lockdown 700 students.

I rarely write serious stuff.
I work as Administrator of three schools. Two (a Konkanni-medium primary school and a high school) get grant-in-aid from the government and one is unaided.
A few of our ‘aided’ children, from standards I-VIII come to school attracted by the midday-meal provided by the government. We can’t help them with food through their vacations anytime, even in years past, that’s true. But, the lockout that flowed from 22 Mar into the summer holidays meant many of them would be drinking/eating Pepsi/vada-paav (or basic fare like chapati-onions equivalent) for more than two months.
These midday-meals comprising two pulses and two vegetables, and bread, are monotonous, but nutritious. When I joined, and found that on some days the food was bad, I threw a minor tantrum and threatened to complain to the authorities. After that, the local women’s Self-Help Group started making pretty good stuff. (Aside: four women cater to a total of 1200 students in different schools, daily, in Porvorim. They start cooking at 0445 in the morning and dispatch the dabbas by 0945. Covid19 has locked down on their income, approx. Rs 7000/m/person.)
The UNaided school’s fees are low, approximately Rs 600/month; I don’t know whether the parents will henceforth be able to afford even those.
The lockdown means a large number of students would lose out on routine. I don’t mean a rigid time-table, but expected events like getting a meal at all or an uninterrupted night’s rest. A single room shared by family members and ‘guests’ from the village, even a tenant or two, don’t allow for the humdrum existence and privacy most middle-class persons take for granted. Unpleasant silences and high-decibel quarrels are the norm. Physical fights, substance abuse, sexual harassment provide highly avoidable excitement.
Considering they’re already lagging in studies compared to their better-off contemporaries from well-off homes and expensive schools, this gap—already big-- is going to be hard to fill over the years post-lockdown. Unlocking cannot be switched on, it will take time for the parents’ incomes to stabilize and for their homes to return to normalcy.
I read posts on Facebook. This is what comes to mind. The Covid-19 Lockdown, to those connected with schools like mine, is not about getting used to doing jhaadoo-pocha. Our PTA comprises plumbers, electricians, masons, tea-stall workers, maids and such like who have never had groceries home-delivered, who believe their children will get a better life than theirs because they wear a uniform and attend school with a bag and books.
Many of the semi-/illiterate parents aren’t unintelligent. They recognize how the Lockdown losses will affect them. So do those of my ilk. But we can plan. We won’t starve. They might.
Goa locked down a few days before the rest of the country. Schools and colleges were among the first to shut their doors to students, though the teachers/staff attended. Exams were initially cancelled, then postponed. For the first three days, only the stray dogs that prowl in the compound missed the children. The rest thought it was time to catch up with Whatsapp messages, finishing corrections and making long-pending register entries. By the time the national lockdown was announced on 22 Mar, there was a sense of unease: what to do about the IV, IX and X standards?
Standard IV is when the child leaves primary to enter middle school. It involves re-admission, even if it is into the same institution’s senior section. Standard X appears for the Board examination. It’s the first rung of the future, the first external exam. The backgrounds of the students notwithstanding, our Board results have been good. Speaks well for the teachers/staff.
IX is important for a completely different reason. That is the only time a school need not promote a student who has not fared well over since the time s/he joined school, when students can decide whether they want to subsequently do vocational/academic courses, or take up jobs.
Until VIII, schools are supposed to continuously evaluate students through the year on classwork, homework, projects, oral responses, behaviour, attendance, etc. Practically, in a class of forty students, most of whom are first-generation school-goers, the only way to evaluate a child’s progress is through tests and exams. It is almost impossible to make a child repeat a year, which is why this policy has earned the name ‘no-fail’ policy.
Many of the 700+ students of my schools aren’t going to be learning music/craft with their parents. The online tutorials on the free channels are in English or Hindi; our Konkanni Primary kids won’t follow any of it. Even our high school students will find difficulty without guidance from a teacher. They must be whiling away their awake hours playing games on their parents’ phones. Or hanging around OUTside their homes as there’s not much space inside. The swampy, garage-littered surroundings won’t do much for their physiological/psychological well-being.
Much though people grumble about ‘government schools/teachers’, my small audit sample, restricted to these schools, has shown me that the teachers really do their best. They have to tackle more than finishing portions and imparting knowledge through modern teaching methods. They are faced with poverty, malfunctioning families and their consequences. They hand-hold the children from ages five to fourteen. Releasing them into the world at the best of times is heart-breaking.
The lockdown can’t be suddenly lifted. Whilst the haves will pick up the threads quite easily—their parents have spent quality time with them, their teachers have gently taught them the reading/writing/’rithmatic, craft/music/PE through virtual media, the have-nots would have developed deficiencies in nutrition, emotion and discipline.
Can I bring myself, anxious as I am about the future of ‘my’ students, to think about new recipes, embroidery, poetry, painting, when in isolation/solitude? Yes. I have running water, electricity, cooking-fuel, food, a roof and the ability to read. It helps.
But, the Covid-19 Lockdown has, after a very long time, forced something humourless to get typed out of my keyboard.

