Ban the Bhiknna

Whilst the rest of the country’s discussing on television whether it’s a good idea to ban beef, in my corner of the village, I’m wondering what to do about the hundred odd ‘bhiknna’ that lie fermenting in the soil, quite literally raising a stink. (For the ‘bhailley’ who haven’t a clue what ‘bhiknna’ means: in Konkanni, we use the same word for groundnuts and some people also use it to describe the edible jackfruit-seed, but here I’m talking about the cashew-nut.) Technically, it’s not the cashew-nut that lies fermenting in the soil, it’s the yellow, pulpy fruit whose flesh is acrid and is the source for the stinky ‘feni that tourists think we Goans drink all day long. In my vado, there are several dozen cashew trees, none intentionally planted by the dwellers. In years gone by, squirrels and other pesky creatures played their role in transporting the nuts hither and thither. The big, bad monsoons encouraged them (nuts, not squirrels) to sprout and grow, year by year, into productive trees. Trouble is, the trees are now adults and giving us trouble, shedding sickeningly smelly fruit over the roads, on roofs and inside compounds. Carefully though I tread, I occasionally step on one, it gets squelched and my nostrils and olfactory lobes suffer for hours together. Nowadays, no one comes to pick the nuts, either, for money or love, and the fruits lie rotting everywhere. Cash crop my foot. Driving taxis for the whites (racist term, commonly used hereabouts) is what parents encourage their children to do. When I came to settle in this village, if there was a heap of cashew fruit sulking in the corner of a garbage pile, cows and pigs would slurp at the rotting mess, clearing it up in minutes. I don’t remember any heady stink. Today, no pigs to be seen and the rare cow that comes a-wandering prefers to poke her nose into any plastic bag that floats her way. I’ve noticed that many cows eat the bag along with its contents. I wonder why any beef-eater would want to eat the meat of an animal raised on such food, but then, as Shri Husband points out to Bai Goanna in an aside, I have a tendency to ask stupid questions. I get unwanted vibes where/when-ever I go to eat in other peoples’ homes. Meat-eaters look at me askance because half my family is vegetarian. Vegetarians keep me at a distance because I have family/friends that eat meat. Flesh on hooves, covered with feathers or scales, inside shells… abstinence from these, for religious reasons, I can understand. But recently, I had guests who avoided all of the above, plus didn’t ‘touch’ ‘masoor-daal’ and mushrooms. Nothing to do with allergies. I was informed that “we don’t eat” the stuff followed by “in ‘ours’ it’s not considered nice”. Comprehend? If you understood what that meant, you’re a true-blue Indian from India. You will then also understand that ‘we’ don’t eat non-veg/onion/garlic on Mondays, that Tuesdays and Thursdays are also vegetarian days, that some people are extra-devout on Saturdays, that food specific to certain days can be consumed on ‘non-God days’, etc. Wednesdays and Sundays are ‘safe’. You annoy none of the million gods no matter what you eat on those day. No, wait, Sunday is Ravivar… if you worship the Sun-god, then that’s not a safe day for you. A true-blue Indian will be unaware that the term ‘non-veg’ belongs to India. In other countries, the concept of having different kitchens/utensils/people for cooking flesh/non-flesh is not understood. I digress. Since most of our local cows have either died of starvation or got killed by speeding vehicles, the stink of the rotting cashew fruit has ‘intoxicated’ my life. Shri Husband pointed out to Bai Goanna: “She talks nonsense without any help.” Bai Goanna retorted : “Writes, not talks.” Shri Husband said: “Same thing.” I spent some afternoons collecting the fallen cashew fruits, separating the seeds from the smelly, soft flesh and drying them. I made a fire with twigs, put upon it a perforated metal sheet, and roasted the seeds. Burnt my fingers, and made an oily mess trying to skin them. Some seeds were barely roasted, others were burnt and fragmented. Yet, all whom I offered them to agreed that ‘this taste’ was incomparable. Everyone who eats off a barbecue sighs with delight about the aroma of smoke. To me, effort-to-enjoyment ratio didn’t match. I won’t do it again, will leave it to enthusiasts who like to eat wood-fire-cooked ‘jevonn’. I’ve been informed by neighbours that the un-picked seeds littering our locality are likely to sprout and grow into trees. In the years to come, I will get ‘gassed-out’ by the smell each summer. But, who knows, some bright minds might decide that, like beef, intoxication is not something India should have… the cashew came from foreign lands, was unknown in Vedic times, etc., … so ban, or at least the fermentation of, the cashew fruit. Don’t know whether that falls under the purview of ‘swatchha Bharat, nitall Goem’.

The Other Female in Shri Husband’s Life.

