Vegetarian Goan Hindu Food.

          Dr Shah couldn’t believe that Goan food could be made without something that has a tail, without onions or garlic. Like the Jain cuisine, Goans too have recipes that are sattvic or fit to be served to the Gods. For some reason, a number of Hindu Gods don’t like non-vegetarian food and for some other inexplicable reason, bulbs that grow underground aren’t considered ‘pure’ because they have ‘life’ in them. But so do sprouts which are relished. In an already complicated social set up, we have sub-complications when it comes to caste, dialects and food. In Goa, Christians add salt to the rice when it’s cooking; Hindus don’t. The former use vinegar to add sourness and tang to a gravy, Hindus prefer tamarind pulp or kokum.

Unless you’re going for a Saraswat food festival or someone’s home, you are unlikely to find these recipes/dishes on any menu.

          First, a raw mango ud-da-methi. Peel a medium sized raw mango, remove the seed, chop into little squares, sprinkle salt over them and keep aside. Finely grind 2 cups grated coconut, 2 tsps chilli powder, ½ tsp turmeric powder, a tbsp. of tamarind paste and 12 peppercorns.  Heat a tbsp. of (preferably coconut) oil till it smokes. Then add a tsp each of mustard seeds, urad dal (split black gram without the skin) and fenugreek (methi) seeds. When the dal turns brown, add a pinch of heeng (asafoetida) and immediately pour into it the ground masala, salt and jaggery to taste, three cups of water and the mango bits. Boil for 3-4 minutes and serve hot with rice.

          Next, a stew called khatkhatem.  Chop into 1-2” pieces and keep ready a cupful of each: red pumpkin, raw papaya, banana, drumstick, raw jackfruit and white radish/turnip, yam (suran, colocasia root). If you have an ingredient or two less, don’t panic, either do without it or replace with something similar. But no cauliflowers, peas, broccoli or carrots. Or cabbages, spinach and the likes. Cook and mash ¼ cup of toor dal. Add to the dal 4 cups of water. First add and cook the hard vegetables: jackfruit, yam and radish. Then add the other vegetables. Cook them with salt until they are soft but retaining their shape.  Whilst they’re cooking, grind together finely 2 and ½ cups grated coconut, a tsp of turmeric, 1 tbsp of chilli powder and some tamarind paste. Lastly, add to this masala  4-5 lightly crushed teffla (this strong smelling spice is commonly used on the west coast and is easily available with hawkers who squat outside markets and in villages). Add a dash of jaggery for sweetness, give it a good boil and stir and serve immediately. This dish is not dry. It goes well with rice/bread/chapatti.

          The third vegetarian dish with no onions, no garlic is a simple one, made with the lowly but tasty and nutritious and easily available red pumpkin. Goa doesn’t celebrate Halloween. The inexpensive pumpkin is unjustly looked down upon. Try this recipe and you’ll see why: take a slice (approx. 300 gms) of bright orange pumpkin, remove its seeds (you can dry them and use elsewhere) and its skin. Cut the flesh into ½” bits, put it in a vessel with a fistful of freshly grated coconut, a tbsp. of finely ground ginger, ½ tsp of crushed jeera (cumin seeds), salt and green chillies to taste and cook it until tender with very little water. Garnish with finely chopped fresh coriander leaves. If you want to convert this into a raita or yoghurt-based salad, beat up a cupful of curd, cool the pumpkin and mix it all up.

          Whoever said Goans can’t, don’t, won’t eat anything that’s plucked hasn’t met my grandmother. Ok, she’s been gone a long time, but my mother and now my cousins and I enjoy our ‘pure’ vegetarian food as much as we relish the fried fish, pork chops and beef steaks (blasphemy that I should even mention this, but truth must prevail) that are often served in our platters.

          So hark ye who believe that the world and humankind will be saved by everyone turning to healthy, vegetarian, vegan, organic food, turn to Goan cuisine, you won’t miss flesh again.

Winter In Goa.

          It’s generally assumed by fellow Sangoldkars that the Man and I are eccentric. We rise pre-dawn to water the plants, a job generally left to the Maker who cares for all creatures big, small and Goan, who has stretched the monsoons over four months and then provided heavy dew for another four, so farmers and plant lovers need to work for approximately a third of the year. Amen.

          One neighbour politely wishes me good morning through chattering teeth, head covered by an acrylic-wool shawl, upper limbs enveloped in two layers of husband’s long-sleeved shirts, brand new canvas shoes firmly on socked (sic, but that’s how we talk hereabouts) feet.  Her hands are folded, fingers tucked into elbow folds. “Bai,” she says by way of conversation. “Cold, no?”

          I’m busy bending, stretching, untangling a kink out of that stiff plastic pipe. Yes, I tell her.

The poder comes along, ‘monkey-cap’ protecting his head from frost and chill. She feels sorry for him and reflects a second “Cold, no?” towards me.