Engraved in Steel Covid Lockdown.

Covid-Lockdown = Spring-cleaning.

Whilst rummaging through kitchen drawers, something I saw triggered a typical Bambaiyya-Hindi phrase from long ago: “Iss per tera naam likha hai kya?”, commonly said-

• in school by mates who wouldn’t share exam timetables,
• in buses/trains during seat-grabbing,
• by clerks in government departments who took their own sweet time opening a lock/drawer/file,
• by uniformed guards at mall-entrances snapping at loiterers lingering near the luggage-rollers, curiously eyeing bags/packs.
• by acquaintances who wanted to puncture egos of foreign-returned persons who wouldn’t show them imported ball-point-pens (to own one meant you were a ‘someone’).

As I inspected the old utensils in my kitchen, I discovered how ‘naam-likha-hai’ might have originated.
In the old days, buildings and bungalows all over India were often named after a member of the family that built them: ‘Narayan Sadan’, ‘Champa Nivas’, ‘Radha Kunj’, ‘Pethe Nilayam’, ‘Umaid Bhavan’.

Peculiarly, at a lesser economic level, south of the Vindhyas, eg. Gujarat, Maharashtra, brass/steel-ware in bought in the 1930s-‘70s, was always ‘marked’ by names of the owners.

My mother-in-law’s possessions: The handle of every spoon/ladle/spatula/strainer, the side of each vati/ pela/ dabba/ taat/ zhaaknni (=bowl/tumbler/box/plate/lid) had a name/date engraved on it. Every vessel, big/tiny, had a history.

I read one written in English: Sow Savitri Ghanashyam Doiphude. (Sow=Sau=Mrs=Saubhagyavati). Who’s that, I ask my sister-in-law over the phone; ‘might have been a neighbour’, she said. Perhaps she had loaned my mother-in-law sugar in that dabba? Excellent cursive penmanship. The letters flowed.

A big and heavy paan-daan (closed container that held betel-leaves, supari, tumbaakkoo, choona, kaat, dry-coconut-shavings, gulkand) was gifted to my father-in-law, ‘with grateful thanks’, by a certain Advocate Siddhananda Maharudhreshwar Rajyadhyakshya; the names of his juniors and staff – I imagine--have also been included, possibly rank-wise, as they weren’t in alphabetical order. The writing, again, remarkably neat, was at the bottom of the dabba. Complicated names, perfectly inscribed.

A 12”-diameter brass chapatti-dabba, the well-proportioned paraat and the wooden chakli-making-gadget had my grandmother-in-law’s name on it, greeting her on her first post-marriage Ganapati-festival. I marvel that the legible letters engraved close to a century ago have survived scrubbing with abrasive powders and coconut coir.

No spelling mistakes. This ‘writing’ on metal was done by salesmen in steel-utensils shops in Mumbai, sitting on hard cotton cushions with white covers, next to the cashier-owner, using an electric machine with a needle-tip that tapped the metal surface at high speeds. They would have been barely literate, and in the vernacular. There was scope for errors (at least in English); there were none.

The inscriptions on three tiffins, in Marathi, tell me something about Shri Husband and his sisters. Alongside each name is the date on which the tiffin was bought. The small ones were for the primary-school years, for carrying easy-to-eat laddoos and shakkar-parya. The flat, compartmented, rectangular ones with clips on the sides were for middle-school, for chapatti+bhaji+banana. From standards eighth to eleventh (no 10+2 then) they carried multi-layered containers with usal, chapati, curd, the inevitable banana, and possibly a fistful of roasted groundnuts or homemade chakli.

There are drinking-water lotas with ‘sa-prem bhet’ (=with affection) or ‘abhinandan’ (=congratulations) written on them, presented on a birthday or on clearing a Board Examination. Some have tiny, flawlessly executed flowers/leaves drawn alongside. I marvel at the precision of the work.

The most interesting ones are the small haldi-kunku presents:

• one oil-container can pour out a teaspoonful of liquid through a beak. On it is written, ‘Lata-kaki heechya kadoon, sankrantichi bhet’ (=from Lata-kaki, on the occasion of Sankrant).

