Cross-pollination

          It took us two days from Srinagar to Jammu via Udhampur by bus and five from Jammu to Tambaram near Chennai by train. There were no halts, though we changed trains. A toddler and a dog were part of our entourage, adding to our troubles and excitement. From Bareilly to Goa in a ‘sixties’ vintage Fiat also took five days; nights were spent in homes of friends in towns along the way. Hotels were rare and unaffordable, as was air-travel. Shri Husband and I lived an adventurous life; these are two of the several long journeys we’ve undertaken across the sub-continent in the days before television, bottled water, the internet and mobile phones came into our lives. A ‘hold-all’ carried our mattresses, linen and shoes, and trunks carried our clothes and valuables. Food hampers were stuffed with non-perishable snacks. Water? We got off at platforms and drank it from the taps, never giving a thought to infections. Made us hardy.

The problem was language. As we crossed geographical boundaries, from the desert to the mountains to the coasts, the features of the people (and landscapes) changed rapidly, as did the food they ate, the clothes they wore, the crafts they made. Travel wasn’t possible on Discovery or National Geographic channels, nor through packaged tours.

(“I could,” I said to Shri Husband, “actually, write a best-seller on the experiences, you know, and make a lot of money.” His answer: “Ha.”)

          Today, travel is different and the change visible.

The mekhlas-chadors of the north-east, the lungis of UP, dhotis of Maharashtra and the runda-mundoos of Kerala are converted into salwar-kameezes. The Punjabi-suit (that’s what we called it in my childhood), is known as ‘dress’ in the land of its origin today. All the brilliant weaves that made gorgeous saris in erstwhile eras are now re-designed to make ‘suits’, something that is no longer what only men wear. (To anyone who moans how the elegant sari is getting extinct, I say, Indian men long ago discarded the airy dhoti-lungi for the restrictive but practical pant-shirt. Now it’s the women’s turn to get comfortable.)

Like Bollywood, this fusion-fashion has united the country imperceptibly. In most urban and semi-urban areas, clothes no longer indicate caste or region. Besides cable-television and mobile-phones, the other things connecting this vast country are the lokotsavs.

          At the recently concluded one in Panaji, I found Goans flocking to gobble dal-kachoris from the Gujeratis and Rajasthanis. They (the local customers, not the Gujeratis/Rajasthanis) expertly tackled its sticky, heavy, utterly delicious sweet variation, too.  Embroidered linen, crochet-laced children’s-wear, hand-made leather footwear, preserves, masalas, people were no longer unfamiliar with the wares on sale. An acquaintance spotted the fine difference between a brown cane-basket and a boiled-cane green-hued one. I saw a couple purposefully striding towards a Ferozabad stall that had metal-studded glass pendants on sale. “The only other place I can get similar things is in Italy,” I overheard. One upper-middle-class woman, on my asking multiple questions, admitted that she came from a long distance away to spend several hours each day at the utsav to search for artsy bargains: “I buy a year’s stock of gifts.”

          Birthday return-presents, Diwali-Christmas decorations, wedding reminders /takeaways are no longer necessarily locally made. That’s true the world over. Fridge magnet mementoes showing (Goan?) coconut trees, caps with pictures of churches printed on them, checked chuddies with drawstrings… are all made in Thailand.

          Now that most states in India have ‘labour’ from ‘outside’ because ‘no-one (here) wants to work anymore’, an undocumented change is happening. Businessmen from Andhra starting eateries in Goa are hiring cooks from Manipal and waiters from Karnataka to serve customers from anywhere in the world. The cuisine stretches from Schezuan samosas to wine-flavoured rasagullas to prawn-filled puris dipped in vodka-pani.

          The resultant cross-pollination of cultures in best reflected in language. In the pure form of Konkanni/ Marathi that I learned in my growing years, a ‘polka’ was worn under the loose ‘padar’ end of a sari to cover the chest, and a ‘parkar’ beneath the waist/pleats. The sari has long been relegated to wedding-wear, hence these words are out-of-use in my home. The other day, I mentioned them to my house-help who wears the traditional attire day in and out. She stared at me blankly, uncomprehendingly. I brought out my old clothes and pointed out to her what I was referring to. She giggled and corrected me: “Say ‘blouse’ and ‘petticoat’. Don’t talk to me in English, I don’t understand it.” She has adopted the words ‘blouse’ (pronounced ‘billa-ooss’) and ‘petticoat’ as her own.

