Saturday 17 December 2022
Sunday 11 December 2022
Papia Ghoshal’s Solo Tantra Exhibition at London’s Nehru Centre
The Nehru Centre is within walking distance from the deeply spiritual London retreat of Hyde Park, originally bought by King Henry VIII from the Benedictine monks of Westminster Abbey. Across from that park, and down the road from the 18th century Grosvenor Chapel (church), the16th century building situated at West London’s South Audley Street, number eight (acquired by the Government of India in1946) is the de faco Indian cultural wing of the Nehru Centre, engendering displays, performances and screenings of Indian arts and cultures, established in 1992.
It comes as no surprise then that, amidst the innate spirituality of the area, the Indian artist/poet/singer/actress/performer Papia Ghoshal (based in Prague [Czech Republic], London [UK], and Kolkata [India/Bengal]) should frequently choose to have her works, like ‘Gandhi the Practitioner’ which ultimately celebrates the spiritual in humanity, shown at the Nehru Centre, and in that area of London steeped in spirituality.
Over time, Ms Ghoshal has created a fresh ‘language’ with her works, some harness more figurative aspects, like ‘Tantric Practitioners’, some are reflective and enhance our understanding of rural and tribal Indian art, such as ‘Shavia Shaktis’, while Ms Ghoshal constantly edges towards a deeper understanding of ‘the spiritual’ with ‘Tantra the Infinite’, ‘Shuya’ and Cosmic Energies’ all the time bringing her fascinated audience so much closer to the ecstatic with her insightful intimations of the ancient, the mystical, and eventually with Tantric abstraction reaching out to touch, and reflect, ours souls with mystic spiritual love with intimations and allusions of a Sufic/Baul tradition.
Within that aforementioned esteemed gallery, under the watchful eyes of exquisite busts representing Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo, Papia Ghoshal’s artworks, such as her series ‘Tantra Trees’, dig deep into the sacred earth while simultaneously stretching into spiritual heavens fairly scintillated within the enraptured atmosphere of that cultural centre. There to witness her solo exhibition of vibrant, highly personal, yet significantly esoteric Tantric works of art were gathered a coterie of collectors, supporters, friends and art enthusiasts, close friends and art lovers, who were understandably present to be spellbound, intrigued and delighted by Ms Ghoshal’s Tantric works on show. The stage (literally) had been set to welcome artist Papia Ghoshal (aka Papia Das Baul, and a regular at the Centre) to present her solo exhibition of spiritual Tantric paintings, significances and symbology.
Ms Ghoshal, in her artworks, shuns Western nomenclatures such as ‘Modern’ or Contemporary’ art in favour of reaching out past both and forging ahead with Baul inspired sufic Tantra-based visualisations, seen in this solo exhibition as part of the Nehru Centre’s Tantra Festival.
Later there would be performances of Papia Ghoshal’s Baul music, and one fascinating Tantra documentary ‘The Story of Tantra’ from The Czech Republic’s director Viliam Poltikovič, featuring the artist Papia Ghoshal, as well as a group exhibition ‘De-constructing Tantra’.
Wednesday 30 November 2022
Landscapes and Beasts, a Review
According to the exhibition and cultural centre Firstsite, Colchester, England, the exhibition of ‘Denis Wirth-Miller: Landscapes and Beasts’ is on from October 1st 2022 to January 22nd 2023. It “ … follows Firstsite’s critically acclaimed 2021-22 exhibition ‘Life with Art’ – an exhibition which focused on artists of The East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, of which Denis Wirth-Miller and Dickie Chopping were a part and Francis Bacon visited.” That said…
Ever since I’ve returned to my old home town (Colchester, Essex, June 2021), after living almost two decades in Asia, I have found myself discovering a renewed interest in the history of art of the area (England’s East Anglia). Firstsite’s series of exhibitions, including the 2021 exhibition (mentioned above and meticulously researched and put together in combination with Firstsite by Colchester Art Society’s Simon Carter and Melvyn King) have been a great boon to my knowledge acquisition. It has led to me looking closer at those artists who had brought notions of the artistic avant-garde/Modern art to East Anglia’s Colchester (Essex, England) and its environs.
