Removing Chappals and Other Traditions

Shri Husband doesn’t wear chappals. ‘Will you change that sentence? It sounds odd, somehow, like I walk around with naked feet,’ he growled as he read what I was typing, over my shoulder. He cannot not interfere with my column. ‘Old habits die hard,’ I mumbled. Bai Goanna piped up: ‘Don’t say ‘old habits’. Habits are formed over a period of time, how can one have a new habit? All habits are old.’ Together, they broke the thread of my thoughts; I typed that. ‘Train of thought,’ both chorused, ‘or series of thoughts. You say thread if you’re talking about emails.’ I wish they would leave me alone when I’m writing. Anyway, if you read the first sentence, that Sri Husband doesn’t wear chappals, let me tell you, he doesn’t wear sandals either. You might imagine that he goes around like MF Hussain. No, his footwear comprises shoes with laces. No Velcro, no clips or elastic to hold them in place, he wears the polishing kind. They are good for the fit. ‘You mean good for the physically fit?’—Shri Husband, goading me. Me, patiently: ‘No. By ‘fit’ I don’t mean physically fit as with a good pulse-rate, flat abdomen and no illness, I mean they are comfortable for the toes, heels and ankles.’ For Shri Husband, buying shoes means giving the salesperson a fit (of the seizure kind). He turns them around to check the soles’ grip, the stitching at the edges, the inside, the back of the heel height, the evenness of the exterior. He asks the salesman when/where the shoes were manufactured, when/how delivered to the store, how long kept out of packing, in the open, on the shelves. I suspect in the billing software, they have a column that alerts the counter staff who in turn alerts the sales team that Shri Husband is a customer to be handled with enormous patience. Most of the time, he is attended to by a senior (means potbellied, greying and normally sitting on a stood, telling others what to do) person, who is armed with answers to the random questions tossed by Shri Husband: ‘Do people buy real leather anymore? Is this real leather? Real? Really? How to tell, it looks and feels like faux leather. Phone your manager and ask him whether it’s real leather or something else. Or (the ultimate threat), I’ll check online.’ Shri Husband wears shoes the old-fashioned way, with socks. Cotton, rarely manufactured therefore hard to find, hand-washed, shade-dried, no-allergy garments. ‘Can socks be called garments? Try using the word ‘hosiery’.’—Bai Goanna’s attempt to distract me. ‘Socks can be called under-garments,’ Shri Husband clarified. The issue is, whenever we visit relatives, temples, hospitals and air-conditioned shops, these days, we are told to remove our chappals. There are no rules for shoes, but it is implied that those also have to be taken off and added to the higgledy-piggledy pile near the entrance. Shri Husband grumbles as he has two layers to shed. Why not just use rubber flip-flops, I wonder; I don’t voice my thoughts, you know that. ‘There are racks and shelves,’ Bai Goanna has told him many times, ‘to keep them on.’ Shri Husband has retorted, ‘They are for show. No one touches their own footwear to put them up on a shelf.’ He is correct, as always. People shuffle their feet out of their footwear and leave the latter wherever they lie. Hence, in many places, the shelves are empty and there’s a pile of chappals, etc. next to the stand, mixed like chivda ingredients. In places where tokens are given and footwear is stashed in pigeon-holes, the chappal-owners do their best to not touch them. The pairs are slid or thrown on the floor by the token-handler, adjusted into place by the chappal-owners with their toes, worn by a wormlike, crawling motion of the feet. Shri Husband does a visual check of public places where footwear is prohibited, from the door. If the floor inside is clean, socks are removed, if dirty, he waits outside. His logic: ‘Shoes are kept outside to keep the inside clean; if the inside is dirty, what’s the point in keeping the shoes outside?’ Bai Goanna’s logic: ‘If you’ve gone somewhere, what’s the point waiting outside?’ Tradition based on common sense made the shoes-outside rule a universal one in the eastern world. Now, many westerners have adopted it for their homes (we, the superior, civilized humans of India transfer so much gyaan to them and yet get no credit). But in offices, hospitals, shops, they are allowed. Oddly, we buy shoes from air-conditioned shops, and vegetables from gutter-lined pavements. Another tradition of almost touching something with one’s fingers and then drawing those fingers to one’s heart or forehead, endures. If my foot touches someone else’s, I do that gesture as an apology. But if someone else’s foot touches me, I still do it. ‘Weird, no?’ Bai Goanna says. Employees touch the outside stairs when they walk into office buildings, then touch their chest with the same fingers, supposedly in gratitude for having a job. Of course, whether one is earning one’s salary has nothing to do with how many times stairs and chests are touched, six days a week, so many weeks per month/year, for a lifetime, especially if you work in a large corporate or the government. Mechanical rituals are a must; work ethics are optional. ‘Cynical you are,’ said Shri Husband. ‘As if everyone is a kaam chor.’ (Look whose being sarcastic about cynicism. Whatever did he eat for breakfast today?). Take burping, slurping, rubbing palm over exposed, rotund belly (only for men). In most places outside India, if done in public, these acts, done deliberately, individually or combined would be considered rude or worthy of psychiatric evaluation. But, our ancestors knew the scientific reasons behind them (including taking pride in a planet-shaped abdomen with a blackhole-navel). If we collected the gas from all the burps and other gaseous expulsions, a million, million male Indians could together harvest a fair amount of fuel to overcome the price rise. ‘Are you serious?’ Shri Husband asked, reading this paragraph. ‘Why would she not be?’ asked Bai Goanna, for once taking my side, sort of. Think Swatchh Bharat. Great concept. Government gave money to build toilets; many of us got funds through the panchayats. Small sheds were built. We use them… for storing coconuts, rusted cycles, wooden planks, cracked buckets, broken chairs; we still ‘water’ our plants when full bladders protest. Tradition is tradition. Our ancestors ‘watered’ plants thus, science has proved that plants get nitrogen/phosphorus/natrium/potassium/minerals/vitamins/hormones/TLC by this method. We should not blindly follow the West and ignore the gyaan that our forefathers followed for thousands of years. ‘Thousands?’ Bai Goanna asked. ‘We’re just in 2022.’ Shri Husband said: ‘She’s including the years Before Christ, way back till the cave years.’ I cannot make out when he’s serious, when not. And then he reminded me of one embarrassing incident. On a billboard was a photograph of a young couple with their two children, and beside the man was written in English: A clean Bharat is a healthy Bharat. I (innocently) asked, ‘That’s Bharat? I thought that was ….. (name of famous model).’ When the guffaw subsided, I realised it wasn’t the name of the man. It was written in the way a second standard textbook is written: ‘When Bablu is clean, Bablu is healthy.’ I mean, in English one writes ‘India’, no? Or at least that’s what I had learnt in school and followed until recently. Just saying. For me that is tradition, saying ‘India’ when speaking/reading/writing in English. Or Konkani, for that matter. Talking of tradition, next time I’ll write about the art of accurate nose-blowing and spitting. Namaste.