          I always pay attention to the views of regular travellers and I don’t mean airline crew.

          I asked one of the stall-keepers, who’s been criss-crossing the country doing lokotsav business for the past many years, which his/her favourite state was/is. “Goa,” s/he said, “And Chennai”. S/he may have said the first to please me, I surmised, but why Chennai? S/he replied, “We don’t get drunks and louts bothering us in these two places.” Whoever says that Goa’s a place for drinking should meet this person. I was then informed me that the one thing  common everywhere was the hera-feri that happened during allotment of stall locations. “Paisa,” she said, “works wonders.”

          “Good to know,” quipped Shri Husband cynically, “that in this world, where terrorists’ bullets and the rise/fall of the dollar are unpredictable, some things remain unchanging.”

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The Coconut is a Grass

        The real name of the coconut you grind for your curries is Cocos nucifera. It’s a member of the family Arecaceae, a relative of the supari. Wikipedia tells me the palm and its nut get the ‘coco’ part of their name from the Portuguese/Spanish word for a person’s head. Apparently, the three scars on its ‘face’ make it resemble a human skull. “You didn’t know that, did you?” I asked Shri Husband.

He grunted. Once. Which meant he was actually paying attention, but pretending not to. Does that often.

        I took the opportunity of his not saying anything and went on: “It’s not really a tree, you know.”

“Not a tree?” queried Shri Husband. “How so?”

“Our Chief Minister said so.”

“When? Context? Reason?” Abba, I thought, here starts the why-session. 

But I was prepared. I said, “At a state cabinet meeting chaired by him last Friday. It seems, since it (the Cocos nucifera not the state cabinet) has no branches, it can’t be classified as a tree.”

“Well, it’s a palm; but, tell me, did he not have any other important things to discuss with his colleagues? Could he not leave nomenclature to scientists?”

How would I know, I’m only a poorly-informed housewife, I thought, but kept quiet, as is my wont. Then I told him: “Now, if you want to cut a coconut tree you don’t need to take permission from the forest department.”

“I don’t want to cut any… array, you just called it a tree,” he corrected me. “Call it a palm. And the coco-fruit is a drupe, not a nut,” he went on.
        Huh? I thought. I’m ok with calling it a palm. But coco-drupe? coco-fruit? My curries won’t taste the same with these names. (Once, long ago, he’d told me that the cashew wasn’t a nut either, that was also a drupe. Later he added that names stick, never mind botanical definitions.)

I ignored that and informed him: "The government has approved the amendment to the Goa Daman and Diu Preservation of Trees Act, 1984. So now the coco-palm isn’t a tree.”

“After its productive years are over, a coconut tree is inevitably cut. So, does the amendment seeks to omit coconut tree from the definition of a tree as in Section 1-A?”

I agreed: “That’s right.” Then, not wanting to miss a chance to correct him, pointed out: “You also called it a tree. Say ‘palm’.”  

Both of us stepped out to see the lanky, towering Cocos nuciferas in our neighbourhood. It was hard to believe, though we know it to be true, that such a glorious crown so high above us stood on a foundation of a root system known as fibrous or adventitious, a characteristic of the grass species. Only a few of the roots penetrate deep into the soil for stability. Other types of large trees produce a single downward-growing tap root with a number of feeder roots growing from it.  Cocos nucifera continues to produce roots from the base of the stem throughout its life. The number of roots produced depends on the age of the tree and the environment.

I said: “A tree that's 60 to 70 years old, could have more than 3,600 roots.”

Shri Husband commented: “Who’s counted?”

Me: “Does that matter? Facts are facts, no?”

He nodded in agreement. He’s reasonable, sometimes.