Last year’s exhibition, ‘Life with Art’, concentrated on the founding and running of the Benton End East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, and the diverse young artists who became associated with it. This included Denis Wirth-Miller and his life partner Richard (Dickie) Chopping, both of whom had eventually settled in Wivenhoe after first living in London’s Fitzrovia, Wormingford in Essex and in the old Tudor house of Suffolk’s Benton End, along with other self- exiled young (new) bohemians.
This fresh Firstsite exhibition adds another vital branch to the already existing tree of Benton End and its artistic and exotic fruit. In so doing, the exhibition gives its visitors the opportunity to engage with a larger selection of Denis Wirth-Miller’s work. This new exhibition enables the visitor to look at Wirth-Miller’s work in more detail, and consider the interactions Wirth-Miller had, and in particular with the Irish born, British art bad boy, Francis Bacon a giant in the modern history of British art.
Denis Wirth-Miller (born Dennis Wirthmiller in Folkestone, Kent to a Bavarian father and British mother,1915) has long been an unsung British artist. He died in Colchester’s General Hospital, of vascular dementia, in the October of 2010. His long time partner ‘Dickie’ Chopping had died two years previously, while Wirth-Miller’s friend and sometime mentor, Francis Bacon, had died in 1992. Wirth-Miller and Chopping had met Francis Bacon during their carousing days in London’s Fitzrovia (that nest of literati and the artistically inclined laying between London’s Fitzroy Square and Oxford Street). Whether Wirth-Miller’s lack of continued prominence in the British
art hierarchy was due to his decision to move out from Britain’s wartorn ‘Bohemian’ world of inner-London’s Fitzrovia, along his lifelong partner Dickie Chopping; returning to Chopping’s roots along the Essex/Suffolk border of East Anglia, or not, is a separate issue. The two men’s long time friendship with Francis Bacon, saw the art historical limelight shine on Bacon, casting shadows on artists such as Graham Sutherland (Bacon’s previous mentor) and away from artists such as Wirth-Miller (Bacon’s next partner in art crime).
On entering Colchester’s Firstsite’s ‘Landscapes and Beasts’ exhibition
(curated by James Birch with Firstsite’s Sarah Hall’s support as coordinator),
Bacon’s influence over Wirth-Miller’s artistic style is quickly made evident. In Wirth-Miller’s defense, and before talking further about that exhibition, I need to add a quote from a piece I have previously published (in The Blue Lotus magazine issue 16, pages 40- 55, 2019) about a perceived resonance of Graham Sutherland’s work in that of the early Francis Bacon. Why, will soon become evident.
“Bacon and Sutherland had been friends during the 1940s, with the already well established Sutherland advancing Bacon’s career, and with much painterly cross-fertilisation occurring. This becomes evident in paintings such as Sutherland’s ‘Gorse on Sea Wall’ (1939). It is no wonder then, that those ‘echoes’ occur, passed, as they had been, from Sutherland to Bacon… It is that metamorphosis, that evolving which is the product of freedom of the artist’s mind, freedom to experiment, for the artist to create without fear.” as there are intimations of Graham Sutherland’s style in that of the young Francis Bacon’s work (1940s) later (1950s) Bacon and Wirth- Miller collaborated in the British Wivenhoe studios, now highlighted by the ‘Landscapes and Beasts’ exhibition. True to the exhibition promise, the first images we encounter as we turn to our left (and opposite the very large exhibition lettering) are those of landscapes. Specifically one 1939 painting ‘Stour Valley Landscape’ which is an oil on canvas by Denis Wirth-Miller, and next to it ‘Garden Landscape’ (oil on stucco, 1941).