• a comb-holder from a certain Guna-atya to my eldest sister-in-law. No one remembers this Guna-atya, but the illustration of a baby held up by two sturdy hands and the fact that she was called ‘atya’ suggests she was close to my in-laws.

• Soap-dishes, wick-lamps, kunku-dispensers, sugar-pots, tea-strainers, spatulas, ladles, a remarkable assortment of spoons of all sizes, shapes and quality have at least names, if not dates and occasions, written on them.

Tiny letters, long names, longer messages, all squeezed into two-millimeter-wide, inch-long spaces. We need magnifying glasses to read some of those. I’ve seen men doing it with the aid of only ordinary spectacles.

I don’t know where/how this custom was born.

Correlle, Pyrex, Corning, Borosil, Opal, Khurja, microwave-friendly cook-cum-serve dishes look nice on our dining-tables, may serve as family heirlooms, but are unlikely to arouse curiosity. No Tupperware salad-box or Milton casserole is personalized like this. No name, no date, nothing to differentiate it from any other.

Drums to store water, with taps, before the era of the square ‘syntex’ tanks that now cling to kitchen-ceilings, had bold engravings and proudly occupied precious space on kitchen otas (=platforms). Heavy, grey, no longer shiny, but quite indestructible, impossible even to dent, our steel inheritance gave us a sense of the past, a link to parents/elders/philosophies/attitudes long gone. Many of these items, from homes like ours, have gone to charitable institutions because they are cumbersome to use and take up too much space.

I discover that the word ‘own’ has no equivalent in Marathi/Hindi.

Aadhar cards and passports have our parents’ names on them, but they don’t give a feeling of ‘ownership’.
I had not eaten from a thermocole/foil-coated toss-away until I was well into adulthood. In my parents’ generation, money was spent on education, food and rent, in that order. Every item bought was meant to last forever, hence ‘marked’.

The other markings were on our arms/thighs: to fight small-pox/diphtheria/dysentery/tuberculosis.
We’ve changed our lifestyle and habits, and in the near future, will change them drastically again. Vocabulary and habits have changed drastically and will change some more. Strangely, the phrase ‘naam likha hai kya’ might, I believe, live on.

This compulsory staying put, caged in a comfortable home, thinking about those who don’t have what I have, is a memory forming, nestling, staying put in every human mind alive and conscious today. Across country and race, war and riot, garden and golf, a collective, never-to-be-forgotten part of Mankind’s memory.

Covid-Lockdown=Engraved Forever.

