Spanish ....on the Fly IV

Madrid is a relatively new city as it was bombed pretty badly during the Civil War but what a city. The average Madrileno seems to be take in sleeping hours well below the recommended daily allowance. Either that or they have the DNA of Owls. You could go out at midnight and see families with kids sauntering their way to restaurants. At 2 AM, the coffee shops and the tapas bars have people jamming themselves in through the windows as though trying to get on the last lifeboat on the Titanic. You know the oft repeated cliché, about how a particular city never sleeps blah blah. Never did it ring truer than in Madrid. Mumbai, Hong Kong, London etc are non starters.

It also has a couple of Museums and depending upon which side of the Art divide you stand on , boasts tons of really pretentious or/and mind blowing art. The Reina Sofia (which has Picasso’s famous La Guernica) boasts 2 floors of modern art including a painting by an artist called Miro, which had just 7 black dots on a huge piece of canvas. People had it surrounded by awe struck expressions staring at it with awe like Class IV students at a copy of Penthouse. Tuhin (always Tuhin) was explaining to me the virtues of visual appeal and surrealistic delineation of imagery. It was good that he did because I decided he was so full of crap that his new name for the day was Mr Huggies (now with soft feel) . Beauty may lie in the eye of the beholder but I and “Art” do not really see eye to eye.

The sins of the Sofia however were washed away by dipping in labyrinths of Prado. The Prado has such an amazing collection of paintings that by the end of the day you are ready to pass by even the Taj Mahal without any change in gait. The problem with imbibing art in such intense, concentrated doses is that it really deadens your senses pretty quickly. Paintings which normally would cause multiple orgasms in eunuchs end up being seen collectively with the passion of a man who has overeaten.

All said and done, it still has Europe’s third most valuable collection after the Louvre and the Hermitage. This is a remarkable feat for a city which was torn apart during the Spanish civil war. Spain, which was a dictatorship till 1972, was savagely fought over in the theatre of a Civil War with Madrid being the stage. Even today there are buildings and places where you see the marks of the battle for Madrid. Bullet scars, dud grenades, etc, I guess it is not so different from Patna after all. After 3 years of war, Franco finally kicked out the monarchy and the socialists and attained power and held on to it with the tenacity of a one armed guy hanging on to a cliff edge. A devout (genuine but misguided) catholic, he was genuinely surprised why people hated him , a problem which thankfully our own CPI(M) leaders are lucky not to have. Till he died, he ruled with absolute power. At the time of his death, Spain was the sick man of Europe. However in the past 30 years , it has caught up with the rest of Europe and today proudly sits at the same table as the West European nations and one of the few European nations that truly believe, the “Euro” is not a four lettered word.

Our Spanish holiday was coming to an end and we were still hunting for the perfect paella. Finally Tuhin found out a place where they made the best paella. He had a knack of finding these “Best” places…all of which would happen to be in Mumbai.

You could show him the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and he would, without hesitating for a moment, that characterises the conversion of sound in to neural impulses, retort

“You moron, I know where they make the World’s best Mona Lisa. It is at HimesBhai in Juhu”

One has little choice in these matters but to follow him for any point in arguing with him just leads you to find the place where they have the world’s best arguments. Eventually, we , I must agree, did end up having a really fantastic paella. Not recommended for the cholesterol watchers, it is in tune keeping up with what I mentioned about the Churros earlier on. The ideal Paella has really fresh sea food which is steamed and the stock is then used to cook the rice together with saffron and other Spanish spices. As a result, it takes time and if you are the impatient, hand wringing, table banging sort of patron at restaurants then you are best advised to refrain from ordering it.
That was a good note to end our Spanish vacation on. As with all vacations, the sign that it has gone on for too long is when you start missing the loudmouth back at the office. Fortunately here, we had Tuhin with us so we never really felt it but I must say I know where the best loudmouth in the world is.