          I stupidly decide to educate her about the temperatures in the Himalayas, Kashmir, the North-East, even neighbouring Belgaum. Blank stare. I tell her about snow. She has her aha moment: she’s seen snow. Her cousin from Canada had come via New York once, bought her a transparent globe with a ‘Statue of Liberty’ inside it, floating in clear fluid. When the globe was shaken, a white substance floated to the statue’s head, and slowly floated to its feet. “Snow,” said my true-blue Goan friend. “I have it in my show-case.”

          I tell her about the extreme conditions our soldiers live in, in Siachen. She tells me how her arthritis improves with a khare udak  dip in the Baga waters in late February. “Our bhangrachey golden soil, the water, all have the most therapeutic effect on these things. The cold-cold waters of the sea at this time of the year make miracles, haan.”

          I decide to educate her. I tell her that the ground is so cold that the soft snow hardens into ice. I know, her eyes tell me; her lips say: “Ice? In my freezer, lots of cubes, but they give us sore throats, so we don’t use them.” Then she added: “But you won’t fall sick, don’t worry, this early morning oxygen is good for health.” Her yoga teacher said so. I begin a debate. What’s wrong with me? Inhalation of early-morning ozone must have created that idiocy. If ozone inhalation for a couple of days can give rise to such idiocy, can you imagine what happens to people who’ve lived here all their lives?

          Anyways, I open my mouth to convince her that there are places colder than Goa. She quickly goes into her house and triumphantly waves a newspaper at me. A headline says something about ‘coldest night in five years’. I shut up.

          I recall a debate with another Goan about use of geysers in the bathrooms and wearing (artificial) leather jackets on motorcycles so that you don’t get the sniffles, sore throat, joint pain, headaches, fever, the runs, etc. That’s not all. Hot milk with sugar and haldi is consumed first thing in the morning, last thing at night. I guess the nausea it gives rise to makes you forget all discomfort due to 17 degrees Celsius. The ladoos made of sesame seeds and jaggery will be made around the festival of sankrant to keep the chill away. (What I like about sankrant are the words accompanying the distribution of the ladoos. In almost literal translation: have these ladoos, speak sweetly to me, don’t fight with me, ever.)  

          Whilst wrapping myself up at bed-time, good Goan that I am, I remember that my offspring brought for me a pair of pretty woollen ‘Santa-shoes’, with white bobs at the ends of the laces, ankle-length and leather-soled. I wear them through the night. My south-west-coast blood is warm and any temperature in the teens reminds me ‘it’s winter’.

          Whichever part of the world you belong to: the cold northern hemisphere or the sunny southern one, happy 2014 everybody.

Turning Vegetarian.

          My friend, Bai Goanna, invited me over for a meal.

          “I’ve turned vegetarian,” I said.

          “Naheee!!” came the instant response, as she raised her chin, shut her eyes and put hand to forehead, palm facing outward, hai-mera-naseeb-style. “Since when? Why? How did this happen? Can’t you postpone it?”

          Bai Goanna couldn’t comprehend why I’d want to change my food habits. “I mean, you’ve always loved animals, and a good steak or fish curry hadn’t diminished your love for them in many years. So what’s gone wrong? Why?”

“No reason. Just like that,” I said. “Took the decision a few days ago. I’d been contemplating going green and unfleshing the food for a while now. Finally I’ve taken the decision and the plunge.”

          Bai Goanna’s brows furrowed further (whether in anxiety or annoyance I couldn’t decipher). After a moment’s silence, came a kind question: “Have you developed some allergies?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Adopted a religious guru?”

“Na-a,” I said, followed in a moment by Shri Husband’s interruption: ‘hahaha’.

“Got some dreaded disease then? Developed an allergy maybe?”

“Still in the pink of health,” I retorted.

“Any sense of guilt?” Bai Goanna like all good friends, was trying to play counsellor. “Or maybe you want a wish to be granted?”

“What’s the connection?” I asked.

“People do that – turn vegetarian-- when they want a spouse/ job/ children. Going to temples is an added bonus.” (At this, there was more ‘hahaha’ from Shri Husband, this time louder and directed at the wall).

Bai Goanna isn’t the kind to give up. More questions followed: “Fully vegetarian? I mean, will you eat fish? Will eggs be ok?”

“Fully vegetarian, anything non-v will not be seen on my plate henceforth,” I confirmed, adding, “unfertilized vegetarian eggs won’t do.”

“Onions?” Bai Goanna is a true-blue Indian, so with ‘strict’ vegetarianism in mind, had progressed to the minutiae.

“Onions are ok, and garlic, too. Sprouts are ok, underground roots and stems are fine, I’m not into extreme vegetarianism yet, just off non-vegetarian foods.”

“What about milk products?”

“They’re fine, I’ll graduate to vegan later, maybe, but for now it’s simple vegetarianism.”