At Delfino 7 Apr 2020

We had stocks estimated to last till 14 April, the last day of the ‘lockdown’ as announced by the PM on 22 Mar. Not that we were running out of daal-chaawal-sugar-oil-soap, but since the news hinted that the curfew might be extended, we went shopping. To avoid a crowd, we went immediately after lunch, the hottest part of the day. Others had the same idea, for there was a crowd outside Delfino’s, our closest ‘supermarket’. All the small grocers and other shops in our area were shut, although the CM had requested them to stay open for 24 hours. Considering that they are usually shut most of the day anyway, didn’t expect anything different. A few did open for an hour or two in the morning, as was the usual routine pre-Covid-19 anyway, to sell milk-bread, onions-potatoes and maybe cigarettes-chai and then pulled shutters down. At the best of times these shops sell wilted, soggy ‘fresh’ vegetables. Except the ‘horticulture’ sheds. These days, hawkers who sell the local farm-produce have hiked their prices. We pay them what they ask for. In the Delfino’s compound, a shamiana had been erected to give shade to the customers waiting to enter. Small white circles were drawn to indicate where we could stand, 1.5 metres away from anyone in front, behind or to our sides. Like chess pieces, we stood, waiting to make a move when the Security chap indicated we should/could, when someone exited from the payment-counter at the other end of the shop. He sprayed the handles of the trolleys and every palm with a lemon-smelling disinfectant before entry. As senior citizens, we were entitled to break the queue. Shri Husband, a stickler for ‘go by the spirit not the letter of a regulation’ said we should go when our turn came, as it wouldn’t be fair to the younger folk. ‘We’re in good health and it won’t take long,’ he said. Strange how he’s patient at the oddest times. Not with me, but I’ll save that for another article. Every time a young person’s turn came, a senior citizen turned up and went ahead. Stay, ordered Shri Husband and I shifted from one foot to another and back, smiling through my mask at a woman standing across the square, who had focussed her spectacled eyes on my huge canvass bag. When she didn’t smile back, I folded the bag and pressed the creases to spite her. Little else to do. When my turn came, I exchanged four cardboard egg-trays for coupons. Two bucks per tray is what Delfino’s takes off the bill. I stuffed the coupons into my wallet. I have a collection of those coupons. For some reason, I do not remember to present them at check-out, so they accumulate. “The lockdown hasn’t made a difference to your memory,” Shri Husband remarked after we went home. Snide. I should never have mentioned the coupons to him. Inside Delfino’s, there was quiet music, air-conditioning, no jostling, pleasant staff. No Amul buttermilk, but milk aplenty. No kurmuras, but poha available. No mutton, but beef and pork looked fresh. No toor or moong dals, but urad and masoor were in stock. Our favourite rice, ambe-mohar, the ponni-rice for idli, rava and the flours we love—jwari specially—were available. We aren’t into insta-foods, but I noticed that the noodles, bottle-can-and-carton shelves were empty. Maybe customer-habit researchers are doing a study? Convinced that the electricity-department wasn’t letting us down, we bought butter, paneer, peas from the frozen section. Oil, soap. Once I’d run through my list, I reached out for non-list items—snacks, sauces. Shri Husband was impressed (rare!) that I had made a list. Like budgets and dusting, it’s on my never-to-be-done things. But these are unusual times we’re living through and persons (being politically correct here) like me in other parts of the planet must be doing the same, I imagine. I saw other trolleys piled high. Were they stocking for six months? Was I doing something wrong by buying for just another four or five days? Influenced by the others, at the chemist, we decide to buy a month’s medicine. I walked out pleased that I had ‘everything’ now. Coconuts, curry-leaves, green chillies, drumsticks and pumpkin flowers we get from our compound. The nustekar blows the horn every alternate day announcing the arrival of a scooter-ful of fish from Betim. Bony, scaly, down-market ones, but they’re a good source of protein when we’re tired of eating eggs. What I can buy at and around my house, I don’t buy from any supermarket. Like leafy vegetables, alsande, chawli, tambdi bhaji, etc. I must admit, and not reluctantly, that Shri Husband is a good house-husband. Sweeping, mopping, washing he does, and happily. Possibly because I’m tidiness challenged. He lends a helping hand in cooking, chopping, clearing, too. Through Facebook and the Whatsapp groups of my schoolmates, ex-colleagues and other acquaintances, I have gathered that many husbands around the world are as kind and supportive. There is no way I will let him read this paragraph, let him know I am fortunate. Might change his persona. This is not the time to disturb status quo. After the Delfino trip, after putting things away, I sit to check messages. I have friends in ill health. One is living by herself and missing face-contact with other humans. One cousin is unhappy to be imprisoned in a tiny flat with unpleasant family-members who are not talking to each other, for twenty-four hours, day after day. One is an alcoholic getting severe withdrawal symptoms. One is worried because she cannot reach her daughter on phone or via the internet and doesn’t know what to do because the daughter fiercely protects her ‘privacy’. Contrary-wise, many are enjoying their solitude, the company of their partners/pets/books/music. A very few, like me, are grateful that life has been, so far, good, that I am able to have excursions to places like Delfino’s. Approaching 14 April, I say, que sera, sera.

A Festival of Scraps and Leftovers.

