I was always dissatisfied with my early attempts to map pathways of motion on Janpath Lane. There were simply too many possible pathways, and chaos theory seemed a more appropriate approach than cartography. And so I re-approached the map by looking at areas of flow.

A banana leaf is a plate in Bangalore. The image above left shows a Ghandibazaar plate maker producing and selling leafenware on the street. The waste products of his production are eaten by noshing cows. This is 'everything but the squeal' vegetarian-style.

But Delhi is far far away from the banana climes of the South and an artificial banana leaf plate seems to be a logical substitute. This fabric photoshop job was doing duty as a placemat at drinking club, the Standard, at CP before we procured it from the owners for the culiblog and Nomadic Banquet packaging archive.

Faithful readers of the weblog, culiblog are familiar with the entry just a few weeks ago of the pepesan sans pep dish, wrapped in bamboo leaves. I am curious about whether bamboo leaves bought at a Chinese supermarket in Amsterdam, imported from somewhere deep in the guts of PRChina qualify as ecologically sound plate choices, but I would like to hear from someone with a strong opinion - or better yet - some actual knowledge on this subject.

Q1: Is a one-use banana leaf plate a more sustainable choice than a ceramic plate in a place where banana trees are harvested?

Q2: Is a pack of dried bamboo leaves a more ecologically sound dinner party option than ceramic plates when the bamboo leaves are imported from PRChina and the dinner party is in the Netherlands? or Occitania?

Q3: Is a re-usable (maybe 100 times) fabric plate more ecological than a ceramic plate if the fabric plate is produced locally? (The plate can be rinsed in soapy water and rinsed clean.)

Q4: Are recycled paper plates like the ones shown in this culiblog entry or the tetra-pak plates more ecological than the different sorts of leaf plates if all of the materials come from local sources?

Pictured above are images of leaf plate and other vegetable (and non-veg) trash on the streets of Delhi.

How does one calculate the sustainability of a given object? Ceramic or stainless steel plates are produced under industrial conditions, raw materials possibly imported, packaging distribution all factor in. Imported dried bamboo leaves do quite a lot of travelling. Banana leaves seem ecological (if locally grown) but what are the conditions of the banana plantation and how are the leaves harvested? And what if you already own some plates? And what if you live in the city and don't have a compost pile or animals with four stomaches roaming the streets?

At an 'Andhra-style' restaurant in Bangalore we ate from real banana leaves. It took some getting used to getting a technique together that worked for this sort of wet food.

Self-service > enable sharing. We all have needs to share stuff. Power drills are used for 10 minutes during their lifetime; cars are used for a few minutes a day; the result is huge inefficiencies in consumption. "The notion of sharing material resources is just exploding," particularly in Europe. People are designing sharing systems for space, equipment, time, services.

Sharing knowledge is also a big thing: Deborah Solomon's Nomadic Banquet (organized for Doors of Perception 8) gave people a chance to share inside knowledge about street food. They expected it to be a cellphone, Zagat's guide online kind of thing; but there are all kinds of social and cultural sensibilities surrounding street food that couldn't be accommodated by the technology. It turned out to involve issues natural resource allocation, distribution, packaging, storage, displays, streetscape, etc., etc..

Wonderful isn't it? Even though the IFTF spelled my name incorrectly.

In Dutch we have a saying, doorheen bijten that means literally 'to bite through something'. We use this saying to describe the painful process of exploring unchartered territory. Think for just a moment about what could have motivated someone to invent such an idiom. Now, think about the circumstances that would have caused an entire culture to embrace this idiom enough to use it regularly!

The images above show the author about to take her first bite of paan without any idea what paan could possibly smell, taste or feel like. It is quite strange to try something with very little previous reference, and having never tried chewing tobacco paan was unchartered territory for me.

In a neat little kiosk by the side of the road the paan wallah prepared the leaf for me with all manner of goos, crystals, flakes, shavings and sprinkles - none of which seemed familiar. Although I would like to say that I bravely put the roll into my mouth and enthusiastically started chomping away, the photograph above reveals the utter lack of trust and relax I had in approaching this new foodstuff. You can also see how such an utter lack of trust and relax does not yield a particularly aesthetic portrait. Good news is that as I reported earlier, paan is delicious, something like eating granola perfume. And like the photograph that I keep of myself in the freezer to remind me of what I looked like in a bikini in 1998 (to avoid over-consumption of ice-cream), I have decided to keep this picture at hand to remind myself to be more trusting of new foods.

A water bar on a sidestreet off Janpath. 20 metres down the street is a pump and a well. This was actually just a service on offer to draw customers into a shop selling Kashmiri handicrafts and other small shops hidden from the street. I love the pavillion shared by several shop keepers and the water bar because it offers a place for shopkeepers to gather and chat in the shade.

During our travel in India we mostly bought "prepacked" fruits. Those fruits with "skin" to peel, such as bananas, papayas, mandarins and oranges, strongly keep their virginity and hygiene.

The Social Innovation Salon part of the Doors8 INFRA conference is being built-up. Nomadic Banquet is one of the pre-conference workshops represented in what is supposed to be a poster presentation deep in the guts of the Habitat Centre. Even before the official start of the 'salon', visitors can be seen roaming around the 'stands', trying to glean bits of what went on the week before the conference started.

One of the pariticpant groups of the NomBanq workshop was responsible for the look and feel of our presentation at the Social Innovation Salon (SIS).They gathered and printed images from all of the Nom Banq focus groups (Experience, Mapping, Economy/Value) and served-up them up in the leaf and repurposed paper plates in which the street food is often served. Stacks became books with as many staples as one can use. The dhurries and mats as well as the 'protest style' banners were displayed as well. Here one sees the building up process of the SIS.

A composite picture of the workshop headquarters with participants (from l to r) Pratima, Maria, Julian, Kanu, Surbhi, Kannika, Sanjeev, Deepika. Click further for participants shots.

timewise: he is sitting at this spot since 1984, 21 years, every day, 7 days a week
moneywise: paratha stuffed w/herbs - 4 Rs each, paratha stuffed w/eggs - 8 rs each
packagingwise: parathas are served on sheets of newspaper (sometimes the financial section!)

The pre-conference workshop began on Friday. After a morning introduction, the participants took a street food tour of Old Delhi. Today the workshop participants split into smaller groups to focus on particular projects having to do with topics such as experience, economy/value, skin/appearance, mapping, etc.

The workshop participants (besides those from DAI) are: Priyanka Dilip, Deepika Arora, Kanika Sachdera, Kanu Priya, Surbhi Singhal, Michael Coburn, Pratima Kalmadi, A.V. Varghese, Vaibhav, John Vijay Abraham, Sanjeev Shankar. They hail from the following academies and universities: Pearl Academy (New Delhi), NIFT (New Delhi), Shrishti (Bangalore), IIT Bombay, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

The street food vendors are an essential component of the architecture of Delhi, not just in terms of their physical structure or physical placement, but in terms of how they engage in, create, and facilitate movement, and how they create or maintain paths.

just below our street (jantar mantarroad) is a square(village green) with all kind of streetvenders.

Celebrate the banner deal.
When I picked up the banners, I had to wait a for a while and sit together with the neighbours of the painter.
This was where meeting point after work were the drunk beer and I had to drink with them beer mixed with whiskey, terrible.