For the next couple of minutes Bai Goanna and I discussed whether the word non-vegetarian was appropriate for someone who ate only vegetables (fruits, pulses and cereals, too, may I add). We also argued whether it was fair to assume that plant didn’t feel pain because they didn’t bleat/moo.  

We talked of prices. Was I going to save a lot? Not really, because vellyo, mannke, prawns, tarley, lepem were cheaper than even onions most days. Was I going to lose calories? Who knew… the more I lost the better, we agreed. Would this change of diet cleanse my system? Some streams of medicine believed so... though just what would be cleaned out and what would remain inside the body was unclear. Would it change my behaviour? Possibly: might make me look longingly at food I liked and promised not to consume.

Discipline, Bai Goanna emphasised, is the key to all weirdness.

Shri Husband, thus far sitting uncharacteristically quiet, eavesdropping nonetheless, butted in: “What about days of the week? Are you going to be extra vegetarian on Mondays and Saturdays? Lenient on Wednesdays and Sundays? Any particular deity you want to appease? Choose menu accordingly.”

Bai Goanna was now both concerned and confused. “This is complicated. I mean, will you avoid eating tamarind and tomatoes on Fridays? What about milk products on Thursdays? Any restriction on rice or wheat? Calling you over for a meal is going to be difficult. I would need to keep a time-table with your dos and don’ts.”

“Not at all,” I replied. “I mean, now all you have to do is chop some leaves, peel a fruit or two and my meal’s done. You could cook up daal-rice to keep the pangs away. Or give me a slice of bread.”

“Yeast-in-bread,” mumbled Shri Husband. “Non-veg or veg? Decide.”

Bai Goanna cut him short: “Don’t carry things to an extreme.” Then, turning to me said: “But for typical Goan spread, I need to put on the table prawns humann or chicken xacuti … with mushrooms it doesn’t taste the same.. and fried fish, no?”

“Try moonga-gathi, alsandey tonnak, jackfruit-seeds cooked dry, raw-bananas with black peas, kismors with crushed papads, sanndge with gourds, khatkhatey, kholmbo, there’s a world of great dishes out there. Come Shravan and the vegetarian goodies simmer in pots.”

“But you love sorportel and vindaloo. If I make those vegetarian, I’ll have to retire from cooking. Think of biryani. The Moghuls took pains to develop that recipe. If you want me to make it with peas and carrots, they’ll turn over in their graves (Moghuls, she meant, not peas and carrots). Worse, we’ll be ruining the history of south-east-Asian sub-continental cuisine.” Help, I thought, where does she derive these long-long words from?

The result of my declaring change of food-preference is that some acquaintances are scouring the net for buttermilk-pancakes and long-forgotten grandmom’s recipes like pumpkin-bharta. Others are asking me whether I had anything to do with eggs going off the mid-day meals scheme in some faraway state (if I had that kind of political influence… if only).

Shri Husband, on the go to have the last word, said after Bai Goanna left: “Where’s the need to advertise your vegetarianism? From what’s put on the table, eat or avoid what you want. Such natak over a simple issue.”

We’re not talking to each other again. Don’t know how long the peace will last.

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A Real Life Adventure Through Facebook.

          I met a young man five years ago on Facebook. It took me that long to hear his voice and see him in flesh. This is the unusual story of a friendship that didn’t concern him, of which he was a conduit at one stage. Complicated? Let me start at the beginning.

          About fifty years ago, I had a penfriend, Asha. We wrote each other letters that travelled across the sub-continent, sharing girlie secrets. As a teenager, she did para-jumping through the NCC and I did mountaineering/rock-climbing and we shared legible, cursive hand-written notes on ‘inlands’, via the Indian Posts and Telegraphs. Each letter took about ten days to reach its destination. We wrote each other at least two letters per month through our school and college years. Other penfriends petered out of my life, but this one remained steady and close for decades.

I grew up in Mumbai, Asha in Orissa. Both of us had a female and a male sibling.

          In all these years, we’d met just once, for a couple of minutes, in Delhi, where our husbands’ transferable jobs had taken us. We raised our children and ran our homes in several corners of India. And we continued, when time permitted, to write to each other, updating what was happening where, when, in our lives. The frequency of our letters had reduced, but the bond remained.

          Came the mobile phone and the internet, and instead of communication getting better, we got disconnected. Our husbands retired, our children flew the coop, we took up jobs and we didn’t know where the other was.

          Five years ago, whilst recovering from a bout of illness, I tried to track her on Facebook by typing in her post-marriage name. No luck. I then typed in her brother’s name. I knew he’d joined the Army. The search threw up one identical name. The person I tracked was also in the Defence Forces, but much, much younger. That young man belonged to the same small community as hers. He didn’t know her, but he and I became friends in the virtual world.

          “Tell me her family name and my parents will track her down immediately,” he promised. The one thing I didn’t know about her was her family name. For she had used her father’s name before marriage and her husband’s after, never a surname suffixed to her own.