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.

At the Airport

The woman squawked out ‘last and final call for Mr Ram Verma’. I craned my neck to see who was delaying the flight. The others in the queue seemed not so flustered. Minutes went by. Next announcement: ‘last and final call for Mr Ram Verma, Shrimati Sita Verma, Master Lav Verma, Miss Lavina Verma’. Hainh? I thought, an entire family is late now? When for the fifteenth time that same staff called ‘a last and final call’ for the same lot of names, I went and asked her whether she knew the meaning of ‘last and final’. She was flummoxed; then she said, if I don’t make this call three dozen times, the passengers will say ‘you didn’t tell us’ or ‘you told us only once’. Apparently, if a single ‘last and final’ announcement is made, that’s insufficient. That’s not the only thing that makes Indian airports special. Last weekend, whilst waiting for a flight, I discovered that when a flight is delayed, after the initial message of ‘by two hours’, it’s delayed by ten minutes at a time, sometimes for another hour or more. The truth is hidden behind accents no one follows. The twenty-something lipstick-wearing girl handling her boyfriend-via-mobile and irate customer simultaneously hadn’t a clue why the morning fog in Thane, Mumbai, was causing a problem at Kempa Gowda, Bangalore, after sixteen hours. Another thing: a flight which must take fifty minutes to a destination, on the ticket shows sixty minutes as flying time. So, when it does reach in fifty, wind conditions being kind and all, the pilot proudly announces how his airlines is always before time, pre-punctual, so to say, a new addition to the Indlish lexicon. Who’s to tell him that that’s rubbish? Most of us don’t even wish the pilots, nor they us, what with the cabin crew forming a protective namaste barrier between flier and flown. If I thought the ground staff spoke in a strange accent, I have to admit that the flying employees talk in stranger accents. Even a normal ‘hullo’ to answer a phone call is a ‘hellyo’ for them. Someone in that industry should explain that to me. These days, old timers say, there’s no charm in flying. All sorts of riff-raff occupy hard steel benches and eat (God forbid!) samosas with cholay. Seats have to be alongside courier boys and unshaven IT types. And humour columnists. Gross. It has interesting moments, though. I once entered the ladies’ loo-cubicle and found a handbag on the ledge above the flush. Immediately, I alerted those outside, who were washing hands, adjusting straps or trying to make sense of the hot-air drier. Everyone had a dazed look in their eyes: no one speaks to strangers at airports, right? When they do, they make friends, exchange phone numbers, offer jobs, insurance policies, and more. So, I made my announcement again: there’s a purse in here, someone’s left a purse here, who’s purse is this, etc. One woman sweetly, unexpectedly and very stupidly asked, ‘are you sure it’s not yours?’ I love Indians from India, I tell you, especially those we meet at airports. It’s a breed you don’t find at railway stations any longer. As for bus depots, no one has the time to spend in chit-chat there. Bus-stands are no longer addas for non-destitutes. The real fun in watching human behaviour is at airports these days. And in aircraft. As in trains, so in aircraft, everyone switches seats to sit with old acquaintances met at the airport or new one’s made there. Drives the cabin-crew crazy, trying to figure out who’s in which seat and whom to give which pre-sold meal to. We’re Indians, no? In spite of the fact that our mobile phones occupy forty-nine percent of our waking hours exchanging news like what we had for the last two meals, and the digestive episodes that followed, we still love live company. Seating arrangements and systems be damned. If one can get a free wheelchair and someone to roll us around in comfort, we book one; do our shopping, see the pretty sights inside these glamourous new airports and—oh, yes—break queues legitimately. The queue; a topic I could write a tome on: we know we have to stand in one, just not sure which end to join. Those yellow lines behind which we must wait make no sense to us. One woman behind me at security asked me whether she could go before me. She was on my flight. I let her. Did she know that whether or not she went first, the flight would not leave without either of us? I don’t know. I think she just wanted to be ‘first’. ‘Main first aa gayee’ carries a lot of weight, doesn’t it? A feel-good factor, seen at buffet meals and, of course, at airports. One woman who thought I looked familiar (I have such a common face, everywhere I go people say they know someone who looks just like me. I say to them, in my mind, ‘damn, not again’) stared at me, smiled, asked if I was Y Z. When I shook my head to say ‘no’, she said, ‘sorry, but what’s your name’. I mean, why did I have to tell her? I did. Conditioning. I’m Indian. I also asked her what her name was. Within minutes we talked about our childhood illnesses, in-laws’ problems, the consequences of voting for a certain party and how to cook without onions and tomatoes. Tomaatoes. Tomaytos. Tamaatars. Tambaaters. Indians at airports speak in several Indlishes; Marathindlish, Hindlish, Assamglish… and therefore, various pronunciations are heard and spoken, repeated, echoed so the other person comprehends… in ‘silent’ airports it’s great fun, uninterrupted by the growl and squeak of the (very) loud-speaker. Best of all, was landing and exiting at Goa. Even Allahabad and Gauhati airports aren’t as good. We have carpeted ramps with little ripples that engage our sense of balance, tripping us at intervals, ensuring we never get old with all that jumping to avoid the bumps under our feet. Dragging trolley-bags over a surface with resistance helps us strengthen shoulders and wrists. The fungus and mould that flourish in the tropical temperatures and humidity build up the immune system. There’s more, but I’m running out of words. Best of all, this is a military airport. No photos, say the signs. But they who own and will and must use all features of their mobile phones don’t know that or can’t read or aren’t bothered. As it is, in this age of satellite pictures tracking where we live and where we go, does it matter if we take a selfie with a loved one with the backdrop of runway lights? Apparently, in our airports, it does.

Happy Diwali.