In a sense, those innovative images wrought by the artist Graham Sutherland, who had risen to be considered one of the elite in modern British art, long haunted both Denis Wirth-Miller and Francis Bacon. With Wirth-Miller it was landscapes recollecting Sutherland’s ‘Grasses Against Dark Sky’ (1963) et al, and perhaps foreshadowing Wirth- Miller’s later return to rural landscapes, post Francis Bacon’s influence on him. On closer examination, works such as Sutherland’s “Green Tree Form’ (1940), might also be seen to predict Bacon’s ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ (1944). The young, ambitious, Francis Bacon had long admired Sutherland’s work, so much so that Bacon wrote of his admiration in a series of letters to Sutherland, reminiscent of the awe in which the young Salvador Dalí had held the older Pablo Picasso. Sutherland’s influence on Bacon and Wirth- Miller is not mentioned at the Firstsite exhibition, only the connections between Francis Bacon and Denis Wirth-Miller.
In the Firstsite exhibition, opposite the aforementioned Wirth-Miller images, is a purple wall divider. On that divider is a brief explanation of the intent of the exhibition, which is to re-present the fifty year friendship between Denis Wirth-Miller and Francis Bacon in the largest exhibition of its kind (to date) featuring the works of Wirth- Miller, interspersed with appropriate images by and of Francis Bacon.
In his volume ‘The Visitor’s Book’ (Constable, 2016) Jon Lys Turner (from whom most of the exhibition’s works have come) talks about the closeness of the relationship which B iller had continued over time. Turner relates that…
“One afternoon in 1949, Wirth-Miller took Bacon to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in order to show him the work of the Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)…The images would have a significant effect on the work of both men over the next five years. After each of the artists’ deaths, copies of Muybridge images were found littered on the ground of both their studios.”
Those works were from Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 book, ‘Animal Locomotion’
(aka ‘An electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal
movements. 1872-1885’), images from which are in a showcase in the Firstsite, 2022, ‘Landscapes and Beasts’ exhibition. In Firstsite’s small catalogue to the Wirth-Miller exhibition, Andrew Wilson, in his essay ‘A Study of the Objectification of the Bestial’, suggests that in Wirth-Miller’s series ‘Dogs in Motion’ (1953-54) “The dog is a moving bodily force, unhesitatingly described but also portraying the evanescence of life: matter and energy that are here one moment and then gone.”
Provoked by those Muybridge plates from ‘Animal Locomotion’, perhaps, but with suggested intimations of Graham Sutherland’s work and that of the Italian ‘Futurist’ Giacomo Balla (in particular his 1912 painting ‘Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio’ - Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash). The depiction of ‘movement’ became a meme resonant in the Bacon/Wirth-Miller (1950s) collaborations, and of Bacon’s images, analogous to those of Sutherland. As Parmenides was wont to say "Ex nihilo nihil fit” (nothing comes from nothing).
Overall, Colchester Firstsite’s exhibition ‘Denis Wirth-Miller: Landscapes and Beasts’, completes its two tasks with aplomb. It does add to existing knowledge about prominent British artists in the East Anglian region, and their relationships with the burgeoning modern British art, as well as charting the relationship between the largely overlooked Denis Wirth-Miller, and the more famous Francis Bacon.
What I took away from that exhibition, was the need for a more permanent exhibition collection which encompasses both of the exhibitions mentioned, and acts as a resource for the further study of modern British Art in the East Anglian region, its links and interconnections as begun with the 2021 ‘Life with Art’ exhibition.
Prague’s annual Indo-Czech Festival 2022
The Durga Puja was held again in Prague this year (2022). The main puja was within Papia Ghoshal’s ‘Gallery’ (part of her atelier/Ankara) uphill from the main town, while other venues (such as TJ Sokol) accommodated an art exhibition, a smaller Durga altar, puja and Indian cultural performances. For those two weeks (in Prague) I was guided into the preparations for the Indian ritual of Durga Puja.
The Hindustan Times suggests that “ This festival is about women’s empowerment, whereby a form of the Mother Goddess, Shakti, incarnates as goddess Durga inculcating the purest power of all the gods to kill the asura (demon) named Mahishasur. While all of this is mythological lore, it also has deep symbolic significance in recent times and will always be relevant,” Essentially the Durga Puja is a celebration of the female through Hindu Goddess Durga and relates to female energy (Shakti).