          So the young man and I got ‘involved’ on Facebook, reading posts, liking them, seeing photos, sharing them, exchanging greetings and congratulations on special days, chatting through messages when we wanted to keep the conversation un-public (unless you’re on Facebook, you won’t understand this word).

From time to time I’d nudge him to ask his parents whether they’d come across Asha. His response was always in the negative. He was busy in his profession, taking exams, doing courses, working hard. I was enjoying a retired life, travelling, gossiping online, doing ‘time-pass’. In the process, I even made friends with the fellow’s mother on Facebook, making me a virtual aunt of sorts to him.

          The aforementioned five years flew by and one day he told me he was getting married, traditionally, in his ‘native place’ (we don’t use this phrase any longer now, do we?

Shri Husband and I decided to attend his wedding. We drove to a hilly district in South India to witness a most unusual ceremony. The small community my Facebook friend belonged to – Asha’s community—doesn’t have a priest conducting the marriage ceremony. Elders of the community bless the couple, garlands/rings are exchanged and that’s that. The feast and dancing continued for three days.

I’d always seen him in photographs, in jeans and t-shirts. It was a treat to see him for the first time in flesh and blood, dressed as a groom. Recognition was instant.

Like us, there were others who had travelled long distances to attend. I mingled with the guests, asking randomly if anyone knew Asha. Nyet, nope, nil.

Then, on the last day, almost in filmi style, one stranger asked me some questions: Was Asha’s father working at such-and-such job? An old memory stirred in my head. Yes! Was her brother’s pet-name so-and-so? Another cell churned in my brain. Yes, yes. Did her sister marry a coffee-plantation manager? My cerebral neurons did a creaky tandav-nritya: yes, yes, yes. He told me a likely way of tracking Asha’s brother. He had known of his whereabouts till 2014.

Back home in Goa, Shri Husband and I did a quick search, sought and found the brother’s email, sent off a message to him through the internet and within hours located Asha.

We talked like excited school-girls over the phone, filling up gaps of what had happened in our lives now, then, in between. Laughter and giggles travelled through wireless channels. We saved numbers, id’s, addresses again.

When I sent a message to my Facebook friend, now on his honeymoon, his response was immediate and smacked of astonishment: “You found her! This is destiny.”

Nope, I thought, not destiny, the wonders of modern technology, in this case Facebook, that linked so many lives.

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The Trouble With Magazines.

          “Why do you have so many magazines on the shelves?” Shri Husband asked.

“I’m going to read them,” I said.

“They’ve been there for at least a hundred years.” Shri Husband exaggerates, sometimes. He checked out one which had less dust and gingerly picked it up. “An in-flight magazine?” he asked. “Why are you preserving that?”

“I want to read it,” I mumbled.

“Where did you get it from?”

How did it matter to him? I thought.

I quietly replied: “My friends and relatives got them for me.”

“Why? To introduce you to glossy paper and great pictures?”

I thought, “to tempt me out of my humdrum existence.” But said nothing.

As if reading my mind, he said: “If they thought they’d get you to travel, it hasn’t worked because you haven’t got around to seeing more than the in-your-face advertisements. The articles are printed in small font. That might be intentional, to put readers to sleep. Meant to be read in-flight, remember? The letter from the Director/Editor is the only thing you can easily read, and that’s all about sectors, flights, fares, stuff that’ll make no sense to you.”

He was in one of his moods…’let’s see what I else I can lay my hands on’. I helped by pushing a non-glossy, serious-looking issue towards him. He fell for the bait. Sadly, that too was a travel magazine.

          He said: “All those reality-adventures on life size television screens and the printed word still reigns. You watch climbers desperately clawing rock-faces, see them being interviewed about how they did it, so what do you want these magazines for?”

 I said: “There’s still a joy in dwelling on their descriptions in the quiet comfort of an armchair. That’s how/why these magazines survive.”

Now the volume rose a bit: “Provided you read them, no? They’ve been sitting here untouched… see, even the pages haven’t been unstuck.” He began to explore other shelves. Ouch, I thought, trouble-time. Silly of me to have opened my mouth.

Someone had gifted me a subscription to a hospital-administration magazine. Either that office IT department hasn’t noticed a software glitch or some kind staff regularly continues that subscription, because with monotonous regularity I get copies month after month. The history of the Indian hospital industry (has it been declared an industry?) lies in those volumes.

“They’re precious,” I said.

“Then build a vault for them,” he retorted.

“Not that valuable,” I said.

“Except for the raddiwala,” he said.

In recent months, a dry-waste-gatherer has been making rounds of our colony and buying unwanted paper. (In developed countries, you have to pay fellows to take away the raddi. Strange custom, no?) Here, earlier, everyone used to dump their raddi in vacant plots and burn it in small piles. We’re getting civilized.

I transferred that bunch of magazines hastily to another shelf, just in case he got rid of them. I mean to read them some day.