In my jungle surroundings, Diwali means butterflies and birds. Under the post-monsoon October sun, plants have begun to display buds and blooms. We don’t see many of the latter survive the day. Reason: those butterflies and birds from the first sentence destroy them. Hairy baby butterflies (cute but prickly caterpillars actually) are crazily hungry all the time. Some hundreds of them get born on a single twig and spend all their waking hours chewing up every leaf in sight. I don’t know if they ever sleep. Bald or balding trees, a farmer/ 5-star hotel gardener’s nightmare, is a lepidopterist/ entomologist’s delight. Worms of all kinds are crawling everywhere. Birds, squirrels, civet cats and other sly creatures bite into every fruit they come across, rendering them non-eatable for us humans who have slogged through the year for them to grow. One member of the GoaGardeners group was wondering how to prevent porcupines from destroying her plants. Someone should tell our government that it isn’t just the wild boars, peacocks, nilgai and monkeys that are wreaking havoc with crops: we need to kill many other creatures, too, including prowling two-legged thieves. (That the big and real rogues sit in a/c’d offices and move around in red-light-topped white cars far removed from the poverty our petty robbers live in, is another story.) All’s fair in harvest and war. A friend described a crocodile snacking on a live bat, said it sounded like someone eating potato crisps. Nature is equally unfair to every living thing. In the fast-growing slum outside my gate, a Narkasur effigy is being built. (Just asking, are there legal slums anywhere in India?) Built by those who live in the rooms raised on Communidade land. No one razes what’s raised unless the Court says so... and even then, there’s always an appeal to depend on-- a Panch gave me this gyaan once. Before the Narkasur came, there was a pandal erected for Ma’am Devi; before her Mr Ganapati had festivities devoted to him. After Tulsi-lagna, the Christmas decorations will be up. Civilization has come to our jungle, jingling all the way. The paddy-crop has been cut. One tractor, one day. Hard, laborious field work avoided and over. Viva technology. Neighbourhood homes have been painted. Gates and compound walls have got spruced up. Strings of imported fairy-lights adorn coconut-tree trunks and mango/guava branches. Kitchens are still smelling of snacks being fried and sugar bubbling into syrup. Packets of over-the-counter bought mithai have been discarded over walls into uninhabited plots. The camouflage of creepers has thinned after the rains and the rubbish is tossed around by the breeze. Around Diwali, the breeze picks up, though it isn’t as strong as around Sankranth, and the litter gets evenly distributed in our wado, not discriminating between rich/poor, caste/community, Goan/bhailey. Nature moves in non-discriminating ways. Clay diyas with oil-dipped wicks add to the annual grease marks on floors and window-sills. ‘Rexine’ footwear, plastic buckets, cars and mobile-phones have changed many of our traditions (think Chinese food and chaat at weddings). Other customs get modified, like the preferred material for the akash-kandil is now plastic. Cheaper, easy to fold and store, reusable. Any housewife will tell you its benefits. A friend who is concerned about what’s happening in the world, the country, the mines in the state, the beaches in Goa says the killings in Uri/Quetta/Mao areas should make us feel guilty about lighting lamps, buying new things and enjoying ourselves. Quote: “So many families have been plunged into permanent darkness; this is no time for celebration.” Actually, every year, there’s some reason for gloom—if not earthquake, then flood or drought, if not train accidents, then actors running over pavement-dwellers; if not female foeticide, then paedophiles/murderers getting acquitted; if not dengue, then drug-resistant tb. What to do, celebrate Diwali or not, I want to ask. But I don’t, for life is confusing as it is, for the sensitive. The jungle, unpunctuated by Diwali/Holi, has its own seasonal mazaa. Through the confident branches of teak, the coconut fronds have struggled to make their way skywards. The mango-guava-chickoo threesome is in-between fruiting, the roots enjoying the moist comfort of the homemade saaro-compost that surrounds them. Kingfishers, orioles, bee-eaters, mynas, coppersmiths, koels, tits, sunbirds, baya-weavers and other small birds dart around through the leaves. We can barely get a quick glimpse their gaudy colours. They move fast, they are small, they are lively. Dashes of crimson, emerald, sapphire, sunflower yellow, shiny purple, that’s the only indication of a bird in flight. One morning, I saw a hornbill. Then another. And one more, all in the span of a few minutes. Priceless. The pulsating glow of the fireflies at night is superior to any crackers/sparklers/wheelies money can buy. At night, too, the jungle silence is eerie, its darkness scary, and the life in it utterly fascinating. The one thing Nature can’t provide is cooked food. Like biryani. Snacks and recipes devised and perfected over the centuries. Man-made chaklyo, phenoryo, neuryo, phene, khaje, phov, narlya-vadyo, even the delicious mutton-puri and fried fish which was/is traditionally made in some communities is what, to my mind, really makes a great Diwali. No substitute for good health and great food. Same with music. You may like the sounds of the insects, the song of the birds, the moos and grunts of the mammals, the rhythmic swoosh of the sea. But the taans of a raag, intricate and tuneful, the build-up of an alaap, the cheerful, rapid-fire notes of a taraanaa are man-made. Along with people whose company you enjoy, that makes the good life. Diwali is a label given to times like these, all man-made. Festivals can be fun for some, forced fun for others and no fun at all for the grieving and the ill. I send my wishes to …our jawans, whether at the border, undergoing training or languishing with dreadful injuries… municipal workers, cops, medical teams in government hospitals, kisans, firemen, teachers, postmen, bankers, readers… Happy Diwali all. Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in.

