Of Diwalis Then and Now.

          Our Diwali is divided into several tongue-twisters. In North India, Diwali is divided into two parts, the Greater or Badi Diwali and the Lesser or Choti Diwali. The fact that the stringing of lights, pollution by crackers and exchanging of very, very sweet sweets starts and ends a fortnight on either side of the two days is not relevant.

But our Diwali stretches over three or four days. Three or four because sometimes, by the Hindu calendar, the days overlap. Hard to explain this in a short article, but it’s something to do with moon-set and moon-rise, not the sun’s journey.

The first day is Dhan-a-trayo-dashi. The thirteenth day of the waning moon, dedicated to the worship of wealth. Uh, spending, actually, for that’s when one’s supposed to buy jewellery, clothes, utensils for the kitchen and maybe a sari or five.

The second day, Narak-chatur-dashi, as the name suggests, celebrates Krishna’s getting rid of the evil Narakasur. All other states burn the Ravana. Why Goa chose Mr N I don’t know. Last year, whilst driving around on this night, we found a Narakasur effigy dressed up with the previous Christmas’ Santa Clause’s clothes. Talk about Goa’s sense of humour and recycling!   I don’t know whether my ancestors in Palolem ever built and burned a big Narakasur. Perhaps on a small scale. This mass-appealing tradition seems to be a couple of decades old. Not sure.

My Mumbai childhood had its own brand of Goan-Diwali memories. Get up pre-dawn, have an oil-bath (*), get scrubbed with hot water and a scented paste of utnna, wear crisp new clothes, stand in line with siblings to stomp on a fruit called karate and lick a drop of its horribly bitter juice (to ward off illness), watch mother make a curvy rangoli design around a lit lamp, and eat the goodies she’d slogged over the week before. (* an oil-bath isn’t about soaking in a tubful of the slimy liquid. We got massaged with a bowlful of warmed oil, head to toe. Messy, but fun, and meant to supply the skin with anti-drying pre-winter nutrients.)

All cleaned and spruced up, we  children were despatched to the neighbours’, carrying platefuls of ladoos, chaklis, neuryos and other eats mentioned elsewhere in this issue. The neighbours did the same by us. Result: in adulthood I’m still trying to work off that accumulated adipose.

The hanging kandils and the Chinese-made fairy-light strings draped over balconies and windows, have nudged away the clay oil-and-wick lamps that gave Diwali its name: Festival of Lights.  Whether this tradition began with Rama’s victorious return to Ayodhya or some other reason, fact is, it’s a very pretty, vibrant and unusual festival. God plays a role, but social factors outweigh those. Sending gifts to associates, family, someone you want a favour from… these are important. Requesting Goddess Laxmi to please increase the profit/bonus is important, too.

One sweet ritual is the worship of one’s working tools, writing equipment, machines, bulls, cars, musical instruments, whatever one’s profession/occupation uses. This is done on Padva, the main Diwali day. Another sweet ritual done on the same day is… husbands have to give their wives gifts. After she has thrice waved around his face a plate with rice, kumkum, a coconut, some sweets and a light in it. Our ancients were wise. The women always received. The men gave. Where did we go wrong?

The main day, the Padva, falls on a new moon night. In the blackness the lights shine. And the fireworks light up the sky. And the animals and asthmatics tremble.

A day and a half later is Bhau-beej, also called Bhaiyya-dooj in North India. Thanks to Bollywood, there is a saccharine emotional involvement that surrounds this day. In my childhood, we boy-cousins’ mothers invited us over, or we invited them, we ‘did the needful’ by putting vermillion powder on their heads, tossing grains of rice into their hair, feeding them morsels of home-made sweets, waving the inevitable lighted lamp around their faces and chuckling when we got an envelope (with cash, naturally) in return. It was good to be at the receiving end at Diwali.

Whilst the rest of India reluctantly resumes work the day after, we Goans carry on partying for another twenty days. Our main celebration comes by in the form of a wedding: of the Tulsi plant with the sugar-cane stalk. Known as Tulsi Lagna, this is the day Goans again wear their silks and shimmering kurtas, eat rich and scrumptious moonga-shaak ­and mangaanne and burn the last lot of phataakas.

Harvest is over, re-planting done, it’s time to enjoy the bounty. The tourists have arrived and it’s time to ready-up for Christmas. No rest, no rest at all. It’s party-party all the way.