Shri Husband can’t be fooled. He tracked them down instantly, and worse, found others tucked away thereabouts. There were magazines for women, sports’ lovers, automobile aficionados (the last two had nothing to do with me, feminism or no, those aren’t my areas of interest), animals and environment, humour (comics, actually), etc.

The current news and political commentary ones, according to Shri Husband, were out-dated and needed to be discarded immediately. I said, “It has details of events. Google doesn’t give you all information.”

Shri Husband: “It gives you enough. You’re not doing your PhD in anything.”

He picked up one stained and tattered copy of a publication on spiritual well-being. “See this,” he said. As if I hadn’t already.

“What’s there to see?” I asked.

“It’s gathering dust and mites, it deserves to be chucked.”

“There’s God’s photo on the cover, can’t chuck it.”

“God’s pictures are on every invitation card, do we keep those?”

Silence. Didn’t have the heart to tell him where I’d hidden that pile.

My silence bothers him. “Don’t tell me you’ve got old invites somewhere,” he guessed correctly, transferring his energy purposefully to make the shelves and drawers empty. He found volumes of fiction specials.

“Fiction doesn’t go out of fashion,” I told him. He shook his head, staring at one nearly defunct ‘literary review’ run by a young college girl with her pocket money. Grim expression followed; Shri Husband doesn’t believe in heart ruling head. Calls it ridiculous.

There were several exclamations of ‘what’s this’ at regular intervals.

Suddenly, that changed to “What. Is. This?” with every syllable stressed upon. I looked over his shoulder. It was a cookery magazine with some adorably appetizing dishes colourfully presented on every single page. All that work had made him hungry and the sight of food changed matters.

We have recipe books, watch cookery programs on television, discuss foods with friends and don’t part with food magazines.

We calmly, nostalgically browsed through them, saying ‘look’ and sighing every alternated second. We aren’t going to make or eat any of those things. Just desiring them is wonderful. Like the fashion, luxury and interior decoration magazines. Like Bollywood, they keep alive dreams and hopes. That’s the trouble with magazines. Easy to acquire, hard to get rid of.

I got up to rustle up a snack.

On our shelves…as things were, things remain.

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The TV Noose

          “Poor Sanju-baba,” I said one morning this week, “is going to jail. Saw him say goodbye to his daughters. Sad.”

          Sri Husband: “That nice young man from our colony? What has he done to deserve that? When did you see him and his daughters?”

          Patience, I told myself; the man is detached from what’s happening in the world. “Not that Sanju,” I said with controlled tone. “The Dutt boy.”

          Sri Husband: “Dutts? Haven’t seen any such name-plate in our part of the village. Which house? Where?”
          Patience, I reminded myself and prodded his memory: “Sunil and Nargis Dutt, remember? Old couple from Mumbai? Now dead?”

          Sri Husband, yawning: “That guy’s been in and out of trouble with the law for some decades. Why are you telling me about him now?”
          “You told me to see the news, so I did,” I countered.

          “Did you see or hear anything more important than that?”

          “Of course,” I said resolutely. “Salman Khan’s also in trouble. Something to do with the black-buck case. You know (in case he didn’t), the dead deer thing.” Offence is the best form of defence. I put forth my best ‘so there’ tone. I deliberately asked: “Do you know who Salman Khan is? Yes?”

          Sri Husband getting even, fired back: “Did you know the DRDO chief’s tenure being terminated? Did you know of the terrible fighting happening in Sopore, in North Kashmir? That the parents of the slain children in the Peshawar school protested Imran Khan’s visit?”

          “It sounds like Army-Air-Force-Navy stuff,” I said, putting on an intelligent expression.

          I barely heard a ‘yes’ hiss out of Sri Husband’s mouth, but did see him vigorously shake his head as if he meant ‘no’. Bad mood, I figured.

          Trying to cheer him up, I said, “I always watch Defence Forces related programs. But no child has fallen into any well anywhere in the country recently. No earthquakes, no floods, no riots even. Nothing happening. But I’ll switch on the set on Republic Day. Pukka.”

Silence. Must be listening. Seize the moment, I thought and continued: “The other day I saw the Defence Minister, our very own Parrikar, with the three chiefs. Those chiefs looked so strange, all ironed clothes and shoes and stuff. Our Goan blood, our Parrikar, demonstrated uniqueness. Half shirt was out of his pant, left side, half in, right side. Solid original look. Carefully mismatched chappals also. Sorry, sandals they were. No socks also. In all that Delhi cold, brave, no? That AAP Khejriwal fellow makes ‘bowaall’ about being simple like common man. Nothing to beat our Parrikar-style.”

Sri Husband: “You saw the three Chiefs and the Defence Minister? Where?”

Me: “On tv.” So dense he is sometimes.

          Sri Husband switched on the tv mumbling something about using one’s brains for things other than commenting on un-tucked shirts. Then he read the ticker at the bottom of the screen: “… younger person needed for DRDO post…”

          “Why do they want someone younger?” I asked.