He said: “The earliest description of the coconut palm was given by Cosmos of Alexandria in his ‘Topographia Christiana’ written about 545 AD.” I wondered of what use such information was to me.

Before his began his tirade on the goodness, etc., of the coco-drupe or whatever the Cocos nucifera fruit actually is, I was beginning to wonder whether this change of name would affect the prices of our ‘nustya-ros’, ‘alsande-sukey’ and ‘xacuti’.

We don’t have to grow our own coco-palms in Goa, I thought. After we’ve cut ours to widen roads and build still more houses, we could always import coco-drupes from neighbouring states, like we do vegetables, milk, pulses, sugar, even rice.

Shri Husband seems to read my mind. Can you believe, he interrupted my thoughts. He said: “I guess fish is the only food left we can call our ‘own’.” I ignored that and returned to my thoughts.

I’m not concerned with the builder lobby, nor do I side with the environmentalists, I’m only apprehensive about how to put food on the table. If I’m told to spell banana as ‘c-h-i-k-o-o’, I will do so, provided I don’t have to pay more for it.

“And,” said Shri Husband before he walked out of the room, “Invest in a good solar-cooker. After all the natural, shady greenery is gone, you can save on the cost of the LPG whose subsidy the government’s taking away.”

After he left, I thought to myself, how strange, that the coconut tree as I know it has something in common with grass. Can’t imagine ‘a cow eats grass’ being re-written as ‘a cow eats coco-palm’s cousin’. Just doesn’t sound right. But ‘aamche goem, harit goem’ might honestly become ‘brown Goa’, sooner rather than later. I don’t know how, but I think maybe it’s somehow linked to the official category-change of our dear, beloved Cocos nucifera.

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Post-Pathankot Chit-Chat in My House.

               Ever since I saw the attack on the airbase at Pathankot on television, I’ve been thinking.

               Whenever I think, I remember Shri Husband’s words: “Thinking tires you. Go and do something worthwhile instead.”

So I do my thinking secretly.

               First thought: I wonder how many of my village neighbours know where Pathankot is. Or Punjab, for that matter. Never mind them, they’re bumpkins; even some of my college-attended acquaintances won’t be able to point it out on a map. Fewer will know which Indian states share an international border with another country. Honestly, even I have difficulty in naming all our states, but I can do it (without googling), after some stumbling. Trouble is, Bai Goanna says, my mind is filled with names of the latest restaurants around, how to make money by selling plots/homes to those with cash to spare, which bike/car to buy with the money thus ‘earned’ and whether broken beer-bottles chucked along the road indicate prosperous tourism. Strangely enough, one or two persons I met were able to tell me the air-fares to and from Pathankot. Where interests go, to each his/her own, I say.  

               Second thought: after watching senior television-reporters hyper-ventilating questions beginning with ‘why’, people might believe that dealing with hidden terrorists’ bullets is like playing table-tennis. ‘Ping’ – that was my bullet, ‘pong’ that was yours, my turn now, and so on. In the absence of referees and rules, ethics and luck, death happens. Makes attractive headlines. Debilitating injuries, quite often a fate far worse than death both for survivors and their families, are never mentioned.

Third: how the infiltration into a military ‘camp’ happened was figured out by tweet-comments. The dissection and de-briefing was done through ‘the media’ (as we call our television network) and the government and public told who did what, when, where, why etc. Think of any family-murder covered by private national television-channels, and you’ll know what I mean. Culprits are interrogated, investigations made, loopholes found and judgements passed by tv-channel-staff, before cameras. (In between advertisements, of course, which sell insurance, toothpastes and packaged holidays.)The police, the courts and the elected representatives… all learn from The Screen what’s happening around them and in their midst. That’s how they find out what the nation wants to know.

I made the mistake of saying this aloud.

Shri Husband started off his lecture-baazi. His immediate reaction was: “I wonder whether any news-channel discusses neuro-surgeries through telephonic feedback and tells the medical team inside the operation theatre just what to do to the patient whilst s/he is under the scalpel, all anaesthetized. Or at least keep discussing her/his condition while the procedure is being done.” 

