Eat, pray, dance
Hometown Tourist is a weekly series for those who would love to travel this summer but can’t get away. Here’s how to experience the world close to home
The fun starts with a smile and a saucy shrug.
Dance teacher Lopa Sarkar is demonstrating how to move to bhangra music.
High above Jarvis St. in a rented ballet studio, Sarkar takes students through the basics of Punjab’s celebratory dance.
Quick shoulder bounces. Turn a pretend door knob. Bend the knees. Tap the heels. Kick. Turn.
“If you do this at a wedding in high heels, you need to stretch out your calves or else you wake up in the middle of the night with that ‘Kill me now’ pain,” Sarkar warns.
It is easy to immerse yourself in Indian life in the GTA, where the South Asian community numbers 834,000 or 15 per cent of the population.
Learning to dance Bollywood-style, eating Manchurian noodles, growing Punjabi vegetables or finding peace at a Hindu temple — India is closer than you think. Eat Restaurants are a handy portal to India. I’ve been making the journey since high school, when I ate at what was then Haandi in Gerrard India Bazaar and fell hard for cumin and cardamom.
(I also tried my first paan, a spiced tobacco cheek wad I promptly spit out. You may feel differently.)
You can travel the length of the subcontinent via the GTA’s countless options. Udupi Palace serves South Indian dosas on Gerrard St. E. while Indian Roti House near Harbourfront wraps blistering curries in flatbread. Should you require vast quantities, there is Tandoori Flame buffet in Mississauga.
The cream-splashed northern Indian cooking of The Copper Chimney still dominates the scene. But a new crop has sprung up, with stylish dining rooms (Bindia) and fusion dishes (Pukka, Nawab Fusion Grill).
Then there’s Yellow Chilly, an unassuming restaurant on Albion Rd. in Rexdale that specializes in Hakka cuisine, the Chinese food of India. A $6 lunch special might mean crisp pakoras made from peas, broccoli and what seem to be frozen mixed vegetables splashed with a dark sauce of toasted heat. On the side: thin Manchurian noodles interlaced with bean sprouts and julienned carrots in a peppery tangle.
Or you can grow your own Indian vegetables.
Brampton garden centre Humber Nurseries on Hwy. 50 sells lauki (bottle gourd), karela (bitter melon, spikier than the Chinese variety), chappan kaddu (round summer squash) and tulsi, an herb popular in Ayurvedic medicine and Hindu religious rites, says staffer Parm Singh.
Brampton pharmaceutical worker Kulwant Singh Randhawa comes back to replace climbing bitter gourds lost to heavy rain earlier this summer. When they reach finger length, his wife will fry them with onions and masala spices.
“For many generations we were farmers (in the Punjab). Here, we have less land but still try to do it like back home,” says Randhawa. Pray It rises from the shimmering tarmac like a white and gold mirage. The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir stands majestically metres from the thrum of Hwy. 427. The Hindu temple — elaborately carved in India from marble and limestone and shipped to Rexdale in pieces for reassembly on Claireville Dr. — is open daily for visitors.
Doff your shoes (a must) and feel the coolness of polished stone under bare feet. A stairway leads upstairs to the main worship space, where silence is expected and no photography is allowed.
Niches hold colourful statues of gods and gurus with posted explanations. Some worshippers prostrate themselves on the floor, rolling to adjust pocketed cellphones; others stand and clasp hands.
Every surface but the floor is carved; lacy columns rise to a domed ceiling rippling with lotus and geometric patterns. It’s almost too much detail to take in. Pick a focal point and enjoy the peacefulness of the clean white room.
Downstairs, a gift shop sells prayer beads ($1 and up), incense ($2) and fennel toothpaste ($20) made in a BAPS temple in India. The same architecture — stone temple plus intricately carved teak social hall — is duplicated at BAPS sites in Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Back outside in the blazing sun, golden bells atop the domes tinkle in the breeze and the pavers gleam like diamonds. More gods and sages are carved into the exterior of the temple; search online to read the stories of Jambavan, King of the Bears or devoted wife Sati Ansuya. Dance The dancing starts 30 minutes into Dil Dhadakne Do(Let the Heart Beat) at Albion Cinemas on Albion Rd., the largest South Asian movie theatre in the GTA.
The three-hour, subtitled comedy is about a dysfunctional Punjabi family on a Mediterranean cruise, as narrated by a dog.
Because it is a Bollywood film, there are numerous dance sequences, from a Jazz Age routine to a rousing bhangra-inspired finale that has me bouncing in my seat. I go home and Google “Bollywood dance class Toronto.”
This is how I meet Lopa Sarkar, whose dance classes cost $80 for four weeks, covering the choreography to a five-minute song.
“My classes don’t have a lot of Indian people. They’re people who love to travel, who are active, who want to experience life. They don’t care if they’re dancing properly and neither do I,” says Sarkar, who teaches dance performance at Centennial College next month. Her professional Divine Heritage Artistry troop will perform Aug. 8 at the Bollywood Monster Mashup at Mississauga’s Celebration Square, with a routine that incorporates zouk and Latin music. apataki@thestar.ca