          “Because people get jaded. One needs fresh blood in a job, new ideas, more energy. People retire at sixty, usually, in government jobs.”

          “How old are Parrikar? Modi? Jaitley?” I asked.

          Quickly, Sri Husband changed the topic. Does that when he doesn’t have an answer handy. “Do you know when Delhi’s going to the polls? The bye election in Goa?”

          “Heard of buying votes, but entire elections… too much, I say.” My voicing an opinion sparks a fuse in Sri Husband’s head.

          “It’s b-y-e,” he said, spelling it out loudly, “not b-u-y.”

There was no need to shout. But I wasn’t telling him that. I never do. I retreated to safer ground. “At what age do soldiers retire?” I asked.

He immediately went into lecture mode: “… there are sixteen ranks, so many categories, age of retirement varies…”

I was confused: “So it’s not sixty years, then?”
          “No,” Sri Husband said. “Not in the Defence Forces, exceptions being those at the topmost ranks.” He added, “There are professions in which there’s no need for retirement at all.”

“Like housewifery?” I asked.

“And acting,” he replied.

“I saw Amitabh today,” I said, following the acting-thread.

“Which Amitabh?” He.

“Amitabhji. Lamboo.” Me.

“Mr Bacchhan?” Sri Husband’s particular about saying titles and names correctly. Old world charm, fell for it years ago. “Where did you see him?”

“In the tv-noose, at Uddhav Thakarey’s photography exhibition.”

He, correcting a slip of my tongue: “News.”

Me: “TV noose-news, same thing. Ask Shashi Tharoor.”

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The Daal-ings of Indian Meals.

               What we called ‘varann’ was what our hotel guest Anna relished as ‘savoury porridge’; she had it every morning at breakfast. Strange things foreigners do. On restaurant menus, I read ‘khatkhate’ described as lentil stew. I shouldn’t be surprised, because that’s how ‘sambar’ is described, too.

               Since our Goan pronunciation is ‘daall’ with a hard ‘d’ like in dvd and pressing a twisted tongue on the palate at the last two letters, ‘ll’, I had to relearn how to say it when I went to live in north India where both letters are soft.

               The idiom ‘daal mein kuch kala hain’ is not as valid these days when we get de-stoned pulses packed in polythene bags. I remember how much I hated picking at those dried and split cotyledons to take out little stones which, if ever one escaped my eye and finger, went through the process of pressure-cooking along with the ‘daall’ and routed itself into Shri Husband’s mouth. The ‘kaala’ in the ‘daall’ always avoided me.  It was a conspiracy, I swear, for it happened multiple times without my playing any active role in the drama. Raving and ranting against Providence and the elements of Nature didn’t help: Shri Husband didn’t believe me. His dentist, too, looked accusingly at me.

               But there’s more to the ‘daalls’ in my life.

               Once, a colleague in Delhi said: ‘nek kar, kuem mein daal’. I understood the first part: do good. But the second part of the sentence it took me some time to figure out. If one did a good deed, why would there be ‘daall’ in the well (‘kuam’)? I understood after I encountered ‘iss bag mein yeh daal, uss bag mein voh daal’.

 It took me even longer to understand that patriotic song: ‘Jahan daal-daal per sone ki chidiya karti hai basera’. Such are the perils of living in a multi-lingual country.

               The teachers who taught me in school, may their kind and hardworking souls rest in peace after struggling for a lifetime trying to put a sense and rule of grammar into heads like mine, were mainly ‘cattlicks’ from Goa or Anglo-Indians. They converted ‘daall’ to ‘doll’ or ‘dawhl’ if they were of the left-behind-by-the-Raj variety. Had me in a spot once, in Belgaum, at a friend’s ancient aunt’s place. This grey-haired, floral-printed-dress wearing prim and proper remnant of another century asked me which ‘doll’ I liked. I was in my late teens and not flattered that she took me to be a juvenile.  I shook my head vigorously to indicate nyet, nil, none. She then said: “Awright, we’re having meat for lunch, then.” I was confused until the flickering tube-light finally lit in my head. Pronunciations/accents, what communication goof-ups they can cause.

               ‘Moong’ and ‘masoor’ we ate (still do) whole, sprouted and cooked into ‘usals’ and ‘shaaks’. The former, in ‘daall’ form was (still is) mixed with rice to make a mushy ‘khichdi’ that was meant to give solace to the ill and ailing. I’ve no idea why ‘chavlee’ isn’t skinned and split. The wisdom of that decision has died with our ancestors. Who are we to or how dare we even question tradition?

For some reason, south Indians who consume copious amounts of the split ‘urad’, don’t touch its black whole form which is popular in the north. This sub-continent’s food habits can give a cookery-historian work for a lifetime.