A moment punctured by inhaling a breath, and he carried on: “Reporters seem to learn in fifteen minutes what professionals take decades to get expertise in. Remarkable.”

Couldn’t make out whether he was serious. I’m obtuse at times.

Following his words, I tried to recall what I see/  hear on the news-channels. Or what I don’t. For instance, I haven’t heard anyone yell into a lapel-mike ‘the nation wants to know why Indians are using so much plastic and choking whatever sewage-disposal systems we have’ or ‘…why our students prefer to raise funds for building places of worship instead of demanding better schools/colleges’. Actually, I’ve never heard any channel ask the citizens of India what they do responsibly. Can you imagine the government saying that it wants to know how you’ve supported your local primary health centre or dealt with wastage of water? Can you imagine any television channel asking anyone at all ‘how did you help yourself’ instead of asking ‘what did the government do for you’?

I digress.

Closer home, I figured security is an important concern. I don’t want to die violently at the hands of a criminal. The guards at our malls/ shopping-centres/ supermarkets/ theatres/ banks are trained to open doors and help with heavy luggage. They even double-up as peons. (A peon is a professional no office can do without. Always male, this multi-purpose human being is keeper of secrets, carrier of files/ pen-drives, bearer of chai-nashta… more about him some other time.) Where was I? Ah, the security guards: they have uniforms and, sometimes, beepers. They let you in after asking you whether you’re carrying a water-bottle or anything to eat. If you say ‘yes’, they request you to keep the stuff on the table/floor near the door. After the program or your work is over, you can collect it. Remarkably, you will get your stuff back. I have. Always. The women-guards don’t touch you. If they do, like at the airports, it tickles.

Another word for a security guard, especially in gated communities, is ‘watchman’. Again, always male (feminists please note), always multi-tasking as gate-opener, message-keeper and deliveries receiver.

Shri Husband progressed to phase-2 of lecture-baazi: “Security also includes inoculations against tuberculosis, prevention of diseases like rabies, tackling fire-hazards like loose electricity wires above cotton-cloth wedding pandals, learning skills that will get one a job…”

Bai Goanna, brave woman, interrupted him mid-sentence with a loud ‘Abba!! Enough!’.

“We were talking about Pathankot and national security,” she said, bringing the conversation on-track.

Shri Husband hates to have the second last word. He re-interrupted: “Those guys at the border, in those horrid wintry conditions, at deadly altitudes, surviving cruel winds are facing bullets so we can sit here comfortably to crib about and analyse what we see on television.” And out he walked.

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usband H

 

              

Resolutions Past and Present

         Everyone I know has made, at least once in their lives, the resolution ‘I will study regularly/hard/sincerely’. Multiple times, more likely. Could be on one’s birthday or at New Year’s or when one makes a promise to God (‘please let me pass this time and next time I’ll study hard, I promise you’).

         When the medical professionals proclaimed ‘fat is bad’, young teenage girls, plump young mothers and men with abdominal flab included in their resolutions ‘I must eat less, exercise more’ and ‘…flatten those abs’. My weight-loss battle continues, with the adipose ever-winning. Resolutions like ‘I’ll eat less, only salad’ have failed. Repeatedly. The only way I could comfort myself for the misery generated by such disappointment was by eating a crisp, fried snack or syrupy sweet.

         “That,” Shri Husband once told me. “Will load you with heaps of useless calories.”

         I retorted: “Wafers and bebinca slices are difficult to digest. The more I eat the heavy stuff, the more energy I need to digest it. For every 50 such calories that I eat, I need 70 calories to digest it. So the more heavy food I eat, the thinner I will get.” When confronted with logic, Shri Husband falls silent. Ha.

         Housework challenged persons like me have a million times broken resolutions to properly dust corners, crevices, under and behind tables, chairs and cupboards. To keep a resolution, one has to choose it carefully, nurture it day and night. No point getting influenced by impulsive random thoughts like ‘I will keep my surroundings spic and span from tomorrow until eternity’. If all of us thought like that and actually worked towards it sincerely, our country might get garbage free. Which means the Swatch Bharat campaign might be successful. Means we would participate and contribute to a government plan without protests and cribs. (Shudder), won’t that destroy our national character? What next, display better driving manners? Obey the law? If all of us made and kept resolutions like those, we’ll turn into America/ Germany/ Japan, yaar. It would definitely destroy our Indianness.