What’s the word for the last gooey rice-and-gravy slurp of a meal which we Indians 'mop' up with our fingers? I can’t get up from a meal unless the plate is ‘wiped’ clean. Four fingers of the right hand caress the plate in a circular, scooping motion. Some law of physics attracts and holds together near-liquid dal/curd combined with a quarter fistful of rice, flavoured with the last bit of fried fish or dry vegetable. It’s a skill as complicated, but messier, as eating non-filleted fish with chopsticks. It’s childhood conditioning: ’don’t waste food’. How my polishing a plate would help anyone starving anywhere in the world, I didn’t understand, but the mantra stuck. There were more ration shops than private grocers where/when I was a child. In the early days of my marriage, I often cried over curdled milk (no fridge), collected multi-ingredient one-pot-meal recipes (I owned ONE kerosene-fuelled wick-stove), and cooked with whatever was seasonally, locally available (nation-wide transportation was primitive). Erratic electricity supply meant undependable running water. I enjoyed solitude in remote corners of Uttar Pradesh, through bitter Kashmir winters, drought-stricken Tamil Nadu and in Punjab through its troubled years. Cellular phones, cable-television, and the internet were decades away. I learned from neighbours/acquaintances ‘make-do recipes’ with whatever the neighbourhood grocer sold. I became clever at creating recipes out of odd ingredients. Be informed, there’s madness in the methods. I’ve always had a pukka roof over my head and enough food on the table to welcome guests, but because of circumstance, frugality ruled. So, when the lockdown was announced, I went into kanjoos-mode immediately, stocked until 14 Apr 2020. Gas, check. Oil for cooking, check. Milk powder, in case fresh milk was rationed and we had problems with the fridge. Rice, for making idlis and dosas, too. Flours -- wheat, jwari and nachni. Pulses -- rajma, chana black/white, matki, kuleeth, moong, masoor, alsande. Onions and potatoes. Fruit and fresh vegetables that lasted, like gourds and apples. Masalas. Sugar. Soap and scrubbers. Eggs, bread, butter. Done. Since we can’t trust the voltage in our village, I chose to not stock anything that ever swam, flew or trotted. The freezer held icepacks for predictable headaches. Presently, all vegetable trimmings, rinds and peels are used to make stock for soup or dal, or grated to plump up polle. Early every morning, I soak a fistful of a whole pulse. Shri Husband, peering to see what I was typing, said ‘soaking a pulse’ sounded strange. So, to rephrase: I soak a fistful of one of the pulses mentioned above. And not in rum/brandy as Shri Husband hinted; plain water works. After sunset, I strain it and allow it to sprout overnight. The following morning the grains’ nutritive value is increased multiple-fold. (A good way to cheat price rise, too; you get more value per rupee spent when you soak-sprout seeds). A different pulse is soaked each morning, for variety. After pressure-cooking, I add to it cut drumsticks and the odd pumpkin flower, both freshly plucked, and cook again. Salt and dried kokum bring alive the curry, a tiny piece of jaggery neutralizes the tanginess, a pinch of haldi and spoonsful of the impulse-driven masalas are added. Lastly, I temper it with mustard-cumin-methi seeds and some curry-leaves, again freshly plucked. The last sentence is the post-speech ‘Jai-Hind-Jai-Goa’ of every recipe. Mandatory. Occasionally, I garnish with a spoonful of fresh coconut gratings and a few chopped coriander leaves, the metaphorical ‘icing’. There are no restrictions on playing around with ginger and garlic for those who swear by their medicinal properties. Gardening and I are incompatible. But, in times like these, I rise to the occasion like a German hausfrau during WWII. On Day 1, I buried the sliced tops of onions and garlic in soil in a discarded plastic container. Two weeks gone and I have micro-greens for salad. When, in 1969, the Shiv Sena riots to chase away all ‘Madrasis’ introduced me to my first curfew, I was twelve. Cauliflowers, carrots and peas were luxuries, then. Mother used pumpkins and bottle-gourds to make interesting baked dishes. I boil cubes of the gourd/pumpkin flesh, mash coarsely, add salt, pepper, dried herbs, oil/butter, sautéed cashew-nut bits, grated cheese to taste, some milk-powder, blend an egg into the mixture, then bake until set. I don’t worry about proportions unless things go terribly wrong (much like governments worldwide). Retrieving/salvaging takes a lot of imagination. Shri Husband, intruding: “You should know. New mistakes every day.” My Goan genes miss xit-kodi. Unusual times call for sun-dried, gas-roasted Bombay-duck/mackerel, whose smell I love and most non-West-Coasters abhor. My logic: if people can have nutri-nugget korma (ugh!!), no reason why I should not have salted shrimps with brinjal. My stock of dried fish is packed in ten—ok, exaggerating—four layers of plastic bags, each held firmly with a rubber-band. These packets are kept safely in my grandmother-in-law’s heavy-gauged, tight-lidded brass dabba. I removed my virus-proof mask to sniff the stuff before I put it on the gas to roast. Love that raw smell. Shri Husband spent that morning in the balcao. I should do it more often. I was living through an ingredients crisis; the internet told me tomato leaves were edible. We had them as a side dish, lightly tossed in garlic butter: served that plant right for not producing fruit. Snacks comprise fried peels of gourd/pumpkin. Potato, that import by the goras, now beloved of Indians as stuffing in another import, samosas, unites humans from Alaska to Australia. “Other than the Corona virus?” quipped Shri Husband. Lockdown means monotonous meals, a reminder that I have food. Hunger, an indication of good health, unattended can lead to illness, death. I watch in dismay workers trudging home, pockets empty, stomachs rumbling. Curfews are often indefinite. This one’s unrestricted, planet wide, a first. I would kill for mangoes with cream right now. Or a bite of ripe banana. Others would kill for scraps and leftovers. If the virus doesn’t get them first. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sheela Jaywant is a humour columnist and short-story writer who likes to hear from her readers on sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in