               Talking of the black ‘urad’, …cooked through a winter’s day over firewood/coal to a sticky oneness by nightfall, seasoned well and eaten with a blob of butter with ‘rotis’ fresh off the ‘choola’ whilst temperatures hovered around 0 deg C and the mist thickened into fog… bring back memories of extreme discomfort. Really feel sorry for our jawans at the border; their ‘rotis’ are stale and stiff, cooked weeks before. Each bite they take, at Siachen heights, freezes before their hand reaches from bowl to mouth. And they live there so we can live here in peace.

               I digress.

               Now that the ‘daall’ is making headlines in the news because of its price, Rs 220 per kilogram as I type this, Bai Goanna wanted to know which ‘daall’.

‘Channa’ must be, she said, adding, “gives gas. We must eat more of it.”

               Shri Husband butted in: “What’s the logic?”

               Bai Goanna explained: “We must eat more ‘channa’ because India needs more gas. All this subsidy business, no, for gas-cylinders that we have to give up… if there’s some way we can ‘harvest’ (her word, not mine) gas from human beings, it will be good for the country, no?”

               I saw Shri Husband’s palm go straight to his forehead, and so I hastily changed the topic. I don’t know why Bai Goanna has to come up with warped logic at odd moments. Any moment, actually.  

               I said, “I bought some ‘daall’ last month. Used it sparingly, too.”

               “Lock it up,” Bai Goanna advised. “Keep it for Diwali or some special occasion.”

               Wise words can come from unexpected sources, even Bai Goanna, no? ‘Daall’-rice has now been officially declared a VIP dish. In case the governor drops in… dreaming isn’t a crime in this country… I must have a handful of ‘toor/arhar’ in the house. After all, yellow ‘daall’ with ‘tadka’ is considered the darling of Indian cuisine. Not tandoori chicken, not any longer.

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The Late President and My Class.

          Two days after President Kalam died, I asked my class what they knew about him. Blank stares greeted me (that’s the norm when I ask anything). You had a day off, I prompted them. Why?

One hesitant hand was raised. A cautious voice said: “He died, no Ma’am?” Once I nodded a ‘yes’, everyone said they knew, and the familiar chatter began.

          Me: “Did you read about it in the papers?”

          A confident, choral: “No.”

          Me: “Did you see it on the news?”

          Some ‘yesses’, mostly ‘nos’ piped up, followed by giggles at my methods of getting updates. “Whatsapp,” they all agreed loudly and clearly, was their source for everything, from learning about deaths of VIPs to whether safely hiding/sleeping indoors during an eclipse was ‘real science’ or superstition.

          Even as I was framing questions in my mind, they were rapidly twiddling finger-tips on their phone-instruments to get the answers. One girl complained: “So slow the connectivity is here.” The thirst for knowledge is easily quenched when it (connectivity, not thirst) is fast.

          I asked them the names of India’s past presidents in no particular order. These were the answers I got: “Ambedkar”, “Manmohan Singh”, “Gandhi”. Patience, I told myself, they’re naïve, they’re young, they are here to learn.

          The scowls on my face prompted them to read the correct answers from their fluorescent screens: “Pratibha Patil (first woman President, no, Ma’am?), “Nilamasanjivareddy” (in one breath, followed by ‘he’s dead, no, Ma’am?’), “Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed” (the first syllable caused a burst of laughter. I reminded myself, they’re at ‘that’ age.), “Sar-va-palli-radha-krishan” (carefully, correctly pronounced) and all the others. One said: “… was President from 1912 till 2002.” I had to explain to them that tenures were not the same as lifetimes. What did you learn in school, I asked them meanly. They took that question literally and chanted: “…English, Hindi, maths, science, social studies.”  

          But once I told them how ‘the Buddha smiled’ and how an event in Pokhran changed forever how the world looked at India, I had their attention. I gave them the pacifists’ anti-nuclear-weapons’ point of view as well. They remembered that they had studied a chapter on Dr Kalam in school. Not one recalled what it contained. Prodding helped, as did the ever-accessible google-guru. Interest aroused, they browsed for more gyaan. They wanted to know the difference between a President and a Prime Minister, a Governor and a Chief Minister. They knew, but vaguely. Most of these students have cleared their high school boards in the last three years. Questions that I couldn’t tackle were also bounced off me: “why do we need governors/presidents?”

          As more information about Dr Kalam trickled in via the internet through the cacophony I heard: “Shillong is a Christian town”, that “Kalam was influenced by two Hindus” and “a 96-year-old Air Marshal got up from his wheelchair to salute him”. The last was uttered as if it was a miracle: Kalam, in death, had made a disabled person walk!

          Then they got more valuable information about his work as a scientist, his books, his lectures and his love for teaching. There was a gender divide: the boys told me how he missed becoming a pilot, and the girls told me how simply he lived. Both were impressed that his parents had neither money, clout nor contacts to prod him on his way up. The rags to riches bit struck them the most. “No money for tuitions also,” one told his/her neighbour.

The talk steered towards our own ethics, morals and integrity. They agreed they diluted all three when convenient and that they shouldn’t. I comforted myself: at least they are honest.

