner

INGREDIENTS

The Bird
1 turkey, cut into 6 pieces: breasts, thigh+drumsticks, wings

Brining Solution
1-½ liters water
½ cup sea salt
½ cup brown sugar

Stock for Braising Liquid and Gravy
Bones, wing-tips, and giblets from turkey
Chicken bones (if you have any in the freezer)
Water
½ yellow onion
2 cloves garlic
2-3 celery stalks
Water from rehydrating the shiitakes
Carrot
Bay leaf

Stuffing Stuff: this year’s version – but make whatever dressing strikes your fancy at the moment.
1 large yellow onion, diced
½ kg white or crimini mushrooms, sliced and oven roasted with olive oil and fresh sage
Handful of dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and chopped
½ kg celery sticks, chopped
1 can water chestnuts, chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
250 g of pork products: ground pork, sausages (de-cased and crumbled), pancetta (chopped small), or some combination
Fresh bread crumbs from a medium boule of good bread
2 eggs
500 ml cream, plus or minus
A bit of the braising liquid
Tarragon
Parsley
Salt
Pepper

Gravy
100 ml Cognac
Stock plus residual braising liquid
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 T flour
250 ml cream

PREPARATION

1. Break-down the bird. Cut the meat off the bird using standard technique, leaving the thighs attached to the legs, removing the breast meat from the bone, and cutting the tips from the wings. Go ahead and separate the back-bone and hack-up the rest of the carcass now, because you are going to use it to make the stock. Likewise, reserve the giblets for the same purpose.

2. Brine the bird. Soak the bird parts, refrigerated, in the brine solution for 4 to 5 hours.

3. Prepare stock. You have the turkey carcass from breaking-down the bird; but adding chicken carcass will improve things greatly. First, the extra bones mean more flavor for the stock. More importantly, the worst chicken tastes way better than the best turkey (which, incidentally, you are about to make). Brown the bones and the giblets in olive oil. Add the rest and simmer-away for a few hours. Then strain and reserve. This will be the liquid you use for braising as well as for your gravy; so, make enough. With two sets of bones, you should be able to deliver more than enough rich broth in a few hours. Chill to skim the surface fat.

4. Mise en place. Prepare all the stuffing veggies and pork products.

5. Start Stuffing. Mix together the bread crumbs, egg+cream mixture, tarragon, parsley, salt, and pepper in a large mixing bowl. Yes, you need to taste the mixture to properly season it – so don’t be a sissy about the little bit of raw egg in there. You’ll survive. You always have.

6. Warm oven. Preheat to 350º F (175º C).

7. Roast the mushrooms. Arrange the slice ‘shrooms on a roasting pan, sprinkle with chopped sage, and drizzle with olive oil. Roast at 350º F (175ºC) for, say, 15 minutes or so. This dehydrates the mushrooms slightly and significantly deepens the flavor.

8. Brown baby brown! Brown the pork products in olive oil and remove. Next, brown the thighs+legs and wings in olive oil, getting good color on the skin side before flipping to brown the exposed side. Finally, brown the breast meat; again, skin-side first, then the flip-side.

9. Prepare big-ass roasting pan. Sauté the onions in olive oil, adding-in the celery, both kinds of mushrooms, water chestnuts, and pork products. When these are ready, set the thighs+legs and wings, skin-side up in the pan. Add the stock as braising liquid to about half-way up the turkey parts. Do not add the breasts yet. If you are too busy to read ahead, then just trust me and keep these in reserve for the time being.

10. Braise baby braise! Roast for 2 hours at 300º F (150ºC).

11. Reconfigure big-ass roasting pan. Remove the thighs+legs and wings from the pan. (They can keep the breast meat company for the moment.) With a slotted spoon, remove all the veggies and pork bits from the braising liquid, add to the bread crumb mixture, and mix. This is your stuffing. If it is too dry, add more cream or some of the braising liquid or both. If it is too moist, no big deal. Check again for seasoning. Pour the remaining braising liquid into your reserved stock, bolstering the gravy-makings. Next, put the stuffing into the big-ass roasting pan. Place all the turkey parts, including the breast meat, skin-side up on top of the stuffing.

12. Braise baby braise! Pop the stuffing and turkey back into the oven for 30 minutes, no more, at 350º F (175º C) to finish the thighs+legs and to cook the breast meat.

13. Rest the meat, brown the stuffing. Take out the meat and let it rest for 10 minutes, and pop the stuffing back into the oven to brown during this time.

14. Make the gravy. While the meat is resting and the stuffing browning, make the gravy. Reheat the pan in which you browned the meat. When it is hot, deglaze the pan with the cognac. Add the stock and thyme, and bring to a hard boil. Reduce for until the breasts are sliced and ready to serve. Whisk-in the cream+flour pseudo-roux to thicken.

