01/09/2021
✍🏽 Things I Learnt Travelling To Parts Unknown, No Reservation In Lockdown 2020-2021, Without Watching Roadrunner |
Once upon a time, cable TV and TLC brought home a tall, lean, cheeky conversationalist with grey hair, pierced ear and tattoos, who travelled around the world in a way no one seemed to be doing at the time—taking you beyond city lights and juggernaut of ideas you held close to your heart about people and places you had never met, or seen. Writer, storyteller, director, chef, journalist, ethnographer, philosopher, philanthropist, kind-of anarchist, as ‘Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations’ unfolded on Television, way, way back on Travel and Living Channel in 2010, I was hooked, lock, stock, and too-many-travel barrels deep into Tony’s World.
With ‘Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, (‘Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations’ [aired from 2005-2012] in a big-budget CNN avatar), spread over 10 seasons, from 2013- 2018, interspersed generously with music that was telling, visuals that were laboriously filmed and craftily articulated on screen, Anthony Bourdain continually dismantled the distant and aspirational romanticism with travelling to foreign lands. He democratised it, succinctly editing each episode into 41 minutes of incredible heart, soul, politics, society, culture, and hyper localism for the tube.
He was unfiltered and unabashed, journaling his tryst with a vulnerability, that made him far more relatable, than any social media influencer, worth their follower currency. Bourdain never tip-toed around polarising representations of local customs he was a part of, travelling around the world, allowing the lens and his observations to take centre stage. The more you watched, the more you learned. Through the universal language of food, he broke down limiting notions of origins. He made it simple to understand the cardinal rule of humanity: Deep down, we were all, pretty much the same.
That sentiment stayed with me, even at the time of his death, despite the tragedy it was interlaced with. Heartbroken, angry, disappointed, torn, a mixed bag of emotions, up until then, I imagined him to be kind-of-invincible.
Over the years I made my way back to the shows sparingly. Then, 2020 happened. And everything changed. Covid and lockdowns, forced us to return to our roots, in one way or another.
Resigned to a year of insulated living, I continually re-engaged, whole-heartedly, and mind-fully, with Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, putting aside ‘Tony Travel Hour’ to break the monotony of travelling, within the confines of my own home.
Inspiring, kind, and considerate, watching ‘Parts Unknown, No Reservation’, true Bourdain style meant celebrating people, culture, and food, from around the world, without a bite of prejudice or a pinch of judgement.
By his own admission, it wasn’t until his mid-40s, that Tony tasted commercial success. His love of food, however, kindled at an early age, when he tried his first oyster on a fisherman’s boat in France, on a family vacation. After graduating from ‘The Culinary Institute of America’ in 1978, he went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City, with his stint as executive chef at Brassiere Les Halles, based in Manhattan, being his longest. While working the kitchens, he started sending in unsolicited work for publication in the mid-1980s. Between C & D (a literary magazine), published his article on a chef trying to purchase he**in in the Lower East Side.
At 17, he had moved from his childhood home in New Jersey to the seaside town of Provincetown. In the 2014 episode, Massachusetts (Season 4, Episode 7, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown), where Bourdain used his own experiences to talk about the opioid epidemic searing through Western Massachusetts and small towns, across America, he recounts, “It was here, all the way up here, at the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown, Massachusetts, where the pilgrims first landed, and it was where I first landed. 1972, I washed into town with a headful of orange sunshine and a few friends. Provincetown, a wonderland of tolerance, had a long-time tradition of accepting artists, writers, the badly behaved, the gay, the different—it was paradise.” As the episode rolls out, he says, “I left Provincetown with restaurant experience, a suntan, and an ever-deepening relationship with recreational drugs.”
His first book, a culinary mystery, Bone In The Throat, was published in 1995. Although, it wasn’t until 1999 when his piece, ‘Don’t Eat Before Reading This’, which he sent to The New Yorker on the insistence of his mother (a Times copy editor), bagged him a book deal (Kitchen Confidential, Adventures In The Culinary Underbelly, published in 2000), sn*******ng into a successful career as an intrepid traveller, hosting a travel show, fuelled by his curiosity for people and places. A writer and storyteller, Bourdain was multifaceted and inherently multicultural, as evident in the quotable quotes, every episode that has ever come out is littered with. At the core, he was a raconteur who battled personal demons when the credits rolled out, and left us awestruck by what he brought to our screens—precious footage that documented ‘Us’ in an ever-changing world.
And how quickly has the world transformed itself since the episodes were filmed? Too menacingly to keep up with it!
Beirut, back then, was not spiralling into economic collapse, Myanmar wasn’t crippled by Covid-19 and military coup, Taliban hadn’t emerged as a potential ally for Iran, in its effort to allegedly revive its cash-strapped economy. Even though you could sense the weight of the undercurrents, impending doom hadn’t been replaced by doomsday.
Timeless, Tony will always be revered for earnestly putting his heart out, in each episode he filmed, allowing for people and places to direct themselves and find representation as they rode his thought train. It’s been three years since his death, but it doesn’t feel like he ever left. Perhaps, he’s hanging around in spirit, cigarette in hand, rolling his eyes at Morgan Neville for relying on AI, and not trusting his voice enough, or maybe, he is finally at ease at Borneo (you will get the context further into the read), unfettered by all the noise, or even better, he’s finally done with being a roadrunner, and instead, enjoys visiting his loved ones, guiding them in the afterlife.
As it should, when you have spent the better half of a pandemic year, swimming against the tide in a bizarro new millennium, thankful for ‘Tony-Travel-Hour’, because it’s kept you hopeful and sane, you must relive the experience. As a student of life’s unpredictable, unravelling, in its many diabolical and exquisite forms, I know, like me, the people who he met, and the places he visited, will look a lot less like they are now. Yet, one thing is certain, the 250 episodes filmed over 13 years (106 episodes of Parts Unknown and 144 episodes of No Reservations) will continue to stay relevant, as it shall find a new legion of fans, who are acutely aware, of the studious documentation of our histories and living memories.
Sum of parts, here are the things I learnt travelling to parts unknown, no reservations, in lockdown 2020-2021, because of Tony.
Thank you.
I’ll keep you posted on my visitations from my end of the world!
👇🏽
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https://orangekettle.wordpress.com/2021/08/31/things-i-learnt-travelling-to-parts-unknown-no-reservations-in-lockdown-2020-2021-without-watching-roadrunner-thankyoutony/
Once upon a time, cable TV and TLC brought home a tall, lean, cheeky conversationalist with grey hair, pierced ear and tattoos, who travelled around the world in a way no one seemed to be doing at …
