Swapan Seth

This seems to be my winter of content. I mean, who would have expected both of my favourite chefs in the world to publish their memoirs almost simultaneously? And since decency forbids from recommending them one after the other in this column, I am going to touch upon both. Gordon Ramsay, the enfant terrible of treacle has published his hugely readable Humble Pie.

The title of the book is ironic because this man has been doling out humble pie to everyone around him all his life. The book traces Ramsay’s fractured childhood from his demon of a Dad, his heroin-addicted brother and his near alternative career in football.

Ramsay’s memoirs are a must for any person who enjoys great food. If Ramsay has an alter ego, it is most certainly Marco Pierre White, perhaps the only bloke with three Michelins under his apron. Like Ramsay, White too had a childhood spent coping with the loss of his mother. His book — White Slave, captures his rise to the very top of the gastronomic world as he opened one great restaurant after another culminating in Harveys that fetched him two of his stars. Come 1999, White quit the kitchen and got into the restaurant business with legends like Rocco Forte. White Slave will have you eating out of its damn pages.

The ageing Omar Sharif has a charisma that only he can have. And that charisma comes out magnificently in the fantastic French film, Monsieur Ibrahim. The plot of the film is nothing sensational. Pierre Boulanger is an ordinary Jewish teenager with no relationship with either his father or his brother. Just a passing one with the hookers though.

Until of course he hooks up with an Arab shopkeeper called Monsieur Ibrahim, played with panache by Omar Sharif. Soon after having lost his father, Ibrahim becomes mentor to this lad. The film at one level is about the young and the old, but at another subliminal level it is about the Jews and the Arabs. Hugely awarded and amply applauded, Monsieur Ibrahim is nothing but the story of life. Very enjoyable yet poignant.

At the time of the Renaissance, the lute was an instrument of deep significance. A modern day guitar of sorts, it was the instrument of the angels and had a remarkable role to play in court music. The lute is distinctively British — pear-shaped and often made of pine.

Progressively over the years, the lute lost its charm as modern day instrumentation intervened. But it took a British gent called Sting to resurrect the lute and cobble together an album that startles you because it is quite unlike anything that Sting or any other musician has attempted.

But that’s the inspiring bit on the instrumentation. The music that Sting plays is composed by an Elizabethan composer called John Dowland who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Rumour has it that Songs from the Labyrinth is a culmination of Sting’s 25-year-old, almost maniacal obsession with both Dowland and the lute.

The result, ladies and gentlemen, is music that defies categorisation. Are they arias? Clinically speaking, no. Are they classical pieces? In a manner of speaking. I think they are audio artworks. Audio installations. There is history carved all over this city. Re-inventing oneself is every artist’s aspiration. Re-inventing music is God’s very blessing.

Photographs by Rupinder Sharma