Winter In Goa.

          My New Year memories are of thick woollen coats, prickly inner garments, warm shawls, and painful toes and fingers. I have lived much of my adult life in North India, where temperatures hover in single digits at this time of the year.  I couldn’t have survived without the tent-like ‘pherans’ in Kashmir, inside which I hugged both son and ‘kangdi’ together. The latter is a ‘matka’ housed in a cane basket. Inside the ‘kandgi’ are kept live, glowing coals, quite dangerous to hold against skin and kid, can and do cause blisters, fires and cancer (I’m told, when used over long years). But for me, ignorance was bliss. The heat it generated was more bliss.

Words like ‘razai’ and ‘bukhari’ make no sense in Goa. The former my aunt used as a mattress. The latter I’d left behind for the next tenant in the house I lived in. Sri Husband’s nomadic job made us set up home in several remote corners of India. Our weekly ration of an approximately 20 kg chunk of coal was dragged over the quarter kilometre ‘kacchaa’ lane that led to our house from the main road. By candle-light (the voltage, whenever we had ‘current’, hovered around 40 watts), we hammered it into manageable pieces to feed the ‘bukhari’. Sometimes we injured our fingers.

Winter thoughts: our soldiers at the border live (and sometimes die) in extreme discomfort so we can enjoy our parties, crib about the government, do our own thing.

          Winter memories: carts loaded with juicy crimson carrots, fresh peas, cauliflowers the size of my head, so much home-grown spinach that neighbours who grew it in their yards gifted away big bunches to passers-by. Mounds of tomatoes. Cracked heels, cracked lips, steaming adrak-ki-chai, women clerks in offices speedily knitting something instead of putting fingers to keyboard. Fog.

Goan winter: one neighbour politely wishes me good morning through chattering teeth, head covered by an acrylic-wool shawl, upper limbs enveloped in two layers of husband’s long-sleeved shirts, brand new canvas shoes, ‘socked’ (accurate Goan term) feet. Fingers tucked into folded elbow.

“Bai,” she says, “Cold, no?”

          I nod, whilst I untangle a kink out of a stiff plastic pipe.

The poder comes along, ‘monkey-cap’ on head.

Neighbour reflects a second “Cold, no?” towards me.

          I stupidly decide to educate her about the temperatures in the Himalayas, Kashmir, the North-East, even neighbouring Belgaum.        

Blank stare.

          I tell her about snow. She has her aha moment. Her cousin from Canada had come via New York once, bought her a transparent globe with a ‘Statue of Liberty’ inside it, floating in clear fluid. When shaken, a white substance floated to the statue’s head, and slowly floated to its feet. “Snow,” proclaims this true-blue Goan. “I have it in my show-case.”

          I tell her about the extreme conditions our soldiers live in, in Siachen.

She tells me her arthritis improves with a ‘khare udak’  dip in the Baga waters in late February. “Our ‘bhangrachey’ soil and the cold-cold waters of the sea at this time of the year make miracles, haan.”

          I don’t give up: “The Himalaya is so cold that the soft snow on the ground hardens into ice.”

I know, her eyes tell me; she says: “Ice? Lots in my freezer. We don’t use it because of sore-throat-problem.” Then adds: “But you won’t fall sick, this early morning oxygen is good for health.” Her yoga teacher said so.

I try again: “There are places colder than Goa.” (What is wrong with me?) She quickly gets and triumphantly waves a newspaper at me. A headline says something about ‘coldest night’ hereabouts. I shut up.

          I recall bygone debates about non-use of geysers in bathrooms and wearing (artificial) leather jackets on motorcycles so that you didn’t get the sniffles, joint pain, headaches, fever, the runs, etc. Another trick: Hot milk with sugar and haldi consumed first thing in the morning, last thing at night. I guess the nausea it gives rise to makes you forget all discomfort below 3 degrees Celsius.