         But I know people who keep resolutions. Villagers in my part of Goa decide collectively that (unless they drive taxis) they won’t venture out on NY’s eve. The annual Chogm-Road Traffic Jam helps.

         For the year 2016, I’ve decided to make easy-to-keep resolutions. I will be on the internet not less than six hours a day. Might have to change my sleeping pattern to accommodate that. Then, I’ve decided to meet people mainly on Facebook: simpler than burning petrol and adding to above Jam. Only two.

         “Your,” Shri Husband recalled an anonymous quote and applying it to me said, “New Year’s resolutions are something that go in one year and out the other.” Very funny.

But that’s not true. One year I’d committed to never doing vigorous exercise. I’ve stuck to the commitment. Another time, I decided to be sensible and buy myself new footwear before it wore out/broke. No more crises-oriented shopping, I’d declared. Stuck to that, too. Yet another was to watch Arnav Goswami’s rants on television daily. One dose of that cacophony teaches patience, tolerance, stuff that the meditation-gurus charge to teach spiritual weaklings. Sometimes I feel the urban wildlife on the television channels is more jungli than my forested village surroundings in tropical Goa.

         Never mind my resolutions. People I know have made some weird resolutions. Some friends have promised themselves that they’ll finish reading the books they’ve bought and shelved. Won’t happen; by the time they finish dusting what’s accumulated on them (the books, not the friends), they’ll be tired and in bed. It’s good that people still buy books, though, feeds authors and looks nice in show-cases.

One guy has sworn to buy only big fish, at whatever price. (There’s a history to this. Since the hoteliers buy the larger versions of the tasty fish, eg: visvonn, white pomfrets, chonnak, our local fish-vendor gets tiny, bony vellyo, bangdulay, mannka, leppo, etc. This irritates my friend (and many others), who feels that he’s not getting what’s rightfully his to eat. “Why,” he asks, “should traditional non-fish-eaters come holidaying here to chomp something that we so-o love.” My trying to reason with him that fish isn’t chomped doesn’t help.)

Another has vowed to only receive calls on her mobile phone. Considering the bills she’s run up, it’s a practical decision. Will help settle her vocal cords, too. She’s the same one who had once resolved to get herself a groom within 12 months. She’s still single. Happily so.

         Up in Delhi, I hope Kejriwal has resolved to continue to create controversies, they’re good entertainment; and NaMo might decide to go easy on the travelling and wield the whip within the country instead. May our neighbouring states decide to share water/ electricity/ manual labour/ vegetables with us. Simultaneously, may we Goans resolve to harvest rain-water and start wielding our brooms/ koytay ourselves lest the neighbours not oblige.

Here, in my house, Bai Goanna has borrowed Joey Adams’ quote to wish everybody. She’s going around telling friends/ relatives/ acquaintances: “may all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions”. She can’t say that to me because I’ve chosen my resolutions carefully; as mentioned above, mine for 2016 are hard to break and will last a long, long time.

Just to let you know, this is my hundredth piece of ‘Bhiknna Bhajoon Kha’.

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Virgin? No, Crude.

          The first time I heard a friend use the term ‘virgin’ whilst referring to a cooking medium, I didn’t know what had or hadn’t been done to the liquid for it to have earned that status. Then came ‘extra virgin’ to further confuse my generally-muddled brain.

I asked Shri Husband what it meant and received a “don’t be silly” in return. The term (‘extra virgin’, not ‘don’t be silly’) was parked in a corner of my memory until one day Bai Goanna said virgin olive oil was good for the health.

Me: “Oh?”