Through Papia Ghoshal I was welcomed into the vanguard of those preparations. I met the film makers, composers, singers, musicians, and dancers who orbit her. I was also honoured to, very briefly, meet His Excellency Shri Hemant H. Kotalwar (India’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic) Zbraslav’s Mayor (Ing. Zuzana Vejvodová) and Deputy Mayor (Mgr. Michaela Bernardová)
I am apprised that there is a long tradition of erudite Czech Indology. In one article (‘Czechoslovakia and India through the archives’, 2016) Radio Prague International reminded me that…
“The father of Indian studies in Prague was Vincenc Lesný, who, in the first half of the twentieth century, built up the study of Indian languages at the Charles University, along with Moriz Winternitz from Prague’s German University. Lesný and Winternitz were invited to India to lecture at the Visva Bharati University that had been set up by the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Lesný was also responsible for two visits that Tagore paid to Prague in the 1920s.” Subsequently a bust of the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore was created by the contemporary Indian sculptor Gautam Pal, and erected to adorn the Thakurova area of Prague (zone 6).
In the early twentieth century (1920 in fact), a Czechoslovak Consulate had been established in Bombay, then another in Calcutta. Over more recent years Czechoslovakia’s (now the Czech Republic’s) Indian diaspora has continued to grow. The 8th Indo-Czech festival 2022 (organised by artist and Prague resident Papia Ghoshal), had purposely coincided with celebrations of the Hindu goddess ‘Durga’ (fondly called Maa Durga) and the ‘Durga Puja’ (the act of prayer).
The Hindu ritual of ‘Durga Puja’ is a celebration of the Goddess Durga/Shakti (relating to female energy and celebrating the victory of the goddess Durga over the demon king Mahishasura who had threatened the realm of the gods). The internet informs that “…the event is held during the month of Ashwin in the Indian calendar, which correlates to September–October in the Gregorian calendar. Durga Puja is really a ten- day celebration, with the last five days being the most important. The puja is done in both private and public settings, the latter of which includes a temporary stage with llishments (known as pandals)”.
1. Zbraslav
Papia Ghoshal’s Indo-Czech Festival arrangements (in Prague's Zbraslav) had progressed. One Indian Classical dancer (Rajasudha Vinjamuri BCAa), arrived from the UK's Stansted Airport. We briefly spoke about her coming performance at The Ministry of Education's TJ Sokol (the PARKET dance and social Hall) which centred on Goddess Durga, the intricacies of the dance's symbolism and their meanings. We also spoke about some of the 'mudras' (hand gestures) involved in creating her dances and how they are linked to portray 'stories'.
Rajasudha Vinjamuri along with musicians/singers Papia Ghoshal; Shilpi Paul; Pranoy Chatterjee, and Arpan Bhattachary (who, defacto, comprised ‘the troupe’) greeted Shri Hemant H. Kotalwar (India’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic), Ing. Zuzana Vejvodová (Mayor), and Mgr. Michaela Bernardová (Deputy Mayor) to the celebrations.
Ms Ghoshal, who has won many awards for her paintings, film-making, poetry and performances had been responsible for that Indo-Czech Autumn Festival for the past eight years. In an interview, she explained that she had started the celebration (which became the Indo-Czech Autumn Festival, where the Durga Puja is the main highlight), in 2015. At that time there was no discernible Bengali Indian community for such a puja in the Czech Republic
Papia Ghoshal had previously been commissioned by two Puja committees in Kolkata, twice. Once in 2001 and again in 2003, to create Durga sculptures. This was at a time when Ms Ghoshal was still going back and forth to London and Kolkata, six months at a time. Then, as there was no way that she was able to take sculptures over from Kolkata (to Prague), she had made a small Durga statue (Durga Murti Sthapna, establishing a Sarbojanin idol for Durga Puja, made of Ganges clay) in Prague. Over the years, Ms Ghoshal built larger statue formations for the celebration of the Durga Puja.