          I shut the windows at bed-time and wrap myself at bedtime. I remember I own a pair of woollen, ankle-length and leather-soled ‘Santa-shoes’, with white bobs at the ends of the laces. I wear them. My south-west-coast blood is warm. Any temperature in the teens reminds me ‘it’s winter’.

          Whichever part of the world you belong to: the cold northern hemisphere or the sunny southern one, Happy 2015 everybody. Belated doesn’t matter, does it?

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Is There Another Me Somewhere?

          “Read,” I said to Sri Husband, thrusting a newspaper article at him, “About stem-cells, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood and cloning. These are Indian ideas. We knew all about them several centuries before Christ was born. It’s all written in our puranas.”

          “Was I-n-d-i-a-n written in the Devanagri or Latin script?” he asked, as always, straying from the topic at hand.

          “That I don’t know, but one scientist, he read about it,” I told him confidently. “And our Pradhan Mantriji also said so.”

          “It’s ok for you to say Pradhan Mantri without the ji,” Sri Husband said, out of focus again. “The two words are respectful enough.”

          I got the conversation back on-line: “They say the Kauravas were cloned. Otherwise how could one mother have a hundred sons and all of the same age?”

          Sri Husband quipped: “What, no daughters? By law in today’s India, Gandhari would have got into trouble.”

          It wasn’t me saying so, I was reading something a wiser and better person had written: “… a verse in Mahabharata under the chapter Adiparva describes how the Kauravas were created from a single embryo. According to the description, the Kauravas were created by splitting the single embryo into 100 parts and growing each part in a separate kund or container. They not only knew about test-tube babies and embryo splitting but also had the technology to grow human foetuses outside the body of a woman. Something that is not known to modern science.”

          Sri Husband was silent. I’d stumped him. I grinned wickedly.

          He grinned right back: “Their highly skilled technical staff could control and regulate air temperatures and humidity, no doubt, in their infection-free laboratories. Maybe, just maybe, they had good science fiction writers, too.”

          I didn’t know what he was getting at. He continued, “Did they commute to work on two-wheelers or cars?”

          “Don’t be silly,” I said, “There were only carts, then, driven by horses and bullocks. Or slaves.”

          “Ah,” he said, “But they had Pushpak Vimaans. So they had runways, but no road-traffic jams.”

“Maybe,” I said, adding, “And they had many weapons that match those that we have today. They were bright.” I was equipped with the printed word before me. It wasn’t me saying so, smart PhDs wrote this stuff.

          “So, we were a clever people,” he agreed. “Intelligent, evolved, practical and quarrelsome.”

          “Quarrelsome?” that was a googly.

          “See the number of intrigues and fights that are documented. With humanized animals and demons.”

          “But that’s mythology,” I said.

          “The technology is real and the rest is mythology? Good, good.” I know I’m on unsafe ground when Sri Husband gets extra-polite.  

          “We can’t prove the truth,” I agreed, “But can we prove they did not exist? If cloning is mentioned, how can we say for certain that it didn’t happen, that it’s all fiction?”

          “We can’t. It may well be true,” Sri Husband had to grudgingly grant me that. “Let’s say we were smart and intelligent once upon a time.”

          “Are you saying we’re not smart and intelligent now?”
          “No.”

          “Then what are you saying?”

          “That we should concentrate on the here and now. Let history-scholars dig and analyse the archives. We should be doing our duties and jobs properly, handling garbage and governance issues instead of sitting around dwelling on past glories. Good scientists don’t rule out any possibilities, true, but they move on, too.”

          Me, talking to myself: “Lecture-baazi shuroo.”

Aloud I said, “You can’t deny that Shushrut-surgeon and Charak-physician were great professionals.”

          Sri Husband: “Drs Shushrut and Charak would have moved with the times.”

          Me: “You know, there was plastic surgery; Ganapati’s head is proof of that.”
          Sri Husband: “Plastic or other surgeries for repair of cut noses and ears, and battle or hunting injuries I can believe. Our ancestors were clever and skilled. But if someone’s head was cut off, and you had the talent to reinstate it, why not use the same head? Assuming that loss of head would mean loss of life, after attaching the head back, how would you revive the person?”

          I wondered why he used ‘you’, meaning me.

I voiced a thought: “Do you think every person has a clone? Or had? Is that why there are so many Indians on the planet? There must be some method to find out. Can my clone be made with a couple of my bone-marrow cells?”

          “Another you?”

          “Yes,” I said smugly. “Would be nice. No?”

 “Nightmarish,” said Sri Husband shuddering.

         

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