There’s a rumour that
the monsoons are going to be ‘very cold’. Last December, Goa had a real
‘winter’. Goenkars claimed even their didn’t work in such conditions, and as
for their efficiency (the staff’s, not the watches’), floods, rains,
earthquakes have never stopped them from cooking their xeet kodi, but a
temperature drop? That was something else. Goenkars are a warm lot. Anything
less than twenty degrees decreases their ability to think, and motivates them
to do anything but work. You need to sweat to work here, not the other way
around.
Colleagues tell me last
winter the lowest temperature was ‘eight point five degrees Celsius’; that
takes me back to Srinagar. Every evening, we lit a candle at dinner time. The
voltage, whenever we had electricity, made every 100 watt bulb look like it’d
come from the hinterlands of Bihar or U. P., looking for rozgaar. Gloomy and cheerless. The coal-heater, known as a bukhari, if you didn’t feed and nurture
it well, simple killed you off with odourless, colourless carbon monoxide. The
coal that had to be used came in the form of a single large lump of rock
weighing some fifteen kilos (government ration stuff) which had to be dragged
half a kilometer from the main road where the bus dropped my husband off. We’d
sit together, me cooking on our solitary kerosene wick-stove and keeping an eye
on the toddler, the husband systematically breaking to manageable bits the lump
that would be used as fuel to warm us. Much of those lumps crumbled to powder
that, when the bukhari belched out
the smoke, added a daily layer of soot to the already very black walls. The
ceiling was low, the windows didn’t seal, and small clouds of angry mosquitoes
would attack us. Once their bellies were full, they’d go to the ceiling to rest
before the next sortie. That’s when we could smack them dead with a chappal.
Over the season, there were plenty of footprints up on the sooty ceiling.
My Goan blood never got
used to winders. “Banihal bandh hai”
meant the markets were empty. Our gracious landlady gave us a portion of her
stored vegetables. Like we dry bombils,
bangda and shark for the monsoon months, the Kashmiris dry slices of
brinjals, gourds and other vegetables, and stock them in ‘garlands’ for the
lean season.
The worst days were when the minimum and
maximum hovered around zero, and the snow turned to gooey slush. One had to
allow the tap to drip a bit through the night so that the water in the pipes
wouldn’t freeze. Otherwise the expansion caused by the solidifying liquid burst
them.
We lived in Punjab
through its curfew years. The cheery sight of stretches of golden mustard
fields did nothing to dispel the ache in the bones. I remember the washing
lying out at night, stiff and white with frost next morning; the husband
removing his helmet to reveal specks of tiny icicles on the brows and
lashes.
In the uttar-most part of Uttar Pradesh, it’s
the season of abundance. A strong memory is of a neighbour stopping our car,
standing in the middle of the road, her arms laden with leafy vegetables,
forcing us to accept them, whether or not we could consume them. “Give them to
your favourite charity,” she said, “Mine doesn’t want any more of these.
They’re happier with their dal-kaanji.”
Rajasthan is cruelly
cold at night, but the daytimes are kind and pleasant. Nevertheless, the
candle-lit dinners were a necessity, the reason being no electricity, not
romance. Down south, the Tamilians lived simple lives because their climate
allowed it, we thought. One could live on fewer clothes, lighter meals. We were
wrong. The day we arrived in Wellington, near Ooty, (it’s something to do with
my behaviour in my pichla janam, for
wherever I go, I welcome the coldest season in forty years), the dew poured
like it was rain, and the temperature was below eight point five.
A recent tv show that
I’d seen told me about the rough time the locals in the north eastern states
have in winters. My sympathy stretched to the men in uniform, our soldiers at
high altitude, in desperate conditions, fighting for their lives, for the
country, for our freedom of speech and activity, … and as I write this article,
for a fair deal in the VI Pay Commission…keeping themselves warm with whatever
sub-standard equipment our politicians have doled out. Every candle-lit dinner that
I have, I think of them, in that miserable cold, forgotten by an ungrateful
country. Those who’ve retired after having served the nation are mostly living
in the villages, dependent on their grandchildren, worrying about their
pensions. Do we care? Do we know how many Goan soldiers are living thus? They
have brought glory and honour to the state. We need to support them in their
quest for a fair pension. This is a country-wide movement that’s happening. Let
Goans take the lead in it.
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