For Ms Ghoshal, it was an emotional decision to start the Durga Puja Zbraslav, Prague 5. Her guruji (Pandit Baul Samrat Purna Das Baul) had suggested that she initiate a Durga Puja in Prague, as she was then living there. Ms Ghoshal invited Pandit Baul Samrat Purna Das Baul, his son (Bhagavan Das Baul) who is also a Baul singer and musician, his grandson and others to form a Baul group with her expressly for a two city concert called the Guru Shisha Paramparam (or teacher-student tradition). They subsequently performed across Europe, as well as Prague.
In the past few years, the Indo-Czech Autumn Festival had included film festivals as well as the concerts and worship, which have been a large part of that annual event over the eight years of its existence, and Ms Ghoshal’s involvement.
There have been long standing local and international supporters/practitioners of arts who aid that amazing series of events organised by India's Baul singer, performer, dancer, artist and poet Papia Ghoshal, and enabled by the various incarnations of her entourage.
2. Andel
That year’s troupe, who had taken part in the Zbradslav celebrations, were also featured in Andel’s ‘Experience India’ (effectively a street festival in ‘Pesi Zona’ or Pedestrian Zone of Andel, Prague.
In Andel’s pedestrianised area, myriad stalls selling Indian wares (including the obligatory saris) continued the celebration of India’s seventy-five years of independence, for and with its diaspora.
For me Andel, Prague, had been momentarily and instantaneously transformed into my recollection, not of India, but of the ‘British Melas’ which had their origins in good old Blighty, during the 1980s.
According to current wisdom Mela (n) in Sanskrit means ‘to meet’, to ‘gather’, to ‘blend’. For thirty years Indian fairs (or Melas), have inveigled themselves into mainstream British culture, enlightening those not too familiar with Indian culture outside of the Friday night, post- pub Indian (Bangladeshi) curry houses, and delighting those who are familiar and joyous in the sharing.
It was as if a Ryanair’s Boeing 737-800 had become Dr Who’s ‘Tardis’ and whisked me back from the Czech Republic to the British days of yore, with an assortment of Indian cultural celebrations. In the British Indian
melas, dances had been Indian, classical and contemporary while singing ranged from Bollywood to Asian fusion, flavouring which ever British country park they had been set in.
On that pedestrianised street in Prague’s Andel, one Indian stall chose to call itself ‘Indian Street Food’, which had seemed entirely apt at the time, but a closer examination revealed a very Western take on Indian street food with its Pakoras, Samosas and Chicken Tika. Elsewhere on that ‘Indianised’ street was a Masala Dosa Sambar stall, and another selling Idli Sambar, Chicken Biriyani and ‘N rice wrap’ (whatever that was). I confess to loving Dosa (dosai/ Thosa/thosai). It is simply my favourite breakfast. But it wasn’t breakfast time. Although, thankfully, the ‘Balti’ dishes were absent, the beat pulsing Bhangra
rhythms were in evidence. Both the stage and the crowd danced to energetic beats. Indians and non-Indians leapt, strode or gracefully glided on that platform forming the
full-stop to the exclamation mark which the street naturally formed at the side of the Andel shopping area.
The two festivals (the Indo-Czech Autumn Festival and ‘Experience India) were poignant reminders of the marking of ‘Independence’ of India from colonial British rule, but also of the very close ties that the Czech republic has with India and the Indian peoples.
It had been an honour, and an intriguing experience to be there in Bohemia, and
doing what little I could to assist in those two festivals. I learned something of a different way of living. I (quiet literally) ingested more of Indian culture and had met new and exciting friends on that journey. I thank all of those amazing, creative individuals of various nations who had revealed great patience with me as a non-Hindi and non-Czech
speaker.
Saturday 17 September 2022
Mr Bradley's arty day out
There was a ‘pop up’ art exhibition that I really wanted to catch. It was in Wivenhoe, that Essex village and former River Colne (Essex) port, famed for its large number of artistic connections (including Francis Bacon in Queen Street), over a number of decades.