My Carnaval Experiences.

          As a child vacationing in Palolem with my maternal grandparents, I hadn’t even heard of the Carnaval. (Please note, it’s the Portugal CarnAval in Goa, not the English CarnIval.)

Middle-class Hindu households like mine, in remote villages, knew little about what Catholics did and celebrated. They were aware of the compulsory Mass on Sundays and Christmases. They maybe knew about Easter, maybe not.

My mother’s generation had migrated to Bombay (it’s re-christening to ‘Mumbai’ was decades away) and we visited Goa in the summer and winter vacations, none of which coincided with the Carnaval. That was another reason for the ignorance.

When I relocated to make the land of my ancestors my home, I took up a job in a hotel near Panaji. That was when I was introduced to The Carnaval. The hotel doctor, the kind Hugo Menezes’ wife told me about how, when she was young, she and her neighbours, cousins and their siblings made fancy dresses with laces and crepes for the event. They decorated their car… there were very few cars in those days… and practised songs and silly verses, too. They spent money carefully, recycled curtains and hand-me-downs and plucked leaves and flowers to use as festoons. Paper, paint, glue, twigs and very rarely some ornate curios gave expression to creative minds and skilful fingers. Ribbons were stitched into roses, doilies were converted into bonnets and borrowed high-heels were prettied up with mirrors and thin streamers. This was the time to publicly display one’s talent. Grandparents, great-uncles, toddlers and their parents, all participated. Well, mainly those who lived in and around the cities. The non-participating citizenry lined the traffic free roads to wave, clap and cheer along familiar faces. In sparsely populated Goa, everyone was either village-mate, school-fellow, colleague or distant relative. 

Take her nostalgia with a pinch of salt, my young colleagues told me, it’s more fun today. The boring repetitive music is now peppy, even if it’s sometimes borrowed from Bollywood. Things change, some for the better, some not.

Over the years, thermocole, shiny papers and plastic have made the decorations bigger and more attractive. More cars are on the road. People don’t have to spend out of their pockets, for there are sponsors to help them out. More dances, more dancers participate. Villages have got competitive. Religious connotations have been relegated, the element of fun has began to rule. Today, there are possibly more Hindus involved in this festival than the followers of Christ.

My mother’s generation sometimes refers to the Carnaval as ‘Intruz’ from the Portuguese word Entrudo. After four hundred years of rule, Portugal has left behind this colourful, cheerful legacy in Goa, the only state in India to celebrate it. Bands, floats, dances, parades are now organized throughout the state to entertain locals and tourists alike.  

This year, the Carnaval is from 14-17 February. Lively processions will attract young and old, poor and rich to the route and time-table organized. It’s like non-stop festivity for three days. Tradition has given way to contemporary music, clothes, activities. The strumming guitars and base voices are magnified through loud-speakers. Banners declaring the goodness of consumables will jostle for space. Stalls selling drinking water and toys for children will do good business. Traffic diversions will allow us to see parts of the towns that normally one doesn’t.

Each year, on the last day, well night, actually, in one of the by lanes of Panaji, a club holds its famous red and black dance.

Unusually, this festival was in decline in Goa during the last few years of Portuguese rule. Its revival with the liberation of Goa and its boost to tourism has helped it graduate from a home-grown thing to a big ‘do’ that attracts many hundreds from various Indian states and other countries. People dance with gay abandon and riotous revelry from Margao to Vasco to Mapusa to Panaji.

This year’s King Momo, is Geovani Bosco Santimano. He will lead the parades in all four towns. He was selected by an event management agency through a contest.  King Momo orders his subjects to party.

Thanks to the television, I now see the Carnaval sitting at home, sipping something chilled, snacking away at any old hour. I hear taped (is this word obsolete now and must I use the word recorded again?) music blending with live instrumentalists and vocalists, all sounds magnified, but not obscenely so. I observe spectators watching the tamasha. I must enjoy this, there expressions seem to imply. It’s amusing that they’re willing to sweat out the humidity, suffer the travails and exhorbitant costs of Goa’s public transport system, search out loos when desperate just to have this compulsory fun.

Later, in the village, I will see the frame of a giant peacock or frog or fish/ shell/ ship begging to be burnt fully. Wires, planks, large sheets of colourful plastic will be tossed inside a vacant plot whose owners live far away, across the Arabian or some other sea. Sister garbage from the Narakasura time will give it company.