Shri Husband’s fallen in love. I’m far from jealous. I welcome the lack of attention. My ‘sauten’ has a tail, four legs and a whisper-mew that not even God can hear. How she came into our lives is a story by itself. A co-passenger on a Konkan Kanya journey exchanged phone numbers with me. I fall for the ‘we must meet again’ line and in some kind of stupid ‘josh’ end up doing such potentially dangerous things. This co-passenger was harmless, though, I thought, and once in Goa she really did connect with me. “My neighbour has this cute kitten” she wrote on WhatsApp, the sentence accompanied by a photo to prove it. Shri Husband, who hated felines until that moment, figured that it would be good to have a creature that eats cockroaches and spiders to save on pest control expenditure. Little did he know that the wiles of the yet-another-female in the house would change his life drastically. She’s officially named ‘Maows’, which rhymes with ‘mouse’, confusing people, rodents and the other cats in the neighbourhood when we call out to her. Bai Goanna calls her Chingi and I call her Chicktu… because she’s always clinging to Shri Husband (the other reason is because I’m Chick-one, see?) As practical first-things-first sort of people, we trained her to use a litter-box even before she had her first sip of milk in our house. She took to the cardboard-box lined with newspaper and did her ‘business’ dutifully in it. Till she discovered that there was more drama if she did it in the kitchen sink or fresh laundry pile. She hasn’t done it so far—in the kitchen sink or laundry pile, I meant-- just threatened to, but it was enough to have us running around, ‘koyto’ in hand, wanting to kill her then and there. That she’s still alive speaks much for her agility and the state of our aging reflexes and aching joints. Many are the times I’ve vowed to feed her to the monkey that occasionally visits our plot. Bai Goanna tells me monkeys are vegetarians. One taste of cat-meat might help them change their habits, I retort. When she sleeps or begs for something, it’s heart-melting. That look, oh, that look. Google told us inoculations against rabies and cat-flu were necessary. Getting in touch with a local veterinarian wasn’t difficult as Goa has a good doctor-patient ratio for pets. Astrid Almeida has further confused our cat by calling her MyLittleFriend. The cat doesn’t know what her real name is. Neither do we, although she’s been with us for a couple of months now. We have, within jogging distance, a couple of dog-spas and –salons and one clinic run by a dog-psychologist and –behaviour-therapist. Nothing for cats. My neighbours, ‘niz’-Goemkars all, consider cats as neither pets nor pests, just nuisances to be tolerated, like ‘jalleraan’ (mosquitoes, you know, in Konkanni). The cats that hover around ‘nustemkarnni’ Rose-Marie’s wooden plank when/where she sells fish each evening, are so tough, we could send them for the Olympics. I’ve seen people click their pictures. If ever you pass our village Panchayat in the evening, stop by for a ‘dekho’ where Rose-Marie squats to see what happens. It’s a very Goan activity, feeding fish heads, tails, fins and insides to cats. Dogs are named and called affectionately, ‘Tommy’, ‘Shivaji’, ‘Sultan’. The one in our ‘waddo’ responds to ‘peto’ (Konkanni for pet) or ‘guddo’ (good-dog mispronounced). Cats, poor things, are shooed away and seldom have decent names; ‘hoosh’ and ‘huttt’ are terms snapped at them whenever they come to close. In spite of having thin skins, cats don’t care. You can’t make the tiniest dent in a cat’s self-esteem no matter how many curses you hurl at it. I’ve observed that. Shri Husband, ever poking his nose into my affairs and articles, said: “You have so much time to observe such things. No wonder the dusting, chopping, shopping, cleaning, cooking, doesn’t get done ever… never mind on time.” I didn’t say a word. No point. Men are from Mars, etc. Also, Bai Goanna has pointed out that the lesser I do, the more he helps. I’m using that observational data to advantage. Cat has grown from kitten to adolescent. Lanky, adventurous nuisance. She gets into the fridge/wardrobe and after the door is shut, mews. We can’t make out from where the pathetic sound is coming and a frantic indoor hunt follows. In the compound, she climbs trees and is terrified of looking down. Shri Husband gallantly puts a ladder against the trunk and climbs up to rescue her. She goes further up and hisses and claws at him. Temptation in the form of fish-heads gets her safely back into his arms. Both behave like honey-mooning tourists crossing Chogm Road: disjointedly leaning towards each other, not bothering about what people will say, purring and cooing, petting and cuddling. Pets make people do strange things. Imagine a no-nonsense type A man behaving like this with a whimpering, spineless female. (Famous last words.) Now, cat has found herself a playmate-boyfriend. They chase the hose when we are watering the plants. He comes close to her, she spits viciously, he doesn’t mind. She invites him to share the fish she has for breakfast, he eats it all and she has to spend the rest of the day hunting moths, frogs and little birds for food; she doesn’t mind. She treats Shri Husband as a great big mouse and jumps all over him when he lays himself down to rest after a hard day’s work. Chiding, however severe, doesn’t work. A dog would have shrunk in shame if the Master had raised his voice, and behaved well for the rest of its life. The cat is Goan, doesn’t bother about wrong-doings being corrected, penalties are mere inconveniences. Shri Husband won’t give up. Conscientiously tries to remedy her ways. The government should employ him in the yet-to-be-formed Ministry of Morals and Ethics. Until then, I must share Shri Husband’s energy and affection with a furry, four-legged softly-mewing female.