Weather-wise, if I might be permitted an Americanism, it was as pleasant as any mid-September day could be in England. It was dry, bright and with just the tiniest of nips in the air. It was jacket weather, which was fine with me - lots of pockets to carry the necessaries in.
Still having no private vehicle of my own, and loathe to purchase one, means that I have continued to be at the mercy of public transport. If I were a crow, with a mind to fly across an estuary, which I am obviously not, it would have taken me minutes, rather than the hours it took, via buses, to reach Wivenhoe from Mersea Island, where I currently live. That said, it was all well worth the effort.
Not only did I get to see the marvellous ‘Carters’ pop up (available for a limited time only), but two other art exhibitions in Wivenhoe. I found myself chatting to artists and a fascinating bookshop owner during that brief hop to Wivenhoe, and wishing that I lived closer.
In a refurbished old grocery shop called, not unsurprisingly, ‘Old Grocery’ (48 High Street, Wivenhoe), three members of the Carter family put other families to shame with their collective creative output. Simon Carter is, of course, well-known for his East Anglian landscape abstractions in acrylics, his watercolours and charcoal drawings, Ruth Carter for her watercolours, jewellery, craft and batiks while Noah Carter is becoming better known for his videography and his fascinating series of films concerning artists, artists’ studios and their works, as well as his charcoal drawings and watercolours. Samples from all three Carters graced that old shop/new gallery, with a recently discovered wooden easel continuing the studio ambience.
I was particularly impressed by the way that the three individual Carter’s selection of works harmonised together. The entire collection could have been created by one amazing hand, instead of six. With Noah’s films showing on one wall, the various drawings, paintings, craft items, etc., filling the other spaces, rural England and local art was truly brought to life by the Carter’s collective artistry.
Nearby, was Wivenhoe Bookshop, lodged in a 17th century clapboard building for the past forty-four years. Owner Sue Finn kindly let me have a sneak preview of that night’s exhibition opening of Alan Taylor’s work, in ‘art in the shed’, at 23 High Street, Wivenhoe. That evening was to be the launch of James Dodds’ new book ‘Wivenhoe Artists 1946-1986’ (published by Jardine Press, 2022), with Taylor’s paintings and prints billed as ‘his Wivenhoe haunts’, as a talking point. As I am fascinated by local art history, I bought the book while I was there. Okay, I am aware that I am gushing somewhat, but it was that sort of day.
Last but, well you know how it goes, was another ‘pop up’ exhibition hosted, this time, by the Anglian Arts Project (quality arts and crafts from East Anglia). The mixed exhibition was at the Sentinel Gallery, Chapel Road, and accessible by a gravel laid road near to the rail bridge.
Like the ‘Old Grocery’ and not far from it, the Sentinel Gallery is a room about the same size as the former. In that gallery was an impressive array of arts and crafts from across the picturesque, and arty, East Anglia (formerly ‘The Kingdom of the East Angles’ or ‘Regnum Orientalium Anglorum’ in Latin). Amidst the tantalising imagery were intriguing fused glass creations by Cathy Constable, Denise Brown’s charming ceramics and Suffolk artist/printmaker Anne Townshend’s eye-catching linocuts
All this art (and art talk) made me hungry. This led me to grab a vegetarian ‘Baba Ghanouj’ wrap for lunch, washed down with a cup of ‘Flat White’, before playing with buses again. I dined at the incredible Middle Eastern restaurant called ‘The Olive Branch’ (near the train station in Wivenhoe). That eatery was bijou and full, which was obviously a testament to the restaurant’s popularity. The journey back was much better than the journey out, as I had such pleasant memories to cling to.
Friday 1 July 2022
Halia, Food for Thought
I decided to write about Halia, no not the port town of Hermionis, in ancient Argolis at the mouth of the Argolic Gulf, but the freshest Malaysian restaurant in London.