In another dimension, the laughter of the participants, their families and friends, will echo around digital albums seen on screens in homes across the world, via skype or some other technical method.

More than Ganapati or Christmas, I believe this is the festival that Goans share most with outsiders.

Certified: Indian Experience.

Before mobile phones, computers and cable television came into our lives, we had a brilliant communication system: the oral tradition that beat illiteracy. It worked.

I’m reconstructing this experience after retrospective analysis. I realized that I had lost my graduation certificate in Mumbai (Bombay then) only when I wanted to apply for a job in Ghaziabad, a town near Delhi. There was no way I could get a duplicate until I visited Mumbai again, about six months later.

I had left the certificate in a taxi and there was no hope of my ever finding it, I thought. I was prepared to go through the long process of getting a duplicate.

The passenger who got into that taxi after me picked it up, curiously read my name, realized I was from his community and kept it carefully, guessing that he may be able to track me somehow. I was by then far away from community and city.

Good soul that he was, he did his best to contact me by the methods he knew: he told all his friends and colleagues about it. In the pre-facebook era, the method sometimes worked. Those friends passed the word around: does anyone know so-n-so from such-n-such college? Nothing happened for a month or so. Not surprising.

Then, young woman from Delhi who was vacationing in Mumbai, having nothing better to do one afternoon, sat gossiping with her cousin about people and life in general. That cousin, the same young man, told her about the certificate. She took a look at it and said: “The name’s familiar, but can’t place it.”

She checked with someone who’d studied in my college around the same time and was informed that I was in Delhi’s neighbourhood. So she carried the certificate along with her to Delhi. And she told her friends, classmates and some expat-Mumbaikars about it.

Sure enough, within a few days, she could get in touch with somebody who’d met me at a common acquaintance’s house.

I got my precious document back without crease or stain on it. Traditional, time-tested methods work. 

In Search of Scarlet Gumboots.

            Our plot in the village gets very damp with dew. With a drizzle, the ground is wet enough to take a day for the water to soak into the soil. Last year’s downpour broke down the eastern wall. This year’s deluge broke the western one and our private flood killed many trees. We had to wade through knee-deep water to salvage saplings, clean up clogged channels, and the fear of scorpions and snakes added to the discomfort of toes clutching on to a mess of clayey mud, decaying grass, soggy leaves and dead crawlies.

For the third time in a month, I withdrew money from the bank to buy yet another pair of ‘rainy shoes’.

            My shopping is crisis-oriented. A strap breaks or a sole wears off, and I take a pilot to the closest shoe-shop (until Bata opened its showroom on CHOGM Road, we Sangoldkars had to go to far away Mapusa or Panaji, even further away on the other side). This time, I worked my blistered feet through first a pair of hawai chappals. The classic version of this rubber slipper is a white sole with two blue straps with the size number encircled and engraved on both the sole and the strap. Until 2-3 years ago, if the strap broke, you simply took it off the sole and carried it to a local shop to buy a replacement. One could thus stretch the pair for many months, until the sole was a couple of millimetres thick. These days, no one keeps chappal spare parts. The ‘classic’ chappal is still available, but hidden under the coloured versions that have swamped the market. Purple soles with pink and emerald stripes or dots or wavy designs across them, thick soles, thin soles, in all sorts of synthetic materials, to suit many budgets.

            The shops (names unknown because the sign-boards are faded, rusty, or just above one’s head) in the market stock cheap Thai/Chinese footwear. The price ranges from Rs 180 to 350 for a ‘decent’ pair that will last for a season if you travel by bus, two seasons if your own vehicle transports you hither to thither and an unpredictable week if you use your feet for commuting. 

            There is a plethora of choices, but I don’t wear huge purple flowers on my toes, nor transparent soft-plastic ‘ballets’ (India has borrowed this word to describe slip-on shoes pointed at the toe end) with holes all over them. Some look like leather: one sales-chap told me they outlast real hide. Others are called ‘all-weather’: I had bought one of these, my feet slipped inside the shoe through the monsoons and sweated horribly through the sunny months. Besides, they gave me bad bites. I don’t look at them even if there is nothing else available in my size. The Paragon brand, like Carona, is hidden away, I can’t fathom why. I had to ask for it.