She said she’d read about it in a magazine or twenty. For the last many years, she’s been concerned about her well-being. She drinks warm water with lemon and honey in the morning, followed by oats/cornflakes with fruit-platter, eats garlic all the time, bananas with tea, dry-roasted puffed-rice if she feels snacky, just two rotis or a measured amount of rice with lentil and vegetable soup, a single portion of steamed chicken/fish as a treat twice a week. Only multiple-grain breads, thank you. Slimy green drinks are her favourites, and extractions of yeast and other smelly fungi keep her immune system strong. She runs pre-dawn full-marathons for fun, and solves maths puzzles to keep the grey-cells agile. So when she pronounced ‘good for the health’ I knew she knew what she was talking about.

“Virgin oil,” she gravely said, “is the first extraction from crushed olives. Cold-pressed, strained.”

She said she drizzled it on salads and rubbed it on elbows and heels to prevent chaffing.  She asked which oil I used.

“Whatever is available at the vanni’s,” I confessed.

“Always check the label for the nutrition,” she said.

I check it only for the price; but didn’t admit it right then. Mine’s a sambar-guzzling, xeet-kodhi family. We eat what we pluck from our compound (not garden, definitely not garden) during the monsoons. Wild stuff that our locals say we must eat: ‘alloo’ leaves, for example, and drumstick flowers. (BTW, these drumsticks aren’t chicken legs nor musical-instrument attendants; they’re ‘muska-sango’). But they’re so-o not fashionable. I don’t find those ingredients in any cookery classes/programs.

In fact, none of the things we eat at home are ever seen on television: phow with grated coconut and jaggery, bhakryo made with nachnnya pittho, and eaten with tisryaa-ek-shippi. Ever since someone told me shell-fish is good for cholesterol and cholesterol is bad for us, I’ve stopped eating it. No, actually, I’ve stopped telling people that we eat it. When I do (tell people, I mean, not the eating part), I’m armed with references and links that say actually-actually shell-fish are good when cooked in the traditional way, with organic ingredients. Somehow when the words traditional and organic are thrown in, everyone’s convinced about the goodness of the dish.   

I hesitatingly admitted to Bai Goanna: “I bought coconut-oil the other day. Cold-pressed, unrefined.” Hesitatingly because the last time I said such a thing, my audience of two burst out laughing thinking it was a joke. “Hair oil in food? Haha-hoho,” they chortled. “It’s good for a massage, though.” (At the time, I was reminded of an aunt who, when told that people in north and east India used mustard oil as a medium for cooking said, “That’s why their intellect is dense and their speech not sweet”. Had she been alive today, she’d have been labelled an ignorant, generalizing racist.)

To my surprise, Bai Goanna told me: “That’s good. It’s one of the best oils going around.” Really? I was puzzled. I mean until the other day it was only extra-virgin olive oil. What changed?

“New research,” she clarified. “You must avoid palm-oil. Some extracts are fine, of sunflower-seed, safflower-seed, sesame-seeds…”

I got into the groove and sang along: “Cornseed, rapeseed, canola, jatropa, rice-bran, jojoba, grape-seed, kapop, soya-bean, castor-oil,  biodiesel…”

“That’s enough.” Two words from Shri Husband and the larynx goes chup.

Bai Goanna isn’t intimidated by Shri Husband. She carried on with her gyaan: “Crude vegetable oil is the unrefined, unprocessed oil produced from vegetables - in the natural vegetable oil state when it is first extracted.  It undergoes further processing and to take it from its crude form to a refined state. Crude to refined makes it useable and safe for human consumption.” She threw in words like non-glyceride, trace metals, oxidation and contaminants. Fascinating tongue-twisters.

The same evening we met a nice young man who said he worked in the oil industry. He said he specialized in ‘crude-oil’.

“Virgin?” asked Bai Goanna, still enthused by our oil-talk.

Shri Husband interrupted: “Crude. Crude oil. Petroleum.”

The young man helpfully added: “I work in a refinery. It makes naphtha, gasoline, kerosene, the liquid petroleum gas you use in your kitchen. High-tech.”

“Extra virgin then?” Bai Goanna clarified.

“Crude,” both screamed at her.

I’ve no idea why, but an inexplicable awkwardness seemed to stall that conversation and Shri Husband is still angry with my best friend.

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