          We moved on to other current topics. Yakub Memon wasn’t put on the agenda because I had strong doubts they’d heard of him. I would have had to do a lot of talking, so we skipped all national headlines and homed in on the bank-robbery at Mapusa. A spirited debate ensued about who was responsible. The watch-man, said some, because he’s responsible for security and guarding. The cashier herself, said others, for she’s responsible for the cash. The manager, said a few, for s/he’s responsible for whatever happens in the bank. All those present, said a handful, for in teamwork, like the glory, the blame has to be shared. In that noisy classroom babble, one voice stood out. That out-of-the-box thinker had this to say: “So sad, no, for the robbers. If they had covered their faces, they wouldn’t have been caught, they would have been rich today.”

          I wonder what President Kalam (may his loved and respected soul rest in peace) would have thought of that point of view.

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Sweet Change.

         

“Mode, chillar, chhutta, call loose change by any name, like the rose (quoted Shakespeare here for effect),” I said, “there’s a shortage of it.”

          I wasn’t sure Sri Husband had heard me, so I repeated it. “Mode, chillar… roses… shortage…” 

He’s challenged when it comes to comprehending simple things that I say. Or he hears only the last part of the sentence.

“Whattt?” he shouted. “What shortage? Which roses? What does that mean?”

“Don’t yell,” I barked right back. Then I tried to explain to him in an even tone: “It’s like the toffees you get at the payment counters.”

“Whattt?” he bellowed again. “Can you clarify what you’re talking about or is that too much of an effort for you?”

“You know, when you buy shoes and chappals, the price says so many rupees and ninety-nine paise?”

Silence, then an agreeable nod and a slow “o-ka-y, continue”.

“The shoe-shop-people never give you one paisa back, right?”

         Another slow ‘ye-es’ followed by ‘I don’t think one paisa coins are in  circulation any longer’.

          My turn: “What happens to so many thousands of one paisas then? Are they accounted for?”

          He, cautiously, as if treading on unsafe ground: “What does that have to do with roses and toffees?”

          I took that as encouragement and talked on: “When I pay money for a bus-ride, if the money is eight or nine rupees and I pay ten, I don’t get back any money.”

He: “You should ask for it.”

Me: “Waste of breath. I get the answer ‘mode na, change na’. Actually, if the conductor has some, he avoids passengers he owes.”

(An aside-- I think ‘conductor’ is an inappropriate name to give a guy who handles cash, high-pitched deafening whistles, ropes on banging doors and is an expert on stuffing humans in dilapidated rattling tin-on-wheels such that a famous idiom could read ‘sardines stuffed like humans in a private bus in Goa’).

 Sri Husband, with a hint of carefully controlled irritation: “I’m asking you again. What does that have to do with roses and toffees?”

Me: “Forget the roses, I was trying to be literary.”

He: “So what about the toffees, then?”

Me: “When I go shopping for groceries, even in malls, no one gives me any mode/chillar/chutta when I pay the bill. Instead, they give me toffees.”

Ah, he remarked, mumbling under his breath that he had now figured out why there were so many transparent plastic-paper wrapped sticky sweets in my purse.

Oh, I muttered right back, immediately, correctly guessing whose prying hands regularly mixed up the contents of my purse.

Thus neutralized, our conversation became saner.

“Where do government minted coins go?”

“In the bowls of beggars and the coffers of temples/ churches/ mosques, now that pay-phones are practically extinct.”

“What do beggars and priests do with those coins?”

“Maybe give them back to the government? The Railways have solved the problem by no longer having fractions of rupees in pricing their tickets, the Postal Department can hand over stamps if they don’t have change. So maybe the government hoards them in oversized piggy banks somewhere?”

“In the meanwhile, how do we tackle the problem? Every time we pay a bill, we can’t keep rounding off prices or accepting sweets.”

“We can buy in wholesale and keep at home…” that was me.

“… roses and toffees?” that was Sri Husband not allowing me to complete my sentence.

Me, exasperated: “Forget the roses, that was only for literary effect.”

“Buy toffees then?”

“Yes, and use them like cash. I mean, if shops can give customers sweets, then they should accept the same from us when we want to buy something, right? Why, we could buy large amounts of toffees and barter them to tip the gas-delivery chap, maybe even pay medical bills with them. We could exchange them for pao, for fish, for getting punctures repaired. We could use sweets to buy cars and airlines tickets. We should invest in them before someone else gets the same idea.”

“By (pun intended) the truckload?”

“Yes.”

“What kind would you buy? The boiled variety, the brown chocolaty ones, the coffee/ strawberry flavoured types or those that will soothe sore throats? Would brands matter?”

Me, now kind of carried away: “I’d like the white-and-red mock cigarettes. A sweet is a sweet is a sweet. After all, a rose by any name…”

No idea what I said wrong, but Sri Husband’s pursed his lips and has been quiet since then.

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