            For the men, there was a flip-flop called ‘Gas’. (Apt!) Gas and Numero Uno were the cheapest in the men’s section. Velcro studded rexine sandals seem to be popular with men, as well as chappals that look like chappals, with ‘toes’. Branded shoes (Nike) smell through cloudy weeks. Best avoided in these months unless you have a house with sufficient drying space. Too bad we don’t have Metro or Regal handy like in Mumbai, but the former has a website (Bata has one too) one can order through: I don’t because I like to feel an item that I’m going to wear. Lunar is a good brand, one person tells me, for value-for-money. Can’t say, never tried.

            Having found that my feet had to live through gooey mess every time I walked outdoors, I decided to buy a pair of gumboots (in some parts of the world they are known as waders). Found them nowhere. I even asked construction site workers where they’d got their sunny yellow ones from. Language problem, I couldn’t find out anything. Took me many days to discover, right next to Barday’s Inn at Calangute, a shop that sold Crocs and had gumboots. Without canvas inside, my size and a bright scarlet. Over a thousand bucks. Well above my budget, but I bought them. They don’t make squeaky sounds, keep my feet dry, are easy to slip on and off.

            I powder the insides before I wear them. Wear socks so my toenails won’t injure that expensive material. Hold on to the grills when I’m walking to the gate so that the soles won’t glide against the moss and slime. But I feel safer (scorpions and snakes can’t get at my feet) and drier.

I wonder why more companies don’t make gumboots. I’m dashing off letters of suggestion right now. There should be a law: if you want to live in Goa through the monsoons, you must own a pair of gumboots.

            Whilst these thoughts were pummelling my brain, I crossed a labourer-woman carrying a load on her head. My eyes went to her feet. She had fixed a bottle tops at one end of two thick thermocole pieces cut to fit her feet. To the tops she had tied two twisted plastic ropes to make herself a slipper of sorts. It protected her feet from the thorns and sharp stones she trod upon.

            No longer will I grumble about my footwear.  

The Hindu New Year on the West Coast.

Come 31 March morning and Goans will celebrate yet another New Year. The traditional one, that follows the ancient Hindu calendar (that means next year, by ‘our’ calendar it’s not likely to be on 31 March but on some other date). The Hindu new year hereabouts is called Gudi Padwa.

No drinking and dancing to celebrate. Instead of flashing fairy-lights and stars, you’ll see, outside most Hindu homes in Goa and its neighbouring states, a pole sticking out of the window with a brightly-coloured silk-cloth-covered tumbler at its free end, decked in flowers.

By the Hindu lunar calendar, the happy day is the first day of the bright phase of the moon. Ie, the day after a new moon of the first month, Chaitra. Technically, therefore, the Gudhi Padva is also the Chaitra Shukla Pratipada.  The following nine days and nights (or Navratra) are also auspicious. So if you want to get married, start a business, invest in a venture, choose one of these nine days.

Neighbouring states celebrate it as Ugadi (Andhra, Karnataka) and in Konkani, it’s also called Sansaar Padwo. I’m told in faraway Kashmir the Pandits call it Navreh  and the Sindhis call it Cheti Chand. In offices around the country, women employees will wear yellow. In Assam, and other states of the north east, people will celebrate Bihu.

Astronomically, the Sun is supposed to be in first point of Aries. This is considered to be the  begining of spring (the Vasant Ritu). People of ancient Egypt knew this and Nowruz , literally "New Day", in Persia is also based on this observation.  Indian Parsis celebrated Nowruz last week. On this day, the sun assumes a position above the point of intersection of the equator and the meridians.Since the Sun follows the solar calendar (naturally) and the Lunar month is not as long, the plus days (or missing days, depending on whether you’re on the lunar or solar side) are adjusted by adding an "Adhik" (an extra) Lunar month every three years to ensure that Gudi Padwa matches the observed seasonal changes.

Gudi Padwa is a low-key harvesting festival, unlike the boisterous Holi or the glamorous Diwali. It marks the end of one agricultural harvest (the end of the Rabi crop) and the beginning of a new one. Those far right-of-centre will tell you that according to the Brahma Purana, this is the day on which Brahma created the world after the deluge and therefore time began to tick from this day forth.