The Halia restaurant was recommended to me by a friend. It only opened in April (2022), and is situated near to where I used to live in Westbourne Grove (near Notting Hill), some half a century ago. Halia, Incidentally, is the Malay word for ginger, and there are 160 species of ginger across Malaysia, which is one of the richest regions for ginger in South East Asia.
These are train-striking days in England. Journeys by train have become risky but, feeling excited about the prospect of sampling this fresh establishment I grabbed the proverbial train by the rail, navigated from my island hermitage, grabbed my Chinese Malaysian foodie partner who is currently studying in London (although I’m not quite sure who is Watson and who is Holmes) and rushed headlong to Bayswater.
There was no strain for the train to take travelling via Great Eastern rail, the London Underground, and following my hungry friend who in turn was following the ubiquitous Google Maps to Bayswater, London, which is anchored beside Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, the Peter Pan statue, Italian Gardens, and the Serpentine River et al.
Once we’d transversed the ‘Tube’ (the nearest ‘Tube’ or London Underground station is Bayswater, but Lancaster Gate is fairly near too) we, or should I really say that Google, found Halia at the rear of Whiteley’s shopping centre (circa 1911, with its La Scala staircase and beautiful glass dome). Halia is secreted away inside the Grand Plaza serviced apartments (which is, incidentally, part of ‘Felda’ or the Malaysian Federal Land Development Authority) and resides at Prince’s square, Bayswater.
And what a good idea that is, to build the prospective diner’s suspense and hone the building excitement of the Malaysian dining experience (that Halia certainly is) so that by the time the diner actually reaches the eatery, and are welcomed into a friendly dining hall reminiscent of the old, downstairs, Malaysia Hall, they are more than ready to dive into what is undoubtedly one of the best Malaysian food dining experiences in London.
There’s a fundamental challenge when opening a Malaysian restaurant outside of Malaysia, and that is in the representation of Malaysian food, of which there is a copious amount from the three major races (Chinese, Indian and Malay) as well as representations from tribal ethic communities.
It’s very difficult to have one restaurant covering such a rich diversity of truly authentic Chinese Malaysian food, alongside authentic Malay food because of the differing ethical/ religious stances. Malay Halal purity does not mix with Chinese cooking and the eating of pork products. This is why many Malaysian restaurants serve Halal compliant food (suitable for Muslims) and adjust their recipes (like Char Kuey Teow which traditionally is flavoured with pork fat) to the exclusion of the non-halal (haram). My favourite Char Kuey Teoh comes not with chicken, but duck egg beaten into the noodle dish, and kerang (cockles), but that’s a whole other story.
Many of London’s Malaysian restaurants serve the more traditional Malay beef soup, such as Sup Ekor (or oxtail soup). The best beef soup I've tasted was when I lived just outside the Malaysian bougainvillaea city of Ipoh. I had built a ‘bungalow’ in a small town called Malim Nawar and would travel in my old Rocsta ‘jeep’, in the evening, to Ipoh and its marvellous street market, with one stall specialising in beef soup. The trick was to get there just before the stall closed as the soup which had been, by then, boiling for several hours, became dense with taste.
My friend and I ordered Nasi Kandar (rice [nasi] with other dishes) and Wan Tan Hor seafood (rice noodles, mixed seafood and served in a thickened sauce). Well, what can I say? Both dishes were as authentic and any of its ilk that I’ve tasted in Malaysia, although in Malaysia you wouldn’t normally get scallops in the Wan Tan Hor (which is a variation on Mee Suah), nor would you get actual fish in the fish curry presented with the Nasi Kandar, so both were very good value in so doing.
As the restaurant is still ‘young’, there remains copious amounts of press interest still, and any day a prospective diner might be visiting may coincide with a videographer or random news hound turning up to spread the word. I’m glad. My only hope is that this restaurant may be able to maintain its current ambiance, and food excellence. It is fine just as it is, with its concentration on good food, served well, by staff who actually seem to enjoy being there.
As Arnold Schwarzenegger says in the 1984 science fiction film ‘The Terminator’, “I’ll be back”. There is so much more on the menu to taste.
Tuesday 21 June 2022
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