15. Slice the breast meat.

16. Eat the best damned turkey you’ve ever tasted.

CHRONOLOGY

Total lead-time on this method is 7 or 8 hours, depending on brining time. It takes 5 minutes to break-down the bird. Brining runs 4 to 5 hours. You need to start the stock at least a couple hours before the cooking begins in earnest, which involves less than 10 minutes of prep. The prep time for everything else is perhaps 20 minutes. The cooking and interim prep steps will take about three hours. The timeline looks something like this:

Noon: Break-down bird and brine the parts. (1,2)

By 2:00 pm: Start stock. (3)

By 3:00 pm: Start mis en place, roast mushrooms, and start stuffing. (4-7)

By 4:00 pm: Complete stock (3)

4:00 pm: Start browning meat and sautéing veggies. (8)

4:15 pm: Assemble braising configuration and commence roasting the thighs+legs. (9, 10)

6:15 pm: Reconfigure roasting pan with assembled stuffing and all the bird parts. (11)

6:20 pm: Return to oven. (12)

6:50 pm: Remove meat and let rest, brown stuffing, and make gravy. (13, 14)

7:00 pm: Serve dinner. (15, 16)

Among Canada’s most famous treasures is its endless array of ever-astonishing natural landscapes. So, when CBC Radio 2 launched its second annual Great Canadian Song Quest – in which popular musicians from the 13 provinces and territories were commissioned to compose songs commemorating listener-selected roadways in those places – it was a fair bet that the subjects would largely favor broad vistas and open highways. But in Ontario, where the first Song Quest yielded a brilliant homage to Algonquin National Park by Hawksley Workman (“They Left It Wild”), CBC listeners went in another direction. The stretch of road they chose to celebrate was a street in Toronto called Roncesvalles Avenue.

Roncesvalles Avenue is a “Main Street” slice of urban landscape from a time gone by, characterized by small business and handsome single-family dwellings. The neighborhood became home to the wave of Polish immigrants who settled in Toronto after World War II and, though it shows signs of insurgent trendiness, retains its Polish immigrant character. This Song Quest selection eschews the natural beauty of the province in favor of one of Canada’s other great themes: its ongoing experiment in multiculturalism.

It is telling that Canadian radio listeners would select a slice of pavement iconic of the power and success of immigration at a time when ugly nativism is on such open display in the United States and Europe. (Perhaps the American version must be called faux-nativism, since America is fundamentally a country of short-memoried immigrants.) Indeed, the week before Radio 2 unveiled the new Song Quest compositions, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was boldly – and quite accurately – describing her country’s struggle with multiculturalism as ”failed, utterly failed”.

The divergent experiences of Canada and Germany are not an accident. In Canada, the ideals of preserving and enhancing multiculturalism are enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. National, provincial, and local governments actively promote integration and inclusiveness, as well as celebrations of cultural diversity. In Germany, immigration was an ad hoc solution to what was originally perceived as a temporary labor shortage, and its migrant workers were ghettoized, marginalized, and largely excluded from the benefits of citizenship and active participation in the body politic.

Of course, full embrace of multiculturalism in Canada remains elusive. Many communities are still far too homogenous for multiculturalism to be much more than an abstraction; and the truer test of tolerance and empathy is found in a more practical reality. Canada also retains the stains of its hideous colonial transgressions and continues to struggle with American-like urges to rewrite its racial narrative in terms of its trans-Atlantic immigration, patronizing the aboriginal experience and disregarding other immigrations before and since. But the struggle is as important as the elusive resolution. It signals that, despite the inherent challenges, the multicultural ideal is worth fighting for.

There is an interesting wrinkle to this already interesting story. When listener-voting for the Song Quest roads was completed, the artists tapped to compose the songs gave brief interviews about how they planned to approach the assignment on the morning and afternoon pop music shows. The Ontario songwriter was Jully Black – best known, perhaps, for her spirited paean to the candidacy of Barrack Obama, “Running”. When interviewed by Radio 2 Morning host Bob Mackowycz, Ms. Black sounded dumbfounded about what she might write about Roncesvalles Avenue. When Mr. Mackowycz suggested to her that he grew up in that neighborhood, and she should feel free to ask him questions about the spirit of the place, she could only muster the astringent query: “How many people like me do you see there?”

The question bristled with enmity. Ms. Black, who is black, was saying: what is a cool, young, black woman supposed to write about a place where aging white people live? Mr. Mackowycz handled her awkwardly chilly question with grace and the interview concluded. But I didn’t hold out much hope for the song she would write.

When the Song Quest songs were finally played, Ms. Black’s song, “At the Roncies”, was a revelation. Cast in her characteristic bouncy pulse and hooks-a-plenty R&B style, the piece is a true love song. She displays a genuine empathy and affection for the people of Roncesvalles Avenue. Her hip musical sensibility, far from decontextualizing the place, serves as a uniquely effective bridge between two of the cultures that comprise Canada’s mash-up. The lyrics, while far from brilliant, are rendered without any trace of irony or ambivalence.

Ms. Black’s initial reticence about the exoticism of her task melted into a wonderful tribute to Canada’s commitment to multiculturalism. Her work is also a living example of the way in which thoughtfulness, compassion, and decency allow us to find the common humanity in each other and gives us an appreciation for the richness that cultural variegation adds to the fabric of our society. But to see, we must first look.

Listen to “At The Roncies” by Jully Black