               Back to our bedecked pole-out-the-window. The silk/brocade cloth fluttering over the upside down tumbler at the tip will have for company some sugar crystals, neem leaves, a twig of mango leaves and a garland of red flowers. The inverted tumbler or pot might be of silver or copper or steel (if you’re poor like me), but always metal. The whole contraption has to be noticed by neighbours and passers-by, hence it’s hoisted as high as possible. Some say the gudi symbolises the victory of an ancient King Shalivahana over the Sakas. Whatever, the Gudi is believed to ward off evil, invite prosperity and good luck into the house. So it stands on the right side of the main entrance of the house. The right side symbolizes active state of the soul (I’m not certain of that, need to check that out with some soul-specialist).

Early on Gudi Padwa morning, courtyards in village houses will be swept clean and plastered with fresh cow-dung. In cities, people do some spring cleaning. Women and children work on intricate rangoli designs on their doorsteps, the vibrant colours mirroring the burst of colour associated with spring. Everyone dresses up in new clothes and it is a time for family gatherings. Like all Hindu festivals, this one has more social than religious significance.

I remember, as a child, being woken up early in the morning, bathed and dressed in new clothes, made to taste a bit of bitter neem-leaves’ paste. It was ground with jaggery and tamarind to make it palatable. Neem is supposed to purify the blood and strengthen the body’s immune system against diseases. The ancients prescribed the horridest concoctions for good health. And we lesser humans consumed them without questioning. But with loud protesting whimpers. What was better was the feast that followed: shrikhand (a sweet made of hung curd) and Poori (a fried bread; if you haven’t tasted it, you haven’t lived). Those who missed the Puran Poli (one needs much skill to make this delicate, tissue-like sweet roasted pancake of sorts) at Holi make up for that loss. We Goans also love our Kanangachi Kheer, a sweet made of sweet potato, coconut milk, jaggery, and rice flour.

If there were prayers to be said, I can’t remember any. But I recall that we children had to go to neighbours’ homes and touch the feet of the elders in order to get their blessings. Blessings frequently came in the form of ladoos or barfis and landed on our palms, to be gobbled instantly. More blessings could be sought, and at any time of the day: what generous neighbours we had!

I used to love festivals for the rituals (no two festivals have the same rituals) and the food (each festival has its own ‘special’ foods). The vatlee daal, a sweet and sour salad made of soaked pulses, some scraped fresh coconut, chopped green chillies, and seasoned with mustard seeds, asafoetida and curry leaves… is to die for.

Gudi Padwa was the gateway to the mango season, who’s official launch was a month away, at another festival, the Akshay Tritiya. The hotter the summer, the better the fruit, they say: kokums, jackfruit, melons, cashews, pineapples, and mangoes. Think about them and the flowers of summer, too: the fiery gul-mohrs, the fragrant mogras…

And whist I am relishing a chilled glass of home-made, raw-mango based, saffron-flavoured panha, I wish you: happy new year. 

Goodbye, Mr Guns, Come Again Next Year.

          It bugged our uncles no end when we children, cousins all, called Him “Mr Guns”.

          “Show some respect,” they’d holler at us. “He’s God.”

          In spite of the dos (be spruced for the aartees) and don’ts (eating non-vegetarian food) involved, Guns Ganapathy remained a favourite god. Rama had the Rama-raksha prayer chanted to him every evening. Dear Dutta, our neighbours’ family deity, had Thursday’s fast dedicated to him, a fast which involved distribution of the yummiest pedhas. Our own Goan Manguesh frowned on fish/meat-consumption on Mondays, but was otherwise a liberal sort. It was only Ganapathy who visited our homes briefly at a dedicated time of the year and went away into the sea whilst we sang ourselves hoarse persuading him to come again the following year. The ditty went like this: Ganapathy Bappa Morya, pudhchya varshee lavkar yaa. Ganapathy gaylay gaavaalaa, chaieen padaynaa aamhaalaa. Loosely translated: Ganapathy, Father, also called Morya (short form of Moreshwar), next year, please come soon. Ganapathy has gone to his village, we aren’t liking that all.

          Every year’s statue had to be a coconut-palm-leaf-vein thicker than the previous year’s. Approximately 2 mms. Most statues in those days fitted in an adult palm. The decorations were made of things that were plucked, often home-grown. The word bio-degradable wasn’t found in the lexicon of my youth.

