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#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

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#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

Mr Ignatious Joseph is an internationally acclaimed designer and entrepreneur and ranks among the foremost shirt designers in luxury menswear industry and easily identifiable thanks to his signature red shoes and impeccable classic style with his own “twist”.

Ignatious Joseph established his shirt company more than two decades ago. After many years in the international hospitality business, he decided to pursue his passion for elegant menswear. Mr Joseph deliberately began to have his shirts made by people who have the tradition and skills needed to make luxury clothing, the small and medium-sized artisanal enterprises, like those in Italy. Ign. Joseph menswear is made by artisans laboring at the junctions of craft and quality materials. The Western peninsulas of Eurasia still inspire gentlemen from Shanghai to St. Petersburg to São Paulo with trends in the composition of distinctive styles. Yet it is the personal touch of Ign Joseph — and a bit of flamboyance—which has done so much to stimulate interest in handicrafts as well as the novel accents which tradition can lend to contemporary elegance.


Passages to India

In 1502, the Portuguese established the first trading centre in what is today’s Karala State.

A native of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), I decided in 2022, five hundred twenty years later, to explore the region. Like many in South Asia I owed my Catholic education to descendants of those first invasions. To expose the threads that still connect the Western markets where my business unfolded to their Eastern sources, my flight led from Frankfurt am Main to Colombo. There again I located in the Portuguese and Dutch traces one knot from which to begin my unravelling pilgrimage.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

If one speaks today of India as a colony, most people will only remember the British. Cinema and literature in English have saturated the imaginations of millions who never knew the struggles for independence. Ghandi is no longer merely a name. It is also a cliché. India had been invaded before the British East India Company planted its standard on the beaches of Madras or Calcutta. If India is a “sub-continent” then the element of the Eurasian landmass from which the invaders came after 1502 is merely a peninsula. The vast complexity of the Indian Union is impossible to summarize. One might as well try to describe that Western peninsula based solely on a history of Belgium. I find it necessary to preface my brief travel report with these historical remarks. The highlights of these passages cannot do justice to the rich fabric anyone will encounter who tries as I did just to follow one path through the curries of the South and the cultures in which they are created, both in the kitchen and the quotidian.

Colombo seaport also had a pivotal role in the ancient spice route. This was the maritime Silk Road linking China with points as far west as East Africa. This colourful city on the Indian Ocean, with its laid-back island ambience, decaying colonial buildings and smattering of modern office blocks, is the perfect place to get a sense of a tropical capital. Still the bustling narrow streets, with tea sellers, hopper makers, merchants, and markets selling exotic (for visitors) foods and drinks makes me feel, not unlike in the Grand Bazar in Istanbul.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

India‘s best, brightest gather in Mumbai — Bombay as it was named when the Portuguese established it — later conveying it to the British crown — to pursue education and careers, clamouring for a piece of the action — to make money. Here is home of some of India’s biggest companies and wealthiest families. In India, unlike many places with fabulous concentrations of wealth the most glamorous celebrities are not far from Asia’s biggest slum and millions of shockingly poor. Miracles waiting (indefinitely) to happen, the homeless, beggars sleep below the world’s most expensive personal residence, as Bollywood stars slip by open sewers in their Rolls-Royces. While not traditional India in the sense of ancient temples and camel bazaars, Mumbai is an icon of India, in all its facets.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

I enjoyed Holy Sunday with an excellent Portuguese /Goa breakfast sitting under coconut trees on the banks of the Chapora River in the shade of Igreja de Santo Antonio (Church of St Anthony) in Siolim, where once Portuguese governors resided. A pot of Darjeeling tee and “pastel de natas”, avocados on toast and eggs sunny side up with mushrooms finished in butter. The pastel de natas is a Lisbon favorite found almost anywhere Portuguese have set foot.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

The Indian Railway has improved in speed, but comfort? I wished for more. I arrived in the city of Mangalore in the state of Karnataka, a city which dates back to 14th century. This city has nearly everything from exotic beaches to an old style seaport. There are majestic mountains nearby. It is also full of ancient buildings, both temples and churches.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

I too have pushing into the melée for a breakfast staple eaten all over Kerala state. Puttu is a cylindrical steamed rice cake cooked in a mould with grated coconut. It’s usually served with kadala curry, a dish of black chickpeas made with shallots, spices and coconut milk. It too can be served with ripe bananas and grated coconut. Appam is a Keralan staple made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk. It’s similar to a thin pancake with crispy edges. Ishtu or stew is a derivative of the European stew and consists of coconut milk, cinnamon, cloves and shallots. The addition of aromatic whole spices, ginger and fresh coconut milk make the vegetable taste more intense. Fresh coconut milk is crucial to give the dish its sweet flavour.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

Madurai is the second largest city in Tamil Nadu. It is also home to more than a million people whose lives gyrate on the banks of the Vaigai River. The waiter proposed. Sir, you must try our fish mango curry! Tea is almost an unavoidable part of breakfast in Kerala. In 1972, the legendary Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa designed the main structures — a series of deeply shaded pavilions and verandas in wood, rough-hewn stone and terra cotta — as the Madurai Club. It reopened in 2009 as the city’s only boutique hotel. The architecture is not unlike what I found in Ceylon.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

There is little in the small seaside town of Tranquebar to draw the standard issue tourist who can find more attractions elsewhere. The apricot tainted Dansborg fort was erected in 1624 to defend the interests of Christian IV. In 1801, the British absorbed Denmark’s Indian claims. It was once world’s second-largest Danish castle. Today it houses an excellent museum and the New Jerusalem Church built in 1718 by the royal Danish missionary Bartholomaeus Ziegenblag. The Zion Church in another surviving Danish establishment inside the fort.

Tranquebar keeps me quite busy.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

Nothing is more French- by reputation at least- than cuisine. Pondicherry is no exception.

A menu déjeuner, prepared by a Frenchman in the kitchen, starts with a Pondichéry crab soup served with coriander foam, followed by roasted fish in sauce bourride, accompanied by anise-flavoured vegetables and creamy potatoes. La Villa‘s luncheon finishes with a coffee ice cream sprinkled with sesame and almonds. However, one has to raise “il tricolore” for a proper coffee.

The excellent lunch was prepared by Chef Monsieur Michel Christmann, and served by le garçon M. Sunilkumar Sahoo. The 19th Century manor intervenes in the day with l’esprit de Marseille.

Chennai (Madras) is a majestic city, once the seat of the British Madras Presidency, the fruit of EIC conquest. Fort St. George is important to Madras’ history. The complex has in its folds, the Secretariat, a museum, St. Mary’s Church — the oldest Anglican church in India. If I am lucky, I may also catch a glimpse of high-profile politicians as they make their way to their majestic offices. That’s what one Rikscha drive told me. One can expect that as the world’s fourth largest urban conglomeration Chennai will supply all manner of gastronomic opportunities. Its elaborate spicy cuisine, with street-side sizzling, hot plate griddling, frenzied lunchtime canteens as well as fine-dining scene are legendary in South Asia. In the heart of jam-packed George Town at Seena Bhai Tiffin Centre, idlis and uttappams, are griddled to perfection with lashings of ghee and chutney for lunch.

#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph
#TravelInFashion: a story about Indian Subcontinents Travel by Mr Ignatious Joseph

Passing through the Gate to India, passing through the last Portuguese Indian colony of Goa, through the curries and curiosities of Southern India, I finished in Chennai and returned to Ceylon, a quieter and more intimate—also less crowded— and smaller knot in the threads holding me and many others between the Bay of Bengal and Bay of Biscay.

To be continued.

07 июня 2023
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