          I can’t say just when plastic, thermocole and flashing lights came to be part of the Ganesh festival, but I’m sure it coincided with the size-increase of the idols, when the raw material changed from mud to plaster-of-Paris.

          The immersions then involved clanging small cymbals and singing the goodbyes to Mr Guns with gusto. We all felt bad that the modaks weren’t going to be made for another twelve months. People didn’t eat festive foods when they felt like it. They didn’t go out and buy neuryo, chaklyo, kadbolyo either. Like the delicious moonga-shaak gravy, those snacks, too, were homemade and only when religious norms demanded them to be consumed. We’ve trashed that discipline long years ago. As we’ve been trashing Mr Guns’ statues.

          I remember the idols being carefully lowered into the waves of the sea, not tossed over Mandovi or some other bridge. I remember gathering little peaks of sand where our statue stood overnight, dissolving by the inch with every hour. Now we see broken limbs, crushed trunks, an eye here, a ear there, crabs scampering all over what was until a day before His Holiness. Smothered by plastic, dead weeds and other broken statues, it’s an ugly sight. All the singing of praises and praying can’t wish that rubbish away. Instead of ‘to dust returneth’, municipal trucks toss the leftovers of Mr Guns along with domestic and industrial garbage into smelly, maggot-filled pits.

          I remember my late uncles’ words: “Show respect, He’s God.”

          We no longer celebrate the Ganesh festival. The elders couldn’t cope with the traditions and the younger generation was too busy or not inclined to carry them forward.

I always wonder what the worshippers who bring Ganesh idols home annually think of the muck that lines the coast after the festivities are over. After any religious or political rally, pictures of leaders are ripped and trampled upon and no one minds when they are chucked into the gutters to rot in sewage. But in the case of Mr Guns, people fervently believe that he’s a living god who saves them when they’re in trouble, gives them extra marks to pass an exam, prompts interviewers to give them jobs, finds them great spouses, keeps illness away, brings prosperity, etc, etc. I wonder why/how they don’t mind his likenesses being treated so shabbily.

This is one festival that messes up our beaches/ rivers/ wells/ lakes big time. All underwater life, including edible fish, suffers. Ugliness rules. Whither sanctity? Whenever I think of this, I remember an episode: in Uttar Pradesh, away from the coast where this festival is important, in a not-so-wealthy Maharashtrian home, a pious housewife celebrated this festival with a supari, a betel-nut. Her daughter had decorated the little dried fruit with felt pens and some coloured threads to make it look like a little Ganesh. He sat on a match-box pedestal that was covered with golden paper, and the decorations were flowers and leaves from the pots on their sill, changed twice a day. No compromise on food or the singing of the hymns, no dilution of devotion. Came the day of immersion. With ceremonious fanfare, that family of four plus a handful of neighbours carefully carried Mr Guns on a tray and respectfully placed him inside a bucket of clean water. The next day, water and supari was poured into the roots of a favourite plant.

I have a feeling Mr Guns would have enjoyed His stay in their home more than in any that smoke him out with incense, and stifle him with plastic, Made In China decorations and gifts bought with black cash.

My late uncles would not have noticed, never mind commented on our ‘Mr Guns’ tag if they’d seen the mess after immersions that happens these days. They would have been so appalled, they would have been at a loss for words. A miracle, that.

Goan Talk

A pilot in Goa is one who owns or rides a motorcycle taxi, that unique local mode of transport. Until a friend revealed what the word meant here, I used to wonder why neighbours gave my husband curious looks when I said he was a pilot.

As recent arrivals in this lovely little western state, we were amused to read familiar Hindu names spelt unusually. ‘Purxottama’ and ‘Xembhu’ were easy to decipher, but we needed help to read ‘Quenim’ as Keni. It look a couple of months to get used to names like Conceptao de Souza a Quadros Ferrao. And to know that ‘Joao’ was pronounced Zoo-aw.

The first time a shop-keeper asked me whether I’d like a rupyacho Gandhi, I was foxed. He owed me a buck and didn’t have change. I was willing to accept a toffee worth the amount. But a Gandhi worth one rupee? Curious, I said yes, and received a small, white postal stamp with the brown profile of the Father of the Nation on it. “Rupyacho Gandhi” accurately describes the value of the man in the country today.

Once, trying to cajole a colleague, I said, “Koi Baat Nahin”. He kept quiet for a moment, then wondered aloud why I’d chosen that moment to confess that I hadn’t bathed.

The same colleague was puzzled when I described someone very fair as ‘gori-chitti’. ‘Gori’ he knew was fair, but ‘chitti’ meant letter, hence the confusion. Films have popularised the Hindi language, but since many here have not learnt its grammar and vocabulary, there is often misinterpretation of the words. For instance, the innocent phrase ‘kamaal hai’ slipped out of my mouth one day. At that, the acquaintance I was conversing with appeared visibly shaken. Why, she demanded, had I called her, “kamaal hai’. It took many minutes before we sorted matters out.

She had heard and seen people use these two words in Hindi films. The voice that spoke them was always raised and so were the hands of the speaker. She had assumed they were abusive swear words. In an identical situation, another friend thought I was being nasty when I said to her, “Hudd Ho Gayee”. She thought ‘Hudd’ meant a female canine. Again, the reason for such an assumption was lost in a Bollywood movie she had seen sometime, some place. Whose language she had not quite followed.

The hotel industry has its own stories.

It was the prized New Millennium Eve. We wore new uniforms, guided guests, supervised decorations, checked who was where, etc. My colleague, Maharudhra Rajadhyakshya (name invented), was on duty in the lobby. The president of our hotel’s biggest client walked in. New to India, his English was heavily accented. MR held out a gracious hand. The foreigner mumbled something. MR figured the gentleman was introducing himself and reciprocated by telling him his name. Now Maharudhra Raja-dhyak-shya is not easy to pronounce so MR had to repeat the name several times. Both smiled and split. Then began the fun. The guest thought ‘Maharudhra Rajadhyakshya’ was the Indian way of saying ‘Happy New Year’ and greeted everybody thus.

Vocabularies and accents cause unintended confusion. We changed the room of one East Asian guest because people giggled whenever he said, “Wanh, wanh, wanh”. It sounded as if he were crying though he was merely calling out his room number one-one-one.

One morning a couple checked in tired and grimy. They were led to the health club for a wash, as their room wasn’t ready. When they returned, what they sounded like, “We’ve bruised our tit and want to it.” We gulped before guessing that they had “brushed their teeth” and wanted breakfast.

One walk-in was told that the cost per night was for the room, taxes and breakfast. Later, he came to the front desk to book the taxi he’d been promised, he said, by the boy who’d checked him in. We were puzzled, until we realized that he’d mistaken taxes for taxis and thought we were paying for his sight-seeing.

Another instance. A staff showing a deluxe room to a female guest explained that the extra cost was for “the bathtub, the wardrobe, and the view”. The lady rushed downstairs and told us just what she thought of our (unsuspecting) colleague. She had been warned about Indian men but, she ranted, this was unexpected. Subsequently we discovered that she had heard the last three words “and the view” as “ah-love-you”.

What is more interesting though is the evolution of phrases that are not found even in neighbouring Maharashtra or Karnataka which are only a couple of minutes’ drive away. One such is the quaint greeting that all Catholics extend to the Hindus during the Ganapati festival. “Happy Ganesh”, they say. It is like saying “Happy Christ” at Christmas, I pointed out to a friend for it doesn’t make sense. Perhaps not to outsiders, she said. But couldn’t I just gracefully accept the warmth behind the greeting? Why dissect and analyse the hows, buts and whys of it all? Ah well, I had to agree with her and now when any one wishes me “Happy Ganesh” I reply with a nasal, musical ‘Thankuaahn’ just as anyone else would.

MKG

If I were to walk around with a stick in my hand and a cloth around my trunk, no one would blink. The MTV and other channels have encouraged ‘that look’ as a Goan one; besides, most tourists come here to expose skin and wear cheap chappals, they sport the Gandhian look, in a way, Spartan, minimal.

If Gandhi were alive today, pukka bania that he was, he wouldn’t have encouraged people to bully the government with salt or khadi or getting hit with lathis. He was pragmatic and earthy. I have a feeling he would have encouraged us to take over neighbouring enemy countries by setting up shops, stalls, hawking Indian-made maal on their pavements, and making sure the exported brain-power contributed to the motherland by investing in schools and hospitals.

Our politicians wouldn’t have known what to do with him: I mean, how can one deal with unfashionable traits like honesty and ahimsa and whatnot? They (the principles, not the politicians) died with our grandmoms and, like with discarded grinding-stones, we have no idea what to do with them except sit them in the corner of a yard, a haven for scorpions and other creatures of the underworld.

Personally, though, I wish MKG were around, for even though the PM and his jokers, NaMo and his hardliners are out to destroy the sub-continent, I firmly believe the Father would have found a way out. He would have convinced the aam junta to yawn, stretch and participate literally and figuratively to clean up the country. He knew how to lead.

Wherever you are, Bapu, please do something for India. Soon.

Food For the Lord

                              Think Ganapati, think modaks. No other God eats those soft, white, bite-sized pleated domes. Making them is an art: the freshly ground rice flour is kneaded into a dough, the dough is lightly steamed and kneaded again. The stuffing is made with equal amounts of fresh, grated coconut-flesh and jaggery cooked together and flavoured with powdered cardamom and nutmeg. The wealthy add to it crushed almonds or pistachios. A small ball of the dough is moulded inside a ghee-greased palm and after the stuffing is held in place, gently ‘fingered’ into shape. It’s steamed yet again and eaten hot with melted ghee poured over it.

The ‘modak’ shape is now standardized. You can even buy boxes of mass-made modak-shaped pedhas to give as corporate gifts. In some homes, the traditional modaks aren’t steamed but fried (in which case the casing is made of wheat flour).  For some reason, Ganapati eats what he likes in multiples of 21. It’s said he eats 21 modaks in a single gulp. Not too difficult for someone with an elephant’s mouth.

During the period that the Ganapati is worshiped in a house, the inmates cannot eat anything non-vegetarian. Interestingly, onions and garlic aren’t considered ‘pure’ vegetarian fare either. The menu comprises dishes seldom found in restaurants, not repeated for any of the meals.

In our ancestral home, the breakfasts are either idli-sambar or uppeet (upma) made of semolina or dosa-like crepes. No eggs, no wheat flour used. Bananas, custard-apples, papayas, and other local fruit is kept readily available to ‘munch’ on lest one feels hungry, for lunch can happen only after the pooja-aarti is over, and that can take up the entire day if the priest gets delayed somewhere.

Lunch and dinner have similar menus: sprouted green-gram curry, plain-cooked unseasoned daal, two vegetables, a salad of finely chopped cucumbers and its raw cousins, a gravy made with finely ground coconut, puris (deep fried puffed bread), and rice. A sweet kheer is a must. All the items,  including pickles and chutneys are served in a particular way and served on a banana leaf first to Ganapati. Only when the offering is prayed over can lunch be declared ‘open’. In conservative homes, men eat before the women.

Never mind the religious significance. The Ganapati (or Ganesh) Festival is a social one. Family members converge onto the ancestral home. Cousins meet annually, old and young catch up on news, marriages are arranged, gossip about the old and the dead get whispered from ear to ear.

Fish-loving foodies who keep the idol in their homes for eleven days suffer. Suffer? Yes. Goans can’t live without fish, you would know that by now. And so many days of strict no-fish enforced penance is a cruelty of sorts (sob). I’m told that in some homes, a small fire is lit outside a window and a bit of dried fish tossed on it. The smelly smoke encourages hunger and that’s how some die-hard fish-foodies survives. More commonly, the moment the idol is immersed, people race to the market to buy the fish that they craved for through the holy-days of the festival.

Interestingly, the food made for the goddess Gauri has a fixed menu. When she was pregnant with Ganapati, someone told me the myth goes, she didn’t like the taste of salt in her food. In her honour, in our home, the pumpkin is cooked with ginger, green chillies and grated coconut, but without salt. Since none of the food can be tasted until it’s served, all the other dishes have to be made by experienced hands. But this pumpkin dish can be made by the youngest daughter/in-law because the salt has to be added later. Perhaps this was a way to introduce the young girls to the complicated kitchen regulations they would subsequently have to handle.

The best part of the Ganapati food is the prasad. A mixture of roasted coconut-shavings and poppy-seeds mixed with cashews, raisins, sugar-crystals and a dash of honey is my favourite. The halwa made of semolina with mashed banana is another. The slightly sticky fluid made of curd, milk, ghee, honey and sugar is something one gets just a spoonful of.

The heavy downpours are over, light showers reign. Ganapati’s arrival and departure announce the harvesting of one crop